I’m having a lot of currently complicated feelings about… big changes. I’ve been wrestling a lot with feelings of regret as I learn the art of capturing moments into stills and trying to be kind to myself about those missed chances. I’m trying to divorce my hobby of photography from an obsessive need to capture every single moment, from kicking myself with every instance I miss.
I’m not a photographer, not really. I was once a filmmaker but nowhere is quite built for sharing small slices, small pieces of me and the things that I see. So I pivoted. Past an aching nervousness, past feeling like an absolute imposter and despite all the discouragement of an old teacher (yikes, ten years ago, now).
I like to think that my voice in my photos has become stronger. I am enjoying the push and pull, the thrill against my own social anxiety and convention. Instead of worrying about missed moments. I take the time to make moments, to make my space in the world. To occupy instances of time I might be too shy to insist upon. If I don’t take these moments… I miss my chances. Sometimes I am okay with that. Sometimes the chance is not worth taking. I think these small lessons have taught me that it’s alright to make the mistake. To miss the moment. I will grow my eye for these moments with every chance and every missed instance.
I think there’s something to be said about this, even in our lived experiences. In all of my time, both childhood and adulthood, I’ve missed chance after chance to document these spaces up north, the moments I’ve spent time there. I have a few to speak for. Certainly family members can pull up old files. But I sometimes lament the thought of missing the last chance I had to take in my grandmother’s old home.
I took these knowing I’d feel this way if I didn’t take the chance, even if the moment seemed strange. Even if it perhaps looked a little strange to those who didn’t realise I was into photography as a hobby in the first place. I took the moment inside myself to trust my eye, and take this time and this space.
Just these last two years I can feel the ways in which I’ve grown up. But somehow I feel like I have so much growing to do, still. Maybe that’s just a feeling that sticks with you forever. Honestly, that would have scared me once, to know that I’d never really feel ‘grown up’. That there’s not a particular age that determines this. That I’ll always be learning and changing and growing and becoming something different with every stage of my life.
I’m not scared of that now. I’m definitely more scared of not getting to experience that full ride though.
I took these photos during the small get-together after the funeral of a man who was the life and soul of this place. Of every place I knew up here in Lac-Des-Plages. He was a grandparent to me, his big jovial smile is distant in my memory already. It’s been years since I’ve seen it proper even when he was still with us. It’s sad what illness and ailment can do to a person.
Change is exciting, but change can also be just as terrifying. I’m used to change being a crushing weight in my life as of late. I’ve lost a lot of family, and a lot of memories with them. I’ve lost a lot of places that were once dismal escapes as a kid. Being ‘forced’ to go play outside and make the memories I look back on fondly now. Sometimes I wish I could experience them just one more time.
I don’t really know what to feel very much these days. But I know that change is inevitable, and a lot of it is out of my control, and losing this control is terrifying, but I’ll adapt and change, and one day grow from it. Become a more well-rounded person, become a more jaded and sharp personality. Who really knows until it happens to me in real time. I think either of these happening is okay. I’m allowed to be a rough personality, to be disliked from time to time. To be disliked by certain people. To have hard feelings to decipher and build a hard shell that softens only with time. I’ve been giving myself permission to feel these emotions, but not to dwell on them. The second part is the hardest.
I also know that a lot of change comes from within, from decision I make going forward. People say life is short, but really its the longest length of time we have. I’ve come to notice the stillness of time taken in small moments. In breathing fresh air, in centring myself in moments of bliss, and happiness. Acknowledging these moments as strongly as I (unfortunately) dwell on things that hurt and take pieces of me with them.
Its been difficult, but I think I’m doing okay all the same.
Picture me taking a deep breath before going through this year. Its a bit of a doozy and I will try not to be a bummer because some parts of it, were much harder than others but I don’t entirely want to pretend like they weren’t. There were some good things. I do want to focus on those, but I feel the need to validate that this was just a really hard year for me and it’s going to take a lot of introspective and trial and error in 2022 to find that spark in me again. I feel like I lost it this year but, that happens sometimes and that’s okay.
I feel like I struggled a lot this year personally with admitting my limits. With putting my personal well being at the risk of bending over for people. It was… really hard to find that balance this year. I don’t think I’m the only one who struggled and I want to be there for everyone the best that I can be. But I think I lost myself a little bit along the way. I forget that even though I can tough out a lot of things in the moment, the weight they leave behind can really add up. I leave this year feeling like I’ve failed a lot of people, both friends and family, despite my attempts to be there for them all. Its a lot to balance. But who is going to do it if not me?
(Um… pro-tip the world still continues to turn even if I cant fix everything right away. I am… learning that very slowly. But we’re getting there).
I am honestly extremely lucky to have a rock in my partner to keep me anchored through it all.
But Ouf. Here we go.
January — We spend the first month of the New Year in isolation, wrapping up a small project we decided to start on a whim in December last year. It’s hard but we expected it this year. Its weird typing this now, realising we were likely under curfew then and hoping numbers settled into some semblance of normalcy. I have a call with my publisher… this isn’t the start to a new year I was expecting.
February — We wrapped up Myth Retold’s Kickstarter this month. I have three brand new books and I am emotional about them and the quality they bring. I am honoured by the folks who read them and tell me great things about them. It’s a while before things like curfew and numbers slow down on the pandemic side of things. But that’s okay, we’ll get through it and we’ll have a whole lot to show for it. We pass the year mark for Paint The Town Red here and feel… extremely guilty about it but its fine, its fine, we are almost there!!
March — We celebrate a small birthday for Tas, things start looking up, pandemic numbers are dropping, there is news now about vaccines, there is a lot more hope here for a more normal summer but we’re not betting too greatly on it in the fear of being disappointed.
April — We wrap up another Kickstarter: the Underworld Myths Collection and it goes relatively smoothly. Our business is re-organized we are keeping up with things better than we ever have been. Our numbers are doing pretty good for sales, the future does look brighter and we are eager for it. Eager for something a bit more normal.
May — The last of our heavy burdens is lifted when we finally finish Paint The Town Red V2 in time for TCAF’s online show. At the end of this month we are all emotional, both our families receive their first dose of the vaccine against COVID. We’re extremely hopeful, extremely grateful and looking far more optimistically towards a summer with friends. That Tas might be able to finally travel back home to visit family.
June — We launch a Kickstarter for Prism Knights. The last two books of this series put it to rest after I started it in 2017. Its bittersweet. The campaign does tremendously well. I am elated and floored by the reception of this little book series and have high hopes for future crowdfunding campaigns of the same vein. We end this month off on a high note, we get vaccinated with our second dose!! We have an outdoor gathering with family for the first time in just about two years. We celebrate my grandmother’s 80th and try to catch up on everything we’ve missed. It feels great to see people again.
August — Is by far the most exciting month. The one with the highest ups, the lowest downs. Ouf. It is a lot. We start off by tabling at our first Pride. We are safe, wearing masks, pre-packaging all of our goods for any sales made and we are well over two weeks after receiving our second dose of the vaccination. We don’t sell great but getting out there again is fantastic.
My partner and I get engaged!! I personally still can’t believe I plucked up the courage to ask her but it happened! Its an extremely hot month and this day is no exception. We are both elated and share this moment with eager friends.
This moment is overshadowed by a few things. Family drama, funerals (honestly just poorly timed on my part I was too eager to have something happy to share in light of a lot of the negatives from the beginning of this year and the end of the last). The family drama persists and eats away at me personally for the rest of the year.
I turn 29 and we are finally comfortable enough to start regularly going to the gym again (not related really but I am determined to get rIPPED this year).
September — We celebrate my mom’s birthday together! Family drama persists and grows. There is talk of a fourth wave with a variant we call Delta at this time. Tas is too nervous to travel and postpones her trip home. I get an agent which is exciting! My book deal falls through though and I am personally ridden with guilt and frustration. I hate myself for this for months later. My tattoo appointment falls through, one I’ve been looking forward to for weeks.
We launch a Kickstarter for a new product we’ve never attempted before with the help of our friends and find that it does insanely well. Money is a little less tight, we breathe a lot easier for a little while longer.
October — This month is a little bit easier. We get enveloped in the spooky season. We take more walks and enjoy the scenery more. We entrench ourselves in our work and in watching spooky things to get into the mood. I struggle with the fog that’s overcome me. I feel like everything is a little bit further away but its okay. I’ll get through it. I chalk it up to a funk. I limit my time on social media hoping this will cut me a break and it does help in part.
November — Tas is finally able to visit home. Its a weird time this whole week is strange, the two cats are not sure what to feel about it (happy 2nd birthday to them)! I attempt NaNo and don’t quite succeed at the full-throttle sprint BUT I do get an insane amount of writing done (far more than I have previously). The fog & feeling persists. I get a new tattoo (finally). The end of the month brings word of a new variant (omicron..)…. this one seems to spread despite the two doses of vaccine we’ve gotten so far…
We do a couple small conventions and they are both like a breath of fresh air. To see people reacting to your work, to see a new table filled with different works we haven’t had the chance to display before… its just really nice.
December — ….. ugh. The fog gets worse. Kickstarter shits the bricks with a new blockchain reveal, this will set our company back by the thousands if people keep to their word against pledging to projects on the platform. We aren’t making usual sales, on Etsy, on our shop. I melt down. I’m fine. I’m fine.
The familial pressure starts to sink its teeth into my skin. I feel like I’m suffocating. I’m having terrible conversations and can’t seem to get across that I’m drowning even though it feels so obvious. I’m pushed into being placid and placating. I don’t know how to build boundaries without hurting feelings so I pull away. I don’t know how to tell people to stop without worrying I will push them away permanently.
Breathe. This is hard for me to write because its the first time I’m acknowledging this openly. I don’t want to make enemies I just want to disappear for a while and breathe and breathe and breathe.
I promise to make next year better for myself.
I’m typing this and its nearly 2am and I don’t know who might see this, who might be hurt by it. I’m hurt. I’m hurting and I’m bleeding. This year I’ve struggled, placatingly through mis-gendering and inexcusable dead-naming. I am patient, I am so extremely patient. I let people sweep my engagement under mountains of pettiness and pain. I tell myself too often to shut up shut up. I can’t do this to myself anymore.
2022 is going to be hard. But I need to make room for myself and learn what my limits are. I can’t be everyone’s rock no matter how hard I try. I still want to be there for everyone the best I can, but I need to learn how to make my own space to breathe and step back.
I feel like I’ve lost a lot of friends in this pandemic through stress and miscommunication. But I’ve gained many more. Its hard for me not to second guess my worth, my opinions, my presence in bigger groups. I’m working on it, I’m working on it.
Deep breath.
It’s going to be alright. I’m picking up pieces and I’m shaping them back together and sometimes they break apart again but I breathe and I am patient and I put them back together again. It’s going to be okay. I need to learn some things along the way. I need to learn how to be kinder to myself. How to be stronger for myself.
So maybe you will see some of this develop. Maybe you wont. I don’t know what kind of process I will share with you. I know I’ve been distant but this year broke parts of me I am trying to figure out how to put back together again. I’ll be fine. Just give me time.
Hoping for better, and hoping anyone reading this has a better year too.
Last year Tas and I made the executive decision to adopt a couple of cats now that we had moved into our new (larger) place. We began the search tentatively at first, looking up little faces on various shelter’s sites, imagining what it would be like to have them in our home.
We had a few criteria but nothing that couldn’t be bent if the fit was just right. We were hoping for a pair knowing that often pairs get split in the adoption stages. And knowing that having two to play with one another and to keep one another company while we spent the occasional time away doing conventions and trips would make their experiences a little less lonely.
I had a personal preference toward black cats, knowing their terrible luck in adoption circles. I remember when we found these two online and I remember the moment we excitedly decided to inquire. The disappointment knowing that someone else had inquired first and was going to see them first. Surely they would be snapped up the moment the other couple laid eyes on them.
But then we got an e-mail. The other couple bailed, changed their minds and everything fell into place like some sort of fate. We fell head over heels for these small slinky boys upon visiting them. The lady who was fostering them was nervous that we would waver but we couldn’t leave without them.
God the first few weeks were an absolute mess. Two eight month old little tyrants sprinted through the halls, scrambling through the hallways and getting us in trouble with neighbours. Pepper got into absolutely everything while Ghost was so afraid of us we could barely touch him to start with.
They’ve both grown so much in the short time we’ve had them so far. I figure I would take this opportunity to share some photos and talk about each one in their own right. They both have such distinctive personalities, its about time I introduce them a little bit more.
GHOST
Also goes by: Lil Goose, Goost, Gustav, Gustavio, Goost on the Loost, Loosty Goosty, Sweet Boy
This little guy is honestly the sweetest little thing. He started off really quite weary of us but is now quite fond of us. He still prefers Tas’ energy over mine and will demand her pets before bed and the moment she wakes up in the morning. He is an absolute snugglebug. If you sit on the bed by him he will pull himself out of his sleep to come purr and rub his entire body weight into your back.
His one and only terrible habit is that his sleeping all day generally means he will find that one toy at 5 am and decide to play with it in the same room as you until you get rid of it somehow. And man, when this kid has got the zoomies he can run.
We’re still working on being able to pick him up without him scrambling straight out of our arms but he has already come such a long way since we once got him. And I’m sure we will manage this last hill too.
PEPPER
Also goes by: Peb, Pebby, Pepperoni, Mister Peb, Beb, Bebby, The Peppered Roni, Little Gremlin, Bastard
He’s a bit of a dual personality this one and each of those has a name. His sweet side (Piment) usually consists of the moments he is most curious, watching us as we work on our packaging and playing with anything he can get his little paws on. Recently he has also become something of a lap-cat and insists on favouring my side of the couch/the bed– just me in general. He will roll and demand belly rubs.
His spicy side (Poivre) is every single moment he is too smart for his own good. He has a bad habit of scratching our couch for our attention, knocking things off shelves and honking his horrible little meow hoarse in the mornings when we kick him out of the room for being too rowdy.
The biggest question we get asked and perhaps isn’t too obvious in the photos is ‘how the heck can you tell them apart?’ And honestly we were wondering the same thing, getting ready to pick them up.
In person they really don’t look the same. Pepper has gotten much bigger and still has the very sleek frame. He’s also got a little patch of white fur on his chest. Ghost, we’ve noticed in the sun you can sometimes see some tabby stripes in his dark fur, and upon noticing these we couldn’t help but take notice of the way his personality falls in line with the tabby attitude. Ghost is definitely more stocky and timid and more ‘cat’.
Pepper is sometimes convinced he is also a human.
As a bonus here are some more photos from my horde that I really love!
Here’s to hopefully many many MANY more years with these two hooligans. <3
So 2020 has been a hell of a year. I would be lying if I said there weren’t as many “downs” as there were “ups” this time around, but a lot has happened and I’m starting to feel an urge to take things down, make a record going forward. I think most of these little blog posts are going to wind up more of a monthly-type deal. I like to envision a pattern going forward but I don’t always keep to my promises and I don’t want this to become a chore.
This will be what it will be, and I am learning to be okay with the fact that my life is not predictable and learning to enjoy that part of it.
And learning to stop putting so much pressure on myself, create a much more normal image of this unattainable “perfection” I keep trying to chase. This year taught me a lot about slowing down in many ways and about taking in the journey for everything it throws at me.
This year threw a lot at me and my partner and, some of it we are both struggling to regain our footing from.
January — This month, feels like… honestly a lifetime ago. It’s hard to imagine there were actual months this year that were pre-COVID for us. We were gearing up to launch a Kickstarter for the next volume of our comic series (Paint The Town Red), we were bright-eyed and bushy tailed for a year’s worth of new projects, we had five crowdfunding campaigns planned this year, can you imagine? Five! I was even going to the gym regularly with a personal promise to buff UP; a convention schedule lined up that was, admittedly, going to be a lot more lax this year; gearing up for (maybe) another tattoo; a trip…
February — We launch Paint The Town Red Volume 2 on Kickstarter, the campaign is a mess, frankly. Despite our preparations, the new goal, the steeper climb, we barely make it kicking and screaming across the thresh-hold to make our goal. I, honestly, don’t know how we managed it. We certainly wouldn’t have without the help of our friends pushing it with us and cheering us on. We stumble into victory and the reward is our first vacation in years.
March — First week we went on a cruise vacation, COVID was just becoming a household name, most were not sure what its cause and effects were, and it was just starting to become more wide-spread. We came home to a 14-day quarantine… that would honestly turn into social distancing which would last the rest of the year. We wound up moving out of our tiny 3 & 1/2 and into my parent’s house for the sake of sanity and the knowledge we were going to move into another apartment by June. We spend the rest of this month in limbo, playing games, learning how to live in a household with several other adults, adjust to schedules, laugh it off, have impassioned & panicked conversations about money and the future as infection and death tolls only get worse. We celebrate my partner’s birthday laughing about how we’ll have to have a celebration twice as big for her next year.
April — If we weren’t in lock-down by now (pretty sure most of March was locked-down for us) we certainly were now. Numbers spike higher, new cases are revealed, things on the COVID-front are reaching terrifying scales as the situation, honestly, really starts to hit. Most big events have cancelled or are about to cancel. We’re living with my parents still, I’m filming small videos of quiet scenes on our walks around the neighbourhood which has really nice natural scenery. The end of this month we start renovating the new apartment so that its ready to move into in June. We visit the old apartment to grab a few more things, feeling a bit bittersweet about the fact that we will be leaving it without living in it and making those last memories before we leave it behind. I take videos of the space as a keepsake even when most of it has been packed away already.
My partner gets some horrible news from home, not long after the news piles on higher. Its a very hard few weeks, months but we pick up our feet anyway and keep moving forward.
May — This is a madness month. We scramble to finish the final touches on the apartment, we move our stuff out of the hold place, family is generous and sweet and helps us move into the new place. I scramble to set up my accounting…. of which hasn’t been completed since the beginning of the year, I vow to never do this again, future me? Don’t let this slide, you suffered many tears and horrible math-calculations and it was genuinely Not Worth It.
June — We move in halfway through the month, officially, when our appliances arrive, we crash into a new routine and find that it’s hard to sleep in the eerie quiet of a new place when you got used to several months of living with four other people in a house with three cats… So we, maybe start looking into adopting our own…
July — We re-launch our business, the shop re-opens, we are slowly shifting back into a routine. We lose a lot of friends to an argument this month, lose more to situations outside our control. Its a tumultuous time but one good thing comes of it: I have an interview with Montreal Pride for August, it goes swimmingly well. The host asks me what I’m going to do when the interview is over and I make him laugh when I say we’re about to adopt two kittens.
We adopt twin boys we name Pepper & Ghost and … they are only 18 months. It’s… a hell of an adjustment to the new routine, these boys are a couple of handfuls… especially when they get more comfortable. Pepper is a menace and a pest and for several days … weeks… we lose … a lot of sleep. Ghost is quiet and shy and reserved, but slowly we gain both their trust and they adjust to a new routine we set for them.
August — Happy birthday to me, its been months and while COVID is still a threat the numbers have become reasonable during the summer months. Malls have re-opened but everywhere we go we are expected to wear masks for our protection and the protection of others around us (good). I’m in the process of fulfilling Myth Retold and getting Iphigenia ready to print. My partner is a sweetheart and offers to take the burden of illustrating them for me.
September — I get copies of Iphigenia, they are gorgeous, I put in Medusa for print, we fulfill Myth Retold (all but Atalanta), fulfillment goes up until October. Mom has to go back to work in schools, nothing feels really safe about this process, everyone is weary. We meet up with friends for a social distancing pick-nick where we get to see each other face to face after months of not seeing any of our friends. Its very welcome, we laugh a lot and talk and walk until the sun goes down. Its freezing that night, we walk home shivering our asses off but it’s absolutely worth it. We promise, if numbers provide, we will meet up in October–
October — Montreal becomes a red-zone, there’s no visits and no travel permitted between zones. We turn to voice chat with friends. As cases get worse we stop visiting my parents for a few weekends and keep up through social distancing as they finalize touches on my sister’s apartment in the basement. Our shop gains traction, Myth Retold books sell like hotcakes as a few Greek Mythology-themed games, shows, etc drop all at once?? We make a last-minute decision to launch an Underworld-Themed Greek Mythology pin Kickstarter.
November — This Kickstarter hits new records for us. We are floored and stunned and shocked and nearly in tears. My partner gets paid for a big contract, we are the most financially stable we have been since we started our business heading into the holiday season. (For future’s sake… this is also the same month Destiel became canon in Supernatural before being sent to super hell the same week Trump was voted out of office so…. November was a wild ride this year). I tried NaNoWriMo but, understandably got extremely distracted. My sister moves in officially and we help her do so.
December — Everyone spends the holidays in isolation, because my sister lives in the same building we spend our Christmas with her, via drinking games to Kingdom Hearts on the 24th to brunch on the 25th and a final Turkey dinner delivered by my lovely family <3
I type this after kissing my partner at midnight for the new year and Pepper sleeps at the end of the bed soundly. And I’m feeling maybe a tinge more optimistic for the brand new year.
I get off a nine-hour flight of horrible airplane food and freezing temperatures into sweltering forty degree (Celsius) heat in long pants. The family is piled into a van with no air conditioning because when the AC is blasting, the person sitting the farthest back is blasted with heating. We’re sweating more than we ever have in our lives.
The apartment is up a couple flights of stairs, it is beautiful the view we get here in Athens, I wish I could enjoy it more. My skin feels like its burning right off of my bones. A second-aunt or a half-cousin–I honestly forget–hands us the keys and laughs a little bit at our comments about the heat. The apartment is sweltering even when we open up all the windows and doors… the AC unit in the small space barely stirs the air and the air it does stir is about room temp and not very cool at all. This first day is so long and so grating we’re sure it’ll never end.
But in the evening I walk with my Dad to scope out the locals, buy up some medication for my mom’s jet-lag, buy some groceries… and … goodness the bakery. We stumble into the most beautiful little bakery I have ever set my eyes on. They have pastries of every shape and sort, bread and treats. The smell in this place is incredible.
That night we also eat the first of many very delicious and extremely cheap gyros. The food in this country is absolutely out of this world. If there’s anything I really miss its this.
What I don’t miss is the heat. The first night I spend hours with my sister, jet-lagged on the stunning apartment balcony listening to the voices of the locals gathered in the town square enjoying the cool(er) breeze of the evening and chatting away. We learn quickly that the locals eat much later than our dedicated suppertime of 6-7pm in the west. The days are so hot here it’s difficult to want to get together in the middle of the day at the heat’s highest point. So, in the evenings, the locals gather in the town squares to socialize and I honestly grew to really love the atmosphere of kids playing soccer and the boisterous laughs as people cheered on teams or the muffled whispers of shared secrets.
But the thing I truly and vividly miss about Greece is the scenery and the history it brings. Having a tempered struggle with my own identity and connection to this culture that’s a half of me, this trip really struck me with the need to try and connect with it even more.
This is where my photo journey starts. I honestly took more video of this trip than photo and I am sincerely hoping to finally edit all of my footage together and to really outline my whole experience of it all… τζίτζικας included. But for now here is a taste of the wonderful things we got to see…
We started our trip visiting the Acropolis right in Athens.
Ακρόπολη
We are foolish, going to see the impressive and imposing structure that is the Parthenon. It has hardly been 12 hours since we landed, we hardly got more than a scattered 3-4 hours of sleep. We took public transit right to the Athens’ market downtown in even sweatier and more sweltering temperatures than the day before (or so it feels like it at this point). We make our way up to the Acropolis, stumbling into pockets of shade and trying to avoid other tourists who are from countries far hotter than ours ever get even in the summer months. When my sister and I order some lemonade, at the nearest stand, the seller asks us where we’re from.
“Montreal.” He gives us a knowing look and a little chuckle as he hands us 5 lemonades. We sit under trees for some solace in the shade. Luckily for us, in this dry heat the sun is forgiving when you’re not under his gaze. We rest for a few moments, my mom who is struggling with a migraine elects to stay put while the rest of us continue our journey on the last stretch to the Acropolis.
I am not feeling the greatest, my camera is overheating in my hand and it has hardly even been turned on but I tell myself that I will regret it if I come all this way without making the last stretch of the trip.
For our first location, the sheer size of the Parthenon, Zeus’ temple and the Theatre of Dionysus (don’t quote me on this one) are impressive and in the same instance, a little personally disappointing. There is a lot more construction and scaffolding surrounding a lot of these mythical structures. I take photos but they don’t have the same impact as the real thing standing so tall before me.
We don’t spend very long up here and this is when I worry for the future tourist destinations we have planned for our stay. This place is packed with bodies and the heat seems to close in from everywhere. My sister and I leave my dad and my brother behind to experience the Acropolis to their heart’s content but the two of us descend before my camera can die and the sun can stop burning the tops of our feet.
When we regroup again, we get food in our bellies and spend the rest of the day resting in the apartment and deciding we are all a little bit nuts for doing what we did and not simply choosing to stay home that day. We take this evening to relax.
We depart on our 3 hour road trip to Delphi in the morning.
Δελφοί
Delphi is a completely different experience.
The road trip is spent reading and laughing and breathing a little easier. Its still hot but the overcast skies provide just enough reprieve we aren’t exactly baking away in the sun. We spend a lot of time winding up mountain roads that make us a little nervous at the novelty and the narrow precariousness of it all. But when we reach our destination we are met with views unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
Delphi is a location that plays an important role in mythos. It is the location of a prominent oracle and of a temple of Apollo. Fitting as not only is he the god of the sun but of prophecy as well. Around this place feels like there is nothing but wonderful luscious wilderness. It’s hard not to imagine his twin all around us. Artemis kisses the scenery with green and cicadas hiss about in the heat all around us. We make it to the top, the experience is littered with pit-stops but on our way down from the summit the thick heat breaks enough to sprinkle some rain and relieve us of the beaming temperature.
But as the rain sets in we find ourselves rethinking our plans. Instead of continuing our journey to Dotsiko today and the Meteora the day after, we decide to go back to the apartment and take the trip tomorrow during the crummy weather instead.
Δοτσικό
This next destination… is less about it’s ancient history so much as it is just weighted in my own history.
Dotsiko is a small town in the Greek mountains (roughly) 8 hours out of Athens. It’s got a population of about 35 and a stunningly beautiful inn. The people are sweet and kind and excited to have visitors to talk to and learn about. It turns out we learn a lot from them too. We specifically took the trip out this far because our family in Canada told us that my παππού (pappou) had family here once, long enough to found this particular village. My dad speaks to the locals a lot about this though he doesn’t translate very much…
This is the home one of my ancestors built when he founded this village. From what I know this building still belongs to us to some degree though it is in terrible shape but has great character for photos. There’s something about it I really love. But I am also a sucker for things with history we might never truly know about. It might be worth turning it into a writing thought-piece of some sort down the line but for now I get to admire its looks and charm and the pieces of the story I have to hold on to.
While the temperature is cold today, the inn is a nice warm place to set up for the night. The sound out here is near-silent when we sleep.
Tomorrow our trip takes us to the monasteries and it is still a few hours drive to get there before we will make our way back to the apartment… Unfortunately we don’t stop by Mt Olympus and climb it to meet Zeus so I can kick his ass so he escapes me… for now.
Μετέωρα
My dad can’t help but stop the car a few times on this drive. The scenery taking us to the Meteora is some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve witnessed with my own two eyes. These are the images my mind is filled with when we head home. These are images that inspire Myth Retold. It’s hard not to want to let your imagination run wild to visions of what could only be described as fantastical.
And even when we reach the Meteora… the monasteries don’t disappoint. It’s hard to believe the following photo was taken by my own two hands.
This part of the trip leaves me emotional. I wonder a little how I can leave this place without having it follow me around for the rest of my life. I realize now, in writing this, that it never has really. Some of these moments stick so strongly in my memory I feel like I’m right there again.
Ολυμπία
A couple(?) days later we take a trip all the way out to Olympia. This is another Big Drive that we make. We get a little turned around and only make it there by late-afternoon… which honestly worked for a lot of my photos, the lighting was extremely rich and dramatic!
This location probably has the most melancholic feeling for me. Unlike a lot of the other sites that have been updated and maintained over time to keep their preservation, a lot of things happened to Olympia, the ruins here are in true fashion, ruined. Between the country’s earthquakes and the effects of multiple wars taking part in also defacing historical landmarks, there is not much that is left here but an outline, a shade of what once was.
There is a kind of beautiful sadness here. I feel like this place has more layers of history than the ancient history we know the best. This is where the first Olympic games were held. I can imagine ancients partaking in them. I read plaques about wrestling arenas, racing domes and the more intimate changing rooms.
But I also see army men using old artwork as target practice and an environment so unforgiving it topples the greatest structures here.
While we’re visiting, an archaeologist emerges from an underground-someplace and dusts off their latest finds and I’m sad I don’t know the language enough to head over and ask what they think they’ve found.
We have our fun here, but I feel the reflection among our whole group as we sip on our lemonades and consider all that we’ve seen on this trip and how this place I probably the most heartbreaking.
Μύκονος
Mykonos… Mykonos… Mykonos…
Oh is this ever the adventure of our trip. To take in these photos without taking in the sheer turmoil behind them would simply not do them justice. The last four days of this trip were supposed to be spent here, enjoying the lap of luxury and relaxing to the true vacation part of this trip. We selected an island with only a short ferry ride. It had a few iconic landmarks we could take our time exploring and beaches like no other (supposedly…)
This is what really happened:
We wake up so early it isn’t even bright out yet. We find our way to the ferry and snooze on board. Its packed with quite a lot of people, we get through the very distressing experience of disembarking as a crowd of people mixed in with our vehicles trying to crawl their way out. Its absolute mayhem these moments.
But this is still nothing as we spend the next few hours locating our airbnb… only to find that it is absolutely nothing like the images provided, it is the farthest walk from any beach on the island and our van cannot make the steep uphill climb… at all. With all of us packed in, the van nearly rolls off the side of the cliff before my dad can manage to put the breaks on. We all scramble out, he somehow gets it up the hill.
We spend time arguing with the guy who rented us the place, he refuses the refund, airbnb refuses the refund, we leave figuring we will find another place somewhere on the island, surely there has to be a room elsewhere…
Except this is also a holiday weekend in Greece and where do the folks from the mainland go for a vacation getaway? The islands. The hotels are booked, packed with people. We spend the whole day trying to find anything, anything at all before we finally come to the conclusion that we are going to have to go back to the apartment in Athens. We locate the ferry ticket booth (walking all around the island this time as if we aren’t tired enough), and the earliest ferry leaving the island is at 10pm…. we… sure have a lot of time to kill.
We eventually settle to enjoy ourselves in town. We walk through the city, buy a couple of souvenirs. I take these photos and I wonder sometimes if they aren’t the best ones I took all trip long!
We at least leave Mykonos having been able to say we visited an island and having the images to prove it, despite our turbulent day. We sleep like rocks in the apartment when we get home at 3am.
So we spend the last three days of our trip in Athens.
Ναός του Ποσειδώνα
We take the last few days easy. We visit the beach/cove in Vouliagmeni and swim one day, and in the evening we were told to visit the Temple of Poseidon, both by locals and family who told us we absolutely had to visit during sunset. So we go, its a nice little drive, the first time we spend a while with the structure waiting for the sun to set.
The first image is before the sun began to set, the second was the temple catching the orange glow as it descended from the sky. I think the image turned out lovely, but during our escapades across the country we had seen a few lovelier setting suns. The sky may have been a bit too clear so the setting rays didn’t have any clouds to catch on and really paint the sky for us.
The rest of the trip we take it easy. We spend another day at the beach, and one scoping out a local mall to escape the burning sun… and then we go home.
And I sleep for a solid week– kidding, but I sure needed a nap after everything. I wound up having a horrible migraine on the way home, strong enough I almost lost all my airplane meals before we stepped through the front door of the house.
And despite all of these ups and downs, I’d do it all again.
[For the sake of clarity and confirmation, all these photos were taken by me!]
In 2015 I graduated University with a bachelor’s in Fine Arts and a Major in Film Animation with a stocky little body of work and a thesis film I spent a year attempting to fine tune into perfection. I spent that spring and summer applying fruitlessly to festival after festival after festival in the hopes of pushing my name out there….
It… didn’t go so well. And as a fresh graduate watching your future drift away in a cloud of smoke as alum after alum from your program gets picked up by studios or manages to make a serious dent in their film fest applications…. there was… a considerable amount of panic on my end as festival after festival after festival rejected my entry.
But then I get a reply back from a festival in Switzerland and not only this, but they asked me if I would be interested in visiting the festival for the weekend so that I could speak about my film during a couple of 10am round-tables with some of the other directors.
Naturally I said yes…. and I managed to extend my stay for the week and brought my dad along for support and as a travel buddy because I hadn’t been this far out of the country ever, never-mind alone!
So we flew out in the fall for the festival. My first nine hour flight to Europe excited for what could possibly await me at the end of it. When we landed it was warm for September but not hot. We took a taxi from Zurich to Baden where the festival was being hosted, settled into our room at a little bed ‘n breakfast and enjoyed the view for a few moments– (these were not taken exactly the day we arrived but throughout the trip).
Admittedly this day we were a little bit foolish and didn’t consider how strong the jet-lag would be so we ventured into town to scope the place out and just barely made it to the first screening of my film… and both of us promptly fell asleep before the end of the screening. We saw my film but I don’t remember many of the others viewed during that particular one. From what I remember we went back to the bed n breakfast and absolutely crashed into bed that night.
Walking into town that morning we became more acutely aware that the walk was… a little bit longer than we remembered it being but we grew to learn that there were two routes. One slightly shorter cutting straight through a more metropolitan part of the city. We most distinctly noticed that if you even so much as approached or were but a mere couple feet away from a cross walk cars screeched to a halt to let you pass… Just a bit different than my experience here in Montreal.
Our second route (which we took far more often) was longer and more scenic. It took us down toward the river bend where we were met with more beautiful moments like this:
But as we made our way through the either the metropolitan area or our nifty little scenic route we reached the festival grounds and here we found big banners introducing us to FANTOCHE International Animation Film Festival. It was really pretty here. I liked these quirky parts of city spaces, more artistic, just fun.
This is also where we had definitely gotten up too late that morning and absolutely missed the first filmmaker round-table that I um… was supposed to be a part of. Woops. They managed to re-schedule me, luckily, and honestly everyone was extremely sweet and eager to help make us feel right at home. I had a little polaroid taken of me to put on a wall filled with other visiting filmmakers. I got a fancy little festival pass which I’m sure exists somewhere in my keepsakes. We were treated to vouchers for a certain number of free meals courtesy of the festival which was amazing. I think we got most of our lunch and breakfasts out of that.
As silly as this is about to sound, I honestly did not spend much time AT the festival as most would have in my place. Here I was, granted the opportunity to network, to make connections outside of my own small social circles. But I’m socially awkward and I struggle with these things and slapping down a German language barrier only serves to make my anxiety greater.
So, yeah, I did see my screening. I did pick one or two more screenings to view. Went to a talk. Absolutely knocked my filmmaker’s breakfast round-table out of the park. But who wants to be in a theatre all day watching short films when you’re in a brand new country? (No offence, obviously, to the filmmakers of said films, I’m sure they were all beautiful in their own right, but a young 23 year old is unfortunately not versed in enjoying artistic integrity and nuance and all that other jargon… when they’re in a new country for the first time…)
I’ll be honest, looking back, I don’t regret it at all.
While I didn’t spend much time cooped up in theatres and observing talks, I did spend a lot of time sight seeing, and taking photos of an environment that would only come in handy as inspiration later locations in stories of my own. I spent time loving every minute of this trip, squeezing in animation know-how into downtime moments with exhibitions. But most of my time was spent exploring the city’s nooks and crannies.
This trip comes back to me in bits and pieces, I remember small moments like the morning we first called home and distinctly realising how massive the time difference was.
Staying up late one night trying to quickly finish a small segment of animation so that it could fit into the festival’s trailer.
Exploring a small fortress with feet so sore I could barely walk the next day.
Experiencing small exhibitions throughout the festival grounds, there was a display for stop motion puppets and zoetropes. Small sets nearly impossible to imagine how anyone could animate on.
Walking through the small art store and touching all the hand-made notebooks there.
The long conversations I had with my Dad about the future.
Sitting on a terrace on one of the last nights of our trip and absolutely freezing our asses off because we started off this trip in a simple t-shirt and jeans and left Switzerland in thick jackets.
I’m a bit regretful that I don’t keep more of a journal in order to fully relive these sorts of moments.
