8 posts tagged “family”

Hot Docs is a wonderful documentary film festival that goes on every April in Toronto. This year, all screenings before 6pm were free for students. I banked on a few, and saw some films that changed my life (I use this term often and lightly... because really, everything does change your life). I'll include the trailers of the documentaries that i liked. I suck at writing reviews; since I'm such an emotionally-directed person, I usually just end up saying "I loved it soooooooo much". Go writing skills.

1. Carts of Darkness - my favourite i think! about homeless men in north vancouver who ride shopping carts down hilly BC highways as an extreme sport. also documents their bottle collecting, and the wonderful connection between the maker + subjects.

2. White Vans - a short documentary about bike theft. close to my heart, obviously.

3. Memory Books- about HIV+ women in uganda making books for their children to remember thier legacy and heritage. beautiful.

4. The Forgotten Woman - about the current day conditions of widows in India.

5. Bevel Up: Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing - a subject very close to my heart, about harm reduction initiatives and street nurses in vancouver's downtown east side. so inspiring! 

6. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father - i dare you to see this film and not cry continuously throughout. following how the canadian justice system failed one family deep & hard. oh god, i could talk about this one for a long time.

pipe dreams of co-ownership of a bunny paired with less tolerance for meaningless& ignorant speech.
shitty at-home hair dye jobs and a deep fascination with how much i can live my life controlled by fear.
bad chinese food with tired parents.
yesterday's paper & a burn from a spilled americano.

some new music tonight and back to the old routine tomorrow morning.

Molly and Jonas

Molly the Dalmatian: November 1, 1996 - August 28th, 2007.
It was her time to go... she was so old.
Turns out she likely had a massive brain tumour which at the end of her life resulted in frequent seizures ... she basically couldn't use her brain anymore, so my brother and sister-in-law had to put her down.
ohhh so sad.

Barabbas

RIP Barabbas aka Rabby aka Brabby.  ~2001-2007

No one knows the day he was born, and I forget the day he died, but our family cat Barabbas got hit by a car a couple weeks ago. He suffered for three days under our neighbor's porch then my family put him to sleep. He was my brother Aaron's cat, and he gave him to my parents to look after when he moved to China. It was so hard for my brother to leave him but Rabby finally got adjusted to our home and started interesting relationships with Rini (our other cat) & Molly and made a pretty sweet, funny pet family. His name is Barabbas but my Mom and Dad started calling him Rabby/Brabby due to the poor track record the name Barabbas has (Barabbas was the criminal and prisoner who Pilate released instead of Jesus Christ on Passover).  If Barabbas wanted one thing in his life, it was to go outside- be an outside cat. When we kept him inside, he was miserable and meowed at

Barabbas

the door so, so often. We made the decision to let him outside, and he was happy. In the end that's what killed him. I guess the final irony is that we could have kept him alive, if we poured a lot of money into him and kept him an inside cat for the rest of his life. Yeah friggin' right. I think he's happier dead. 

And now we might be losing Molly. She's been having seizures the past couple days... she probably has a brain tumor.  Molly... at least live until Mom & Dad come home from China. I only pray you'll have a peaceful end of your life.

Molly

Last week I watched a lot of The Office, like, all of seasons 1 and 2 in less than a week. And it almost made me wish for a similar life, living in the town I grew up in, at some crappy receptionist or sales job. Somehow TV can make anything glamorous, hmm? But this quote sums up much better how I feel about home, and staying in the place where I grew up; it's from Garden State:

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone. ... You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place."

This summer has really reinforced into me this idea. I miss my house that I lived in from age seven to seventeen; but not much else about Kitchener (there are things I enjoy, yeah, like uptown Waterloo, Encore Records [okay. I do miss Encore Records.]). I think it all really started before I moved out, with not having solid roots in Kitchener. I don't blame this all on my surroundings, though I'm sure it helped that I felt like I never had much in common with most of my close friends nearing the end of my living there, I guess I just stopped investing, too (Except,.. I really did love my Grade 12 Drama class...).

My parents are putting the house up for sale next month. They're moving to London for work (both of them). Bye bye Queen's Blvd. My brother & sister-in-law are in London for Brendan's school, and Aaron's still in China. Home is definetly not a place. It's insulting to even think that.

I assume a lot of people have the town where they grew up (if they move away from it) as the place they can always come back for a good time, for reunions of family+friends, rehashing of memories and whatever, eating your favourite burger,blabla. Kitchener isn't that for me, but I can only hope that Toronto will be, when I leave and go whereever else it is I might go (if you know me, you know the plans are grandiose, detailed and long). So... Toronto, you're my new hometown, are you okay with that?

I'm going on my third year of living in the place I love, yet I've lost so many ties with so many people since I've been here (and definetly before,), it's debilitating. 
There's so much more to living life than figuring out where "home" is...
Nevertheless,... I'm still between the click of a light and the start of a dream. Us kids know where we know.

smoked a cigarette,
with the first drag, chemicals
seared open nearly healed sores in my mouth and
left me with a raspy throat.

"this is no cigarello"
i thought and said aloud

"this didn't bring me closer to grandpa"
i kept to myself

but the belief's still lingering, like smoke

me: "I thought going to so many weddings would make me depressed and feel like I should be getting married too, but it's been the opposite"
Dad: "yeah. You don't want to get married right now... so much added stress, responsibility.."
me: "yes! exactly."
Dad: "but a b/f would be nice, right?"
me: "yeah ... i'll work on that."

my Dad said b/f, as in "bee-eff". cause I said it in a conversation over lunch earlier... he's good at catching on at slang. & he knows me dang well.

I have a remarkable family.
Praise God I can go through days like Mother's Day and Father's day without any pain.

I think I might be pretty insensitive to the state of some people's families. I fear that I "flaunt" mine.

I'm seeing people this weekend who I've kind of lost touch with. I am excited to see these people, they mean a lot to me. But I am also nervous, and scared. Maybe because it takes more effort, energy and time to maintain relationships when, geographically, you are not close (but even so, right now I have a friend who is travelling an hour and a half on the TTC to hang out with me). Especially when you had little in common to begin with.

Also, it's been really amazing to see answered prayer this weekend. Especially in regards to the church community I am involved in, as well as with IVCF.