Clouds, music and colourful plants

Posted by Caroline So Jung Lee • 1 month ago

A smartphone photo that depicts a view of the sky and the top of buildings and street lights at an intersection. In depth, every object is in focus and wide angle shot. The top of the roof of a rectangular 2 floor RONA building is seen. The navy blue rectangular sign is placed on the top corner of the off-white building, with white capitalized letters spelling “RONA”. Street lights and electrical cords zip zag through the bottom right of the photo. The view is of someone standing off to the side of an intersection. The plainness of the buildings are offset by a spectacularly cerulean sky speckled with multitudes of puffy round clouds, that disperse more widely upwards, leaving spaces of deeper blue and misty white spread out.
A wide angle portrait photo shot with a smartphone. Purple and pink flowers cascade over a green fluffy bush the height of a person. Perhaps they are related to cosmos. A gravel path turns on the left of the bush, circling inward. More pale, fluffy, long-stemmed bushes line the left of the path, circling with it. Fluffy green grass patches are on the left side under the bushes. In the background, you can see the top a condo made for young professionals to live in and a long skinny tree trunk that looks like a metal pole. They frame the canopies of trees that have various shades of green, brown and light yellow. The sky looks white because the sun is shining into the lens.
A wide angle portrait photo by smartphone of a brick red and weathered mailbox or electrical box on the edge of the sidewalk. You can see 3-4 lanes behind for streetcars and cars to pass. Behind is a big tree with brownish orange leaves with the centre being a pale green. A red brick building is off to the left side. The mailbox is postered with dirty looking local concert posters that have been glue-pasted on. The most prominent poster is a simple legal size white sheet that says: “You will not let this break you.” Signed by J. Flux. It is printed in someone’s handwriting with marker.
A wide angle landscape shot of the same intersection with the RONA Store on the corner. Except you can see a lamp post sticking it’s head out from the very top of the image, it is dark since the sun is hitting from the opposite side of the street. The rooftops are only visible a little bit. The sky is a deep blue with clouds strewn like moss thrown through the sky.

(CW: bullying, death threats)

After my meeting with Sarah last week, I decided to start taking photos of clouds as a playful thing to do. That same day, I dug out my point and shoot film camera (Olympus mju2) and finished the b&w roll that was inside (Tmax 100). I developed the roll at Graination (a film lab in Tkaronto) but still have to scan it. I also re-loaded with a Portra 400 roll that is supposed to give off some soft colours. I decided to continue my Gallery 44 membership (artist-run film lab) and signed up for their orientations. I’m going to continue to try to make community despite the hardships and traumas I’ve faced.

I’ve experienced what seems like countless exclusions and forms of bullying while in artist collectives and communities. While I won’t go into it all today, something(s) happened in the past few months where a mentally unstable colleague told me to kill myself. It was at an organization I began volunteering at and because I felt unsafe, I stopped volunteering. Because of transitions already happening within the organization, what happened to me was waylaid to the side and forgotten. This happened at an organization that had social innovation as its mandate but I was left feeling worthless, unseen and unappreciated. I’ve had to pick myself up since experiencing that. Needless to say I feel exhausted and even participating in art community carries some risk for me.

I’ve been having a lot of up and downs the past 2 weeks. Last week, I went to a concert where I experienced the most happiness that I’d had in the past few years. It was an amazing experience but afterwards, I proceeded to have a terrible happiness hangover that lasted for more than a week.

Without anyone to talk to about what I was experiencing, I started going to the waterfront to watch the waves and skies. The clouds move at a monumentally slow pace and the hundreds of thousands of waves in the lake flow and break infinitely. I watched seabirds and geese fly, hunt, chase and migrate for winter. A flock of geese flew metres from my head and they were so close, I could see their bellies breathing and struggling to keep themselves afloat in the air. It can’t be easy being a goose, needing to migrate every year. I also wonder if flying is actually a really physically strenuous activity for birds despite it looking effortless… I felt more at peace seeing all these things/beings going at their own rhythm, making decisions moment to moment, living without any concern towards to the humans around them, but never questioning their belonging or place in the world.

There are four photos I’ve taken with my smartphone. Two are of the beautiful blue sky and clouds. Clouds filter the sun’s harshness and cast shade and beauty.

The poster saying “You will not let this break you” was when I walked to Graination on the edge of Chinatown. It was when I was having a particularly hard day.

The lavender and pink coloured puffs of flowers on the bushes were at the Music Garden near the Harbourfront. At one of the hills, there is a path lined with flowers and bushes and that spirals to a point at the top. At the top, there’s a sculptural installation. Walking the spiral is meditative – it kind of reminded me of how silly and futile things can be. And the opposite – useful, beautiful, funny.