Parallels | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Some of the most fruitful days of photography rely on gathering with those who inspire you and just going for a stroll.
You never quite know where you are going to end up or what products you will take home with you, but on this snowy – yet warm – winter night some wonderful views of the city from a different perspective  were a result.

Grey Sunday afternoons often lead to interesting things. This one however lends itself nicely to reflection of not just the past year, but of the past in general.
This morning brought a new day, a new month and a new year. Did anything change overnight? Not likely. So why reflect?
I suspect, like most people I don’t spend much time reflecting on days past – not consciously anyways. For the first time in a long time however  I sit here thinking not about the future, not even about the present but about what I can possibly learn from the past. Admittedly I am just starting to acknowledge that change isn’t always noticeable. It doesn’t necessarily come in one comprehensible action, or lack there of. One would be a fool to think that change doesn’t happen in and around them on a daily basis, it’s not like we are following a script after all.

So why the revelation, why does change matter today, why should I care now? I want to consciously impact change, I want to learn, I want to grow, and I want tomorrow to be better than today, which I am making better than yesterday.  Reflection is a selfish activity it seems… lots of I in it.

There are a handful of events, actions, reactions and things that I can pinpoint in my life where until this year I would have described them as life changing events. There might be a good event in there, maybe two, but most of them are rather depressing in standard light. The deaths of those around us undoubtedly change us, but so do births. Why remember death more? It’s a hell of a lot easier to reflect and say “I wish I could have done this differently”, which is a cop out. Every day we are provided with ample opportunity to do things differently, and yet with no change we still look to death as a moment of impact. In reality, we are just cheating ourselves out of what’s good in this life.

I am much more aware that while I thought these big events contributed directly to change in my life, that is in fact ignorant thinking.
What causes people do buy a new bicycle and ride 1200 miles in a summer? What causes people to put their life “on hold ” and leave the quiet comfort of home for 7+ weeks? I know one thing: it sure isn’t one event that prompts these things. I am absolutely confident that there is a tipping point, and it is easy to pick that last event out and say that sparked the change, but again that is too easy.

In almost 25 full years on this planet I’ve learned a few things, I’ve experienced a few more still, yet I can’t pick out any one thing as having a bigger impact on my life than an other. So if I were to reflect on this January 1st, 2012, I would have to look back at chunks of time in my life, dig a little deeper into the contributions of that time and learn/grow from those.

There are a whole bunch of months/years at the beginning of my existence that i don’t remember much of – at least not in any legible capacity. I do however remember some material things which simply are a holder for the greater meaning/experience of the contributing factors. Case and point: the train set I got during one of my earlier Christmases, and it’s subsequent expansions and tables that would inevitably follow. The home video that includes this wonderful toy includes yet more interesting material for reflection.It represents about all I remember from our first house, how peaceful we were as a family, how well I got along with my sisters as a child – there is further information that begs to differ, but that’s a given!

I remember getting Jalapeno Pepper juice in my eyes in Grade 1, having one specific girl terrorize – aka chase –  me on the playground at school.I remember learning to count, learning to skate, learning to ride a bike – and failing several times – learning to play hockey, to share, to trade – again failing – learning that I really was allergic to peanuts, learning that only I could tell when an asthma attack was coming, or that only I knew how bad the drugs prescribed would make me feel.

I could go on with all the memories of the good and the bad times, the times that I inevitably smile about when I remember – and yes, I smile about that first scare with peanuts – them. The common link between so many of these memories is however much more profound to me – none more punctuated than in this last year – is that while so many of our experiences are social, there is a huge deal of “loneliness” involved in them.

I never really realized how many things I’d shared with how many other people, but yet I never really shared them with myself.
It’s easy to pass things off. To diffuse the real struggle, to be weak. But there is a reason why the tough times teach us the most: we prove ourselves wrong, we prove strength, desire, love. These last few years have opened my eyes to a wonderful new life.
Armed with love, people are able to achieve magnificent things. The problem though is how few people realize that they matter to people, that they have love.

Do something different: say hello to a stranger, make a new friend. Listen to somebody for once, -ACTUALLY listen, don’t just hear them –  hold a door open for someone. If someone looks at you: smile. Don’t look at your feet, or pretend like you just saw a ghost.
We hold onto good experiences, to love, and compassion and intimacy. We do so for a reason; that’s what really matters to people, that’s what puts a smile on our face, what gets us through the rough patches, it is that which drives us to celebrate a new day.

In 2011, I did everything differently. And 2011 has turned out to be one of my favorite years to date. Have I learned something, have I changed? Hell yes I have, and it feels awesome.
So to those of you in my life: Thank you and may 2012 bring as many valuable and wonderful experiences, lessons and new people as 2011 brought me.

vr = renderers.current –this changes your renderer to vray
V_Ray_DEMO_1_50_SP2:V_Ray_DEMO_1_50_SP2 –This it the result
showProperties vr  –this will provide the following list of properties to change:
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x^x

Why is the right to walk your dog in a park more important than a right to protest against the abuse of ones rights and freedoms? I understand that things are hard when rights and freedoms collide, but I’d say that this camp has been anything but unreasonable.

Reasonable people break the law every day. When you turn on that red-light without stopping, you’ve broken the law. When you fail to stop fully at that stop-sign you’ve broken the law. When you j-walk, you break the law.
When you are on your hand-held while driving, you are breaking the law.
Hell when you don’t pay 5 cents for your plastic bag, you are breaking the law.

I don’t think it is a fair generalization that “reasonable people don’t break the law” because reasonable people break them every day.

It is fair to desire them to pack up and go, it is fair to desire that they be able to stay.

We can fight the merits of either, all day every day until we are blue in the face. But at what point do we return to reason and find a better way? Because right now, the general public is not participating in that discussion at all, and we have the extremists kicking up a lot of dirt and smoke.
The reasonable public needs to care for this “issue” to be resolved peacefully. And until then we will be left with “unreasonable” people on both sides of the law – the ones being paid, and the ones paying for it.

Note that they give cyclists tickets for this offense.

As I approach King I notice that he is stopped waiting for the light to turn green but he’s not gotten of the bike. So when the light turns and I start across the intersection he pulls up beside me, still on bike so I turn and ask “You do know that what you are doing right now is illegal? It is illegal to ride a bicycle across a pedestrian cross-walk.”

To which this officer responds “So what? Laws are discretionary.”

“Excuse me?” I interject. “How do you expect anyone to obey any law if you are going to demonstrate open willingness to break the law and then suggest that laws are discretionary?”

He responds “I let people off with warnings all the time, that is discretionary.”

“That’ does not make it right, OR legal.” I return.

At this point we are further down Spadina him still pedalling on his bike, I on foot, when he decides to avert my attention from his law breaking and discretionary attitude towards the Occupy Movement.

“What about this Occupy Movement, it is illegal and yet we’ve LET them stay” he suggests.

It is at this point that I ask him another question: “You are aware that the City of Toronto by-laws do NOT super cede the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that what Occupy Toronto is doing is NOT illegal?”

It is at this point that he – seemingly accidentally – agrees that nothing overrules the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I suggest that the reason why no Police officer has tried to enforce city by-law is because they are afraid of the intense scrutiny they would receive for doing so especially with the G20 still so close in the lurk. At which point I am questioned about what exactly I would know about what went on at the G20.

It is encounters with Police like this that frustrate me. There is never any room for them to make mistakes, or to admit fault or to even reason with them. For the exception of a FEW reasonable police officers at the G20, I have yet to meet an officer on the Streets of Toronto that instilled any confidence in me.

It is so clear to see though. In my few years on this planet compassion, love, and manners in general seem to be on a steady decline. We laugh at people when they say what they feel, conversations about relationships are made to feel awkward and often unwarranted. I get the feeling though that this is the creation of society’s over valuing of tangible resources and materials.

What is tangible about love? Apparently all we have left is a marriage certificate, and as is ever more apparent, that stands for a hell of a lot less than it ever has. Is that why so many people have children, is that the tangible resource that is required to prove that we have love, that we care? The biggest fallacy in life is that time is money. Money is bullshit.

I remember little of the “valuable” things that I ever learned in school, but there are some things that have stuck with me for all of these years, and appear to be for reasons which I couldn’t comprehend until recently. Quotes like “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. I mean hell, the biggest thing I’ve learned since school is that what they told me was unimportant is  - at the core of life – extremely unimportant.
They spewed lessons like “life isn’t fair”, and that if you work hard enough “anything is possible”.
What we neglect to educate and enforce is the betterment of life. The possibility that money just hides our insecurities, that tangible objects do the same. We neglect to  consider that people are people.
All of this bullshit that we -in general – are taught and have enforced is, just that, bullshit. We are taught how to think “inside the box” and that you have to be special to get “outside the box”. But really we sit there and persecute, harass, and bully those who think.
We spend an absurd amount of time and energy oppressing those that we do not understand, and for what?
I am no different. I have been oppressed, bullied, and put inside the “box”. I have done it to others. Fuck, that’s what we’re told is “normal”. The system fucking teaches people further still that it is not only acceptable to do, but encouraged.

Where is the love? 

A blip of a conversation that led to a realization:

You: “I think society is way too obsessed with sex…”
Me: “Society is obsessed with the idea, not with it in actuality. It doesn’t need to be so strange”
You: “I disagree and it’s strange to me because sex has been disassociated from intimacy”
M: “Intimacy is what society is afraid of. The only thing society is intimate with is power and money. That is fucked up.”
Y: “Slight tangent but yes. That is fucked up.”
M: “It is relevant. It is why intimacy has fallen so low on society’s radar. It’s not money, power or sex. The latter of which can be obtained with the first two. Intimacy can be obtained with none.”
Y: “How and why is this perpetuated?”
M: “I’d love to know, or how to change it.”

Sex: but a tiny little blip of our lives that has been – of recent – yet another way to distract, demean and otherwise bully people. Think Gay rights. We are all entitled to our opinions. We may not like everyone’s however, but they are entitled to them. This is one of the FEW useful things we are educated about in school, however it is one thing that the education systems of today actually enforce. Because the school’s opinions are more “important”, read: oppressive.

People need to spend a little more time being people, and a lot less time being sheep to other’s ideas. We need to care more, to love more, to be more compassionate, more thoughtful and considerate.
We need to stand together for the greater good, for each other.  People are occupying your town, city, and country for the greater good. And yet the media – read: educators – enforce that this is not the case. They tell us that they are abusing our rights, our power, and our money. And it is those last two points that fire society up. OUR money and power? That is unacceptable!

Is  it? Maybe this is the point, and the media are “feeding” us the wrong perspective. If somebody takes my money and my power, what do I have left? I have love, energy, passion, and life.
There will ALWAYS be clashes over personalities and opinions and tangible things. But maybe it is time that we tried being people, that we tried using our manners, that we did unto others as we would have them do to us.
Because power is in the people. And that kind of power cannot corrupt any longer, as we’ve handicapped ourselves with it to this point.

Think about it. Think about your family, your friends, the people that you assume give you dirty looks, or treat you poorly. Somethings come from within, and these are things we CAN change.
Occupy, talk openly, be compassionate and remember you are a human being.

You want a better life, I want a better life. So why don’t we start making it today? Say hi to half of the people you encounter today, smile to the rest. Your life could be so much brighter, SHOULD be much brighter. And so should the lives of those around you.

Sometimes I consciously haven’t the slightest clue. Sometimes I wish things were different, I wish more had changed. To what, from what? Sometimes I feel so confused, so unrecognisable, so direction-less.

This year is definitely one for my personal books. This is the year that I will forever look back and say that I broke the mould. I am forever changed. The scale of growth is immense to me, as though the last twenty-something years are so far gone. If in my terrible penmanship and poor English skills had described myself in as many awkward words as was necessary this time last year, I wonder if the changes would have run this deep. Almost as if a concious decision would have altered this path for good.
I am far from a shadow of my old self. In the last year I’ve read a dozen novels. 12 you say?You probably read 12 by the time you were just that, 12. Yeah, I’ve read bits and pieces, I’ve been made to. I went to school just like you. But unlike most people, I never read any of them front to back, and I rarely if ever picked on up in my spare time. Since 2006 I’ve read probably about 20 books, from Warcraft Novels, to Lord of the Rings, to my favourite author Steven White’s wonderful books, not to mention some Michael Moore and Malcolm Gladwell. All in all, front to back, I’ve read 12 different ones in the last year.

I’ve yet to convince myself that that is any kind of departure from my old self, and rather just a mere chance of finding more literature that blows up my skirt – so to speak. Fine. Brain – 1, Alex – 0.  I’ve opened myself up to “nothing”. Before you laugh, this is a significant departure for me. Despite all the wonderful things I have – that I’ve worked long and hear to earn – I could lose all my possessions tomorrow and be the same person. I’ve had to fend for myself for a while now – be it my choice or stubbornness – but have finally freed me of that vicious western social stigma. Great, give me a prize… or a pat on the back. But you’d be surprised how many more things are open to you, when you are open to them. I spend less time criticizing others and more time solving what used to make me upset.

I seek to contribute more, to my fellow people than to that of society as it is becoming Everclear how corrupt societies beliefs are.  It is at this juncture in my awareness of that around me that I stop. I walk down the street, and I see people protesting the “norm”. I look to social media and the grass roots news and find that hundreds of thousands of other people are sick of the “norm”, and I am suddenly aware, that yesterday is old news.

Does yesterday really matter? The only reason yesterday matters is because I(we)’ve learned something from the trials and tribulations of yesterday. For without yesterday, today would offer nothing new,  tomorrow would come and go.
So here I stand, looking out at now. Based on the previous few yesterdays, today has a whole lot of prospects.

It is with great admiration and love that I wish to thank everyone who has been a part of yesterday, from this past weekend, to last month, and each and every day prior. It is because of and with all of you that I will openly welcome what today brings, and will encourage the most incredible moments.

And to you, yes you, I raise my glass and invite you to join me. It’s going to be one hell of a ride, and I just want to see where it takes me.

I was up at 7am on the 30th of September and had a few naps/pass outs of about 1 hour lengths since then.
It is 9:45 pm here in Kragujavec so would be 3:45 pm in Toronto. So that’s  a day and 8 hours?!

32 hours of joy, a whole bunch of air travel and sitting in airports, and wandering around Belgrade for 2 hours before heading for home. It feels so good to be here, but I am naturally exhausted so tomorrow should be much more thrilling.

It is awesome to see these crazy Leonard’s again too as I have some help with the Serbian which I obviously cannot understand.

Anywho, bed time, and updates to follow tomorrow and beyond!