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Location: Near 5 Navy Wharf Crescent and the Gardiner Expressway, Toronto, Ontario

Description: The Rogers Centre with a garden/patio area in the foreground and the CN Tower behind on the right.

Story: "You don't seem like a Stephanie."

That was all it took to set her off. "And what, pray tell, does a Stephanie seem like? It's just a name. It's a handy way to reference that you're talking to me, that's all. It's easier that constantly going 'That girl' all the time. I mean, take Stephan for example. If I said that I was talking to my friend Stephan, what do you think he would look like?"

She paused, but wasn't expecting a response, so whatever he said in his defense was silenced. "We have all these ideas that someone will act this way, or look like this, or whatever and it's all wrong. Your name doesn't change over the course of your life, but you do. It's not supposed to be an accurate depiction of the entity you are now. It's a label, a tag!"

He sat down and let her go; no point jumping in front of a speeding car. "It's not meant to be descriptive, even more so now. Names no longer tell us if a person is male or female. And it doesn't even make sense! It's like saying that a toaster isn't very Stephanie, or a lemur isn't very topographical, or that bench is metaphorically a river! It's apples and oranges!"

She looked straight at him now; the end was nigh. "I don't care what you think; a name is not meant to describe the character of a person. So when we do this play, I'm going to be called Stephanie, got that?" He nodded. "And if I hear another word about this, you'll be called Mr. Sprinklehead the Third."

UE

Location: Near 5 Navy Wharf Crescent and the Gardiner Expressway, Toronto, Ontario

Description: Lanes connecting Lake Shore Boulevard and the Gardiner Expressway with a sign on a telephone pole in the foreground, a business and empty parking lot behind, and two buildings on either side of that.

Story: "Scrap it."

She sighed. "Yes but-"

"It doesn't matter; scrap it." She looked disheartened, like she had done something wrong. "Look, I'm not saying what you've done is worthless, but you can't continue working on it. You know it doesn't work, because you've carved that piece of wood so much there's nothing left to work with. It's over. If you still want to do it, you'll have to start again."

She started to speak and this time he let her finish. "But I've only started! It's just rough right now. I haven't started on any of the detail."

He showed her the sketch she drew. "This is how you wanted it to look. You can't get to this. Either you have to start on a new piece of wood, adapt your design, or make something completely new." She was upset but holding it in; it would take some time before she could let this go. "Look at it this way: it's better to restart now than hours later." He handed her the sketch. "It'll look beautiful in the end and you know it. Dust yourself off and start again."

Ants

Location: The fourth floor of the Renaissance Hotel, Toronto, Ontario

Description: The roof of the hotel in the foreground with Blue Jays Way cutting a diagonal below and buildings all around.

Story: He looked over from the picnic basket and admired the small mound of dirt they had built. It must be like a mountain to them, building something so much bigger than they were. Just yesterday he had tried to emulate those ants, digging a huge hole and making a pile nearby. He kept at it for hours, his parents just happy that he was digging in the garden, but it never got much higher than his head.

They would have spent weeks on it, that colony, all working together for a common goal. The street had been repaved recently and he saw people working together for weeks as well, building something they all could use. He even got his friends to build a treehouse with him over the summer. Great things could be accomplished together.

One time on TV, he saw how much work they put into their home, how many rooms there were, connecting back and forth in a maze beneath the surface. It was like an apartment building, having all those people living together, but they had built their home as well. Maybe he could talk to other people at school, and get them to build their own treehouses in the woods. They could connect them with bridges, build a whole community up there. Sky ants.

Discovery

Location: In front of Crawford on Riverbend Drive, Kitchener

Description: Looking down Riverbend Drive on the left, a "Hidden Driveway" sign is in the centre with a line of trees on the right.

Story: "When was the last time you did something new?" she asked, jotting down points on her notepad.

He continued to stare out the window. "Discover a cure for cancer new, or buy a new car new?"

Resistance. She'd come to expect it from him, and continued to ignore it. "More the second. When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone?"

He scoffed. "You make it sound physical, like it's a circle I've painted on the ground and stubbornly sit inside." He turned and faced her dead on. "I'm happy, healthy, and content with myself. To use the language you like so much, I'm water. I used to flow downhill constantly, and I've gone over a few waterfalls, but now I'm part of the sea, finally at rest. Yes, I'm stationary, but that's the whole point."

She nodded and wrote as she spoke. "Fair enough. But on your journey, you changed from fresh water to salt water. You're stagnant." She smirked slightly. "Perhaps a little overweight to boot."

He genuinely laughed at that and grinned. "Alright, fine, I'll give you that much. So what should I do?"

She got up and walked over to the window, and he followed her. "There are so many things to see out there, and I'm sure you haven't seen them all. Why not just go for a walk every day? That's the new I spoke of before: new to you. Maybe you won't discover a new continent, but you might be the first person to look under that rock, or climb that tree. Just go out there and see what could be."

Curved

Location: The intersection of Riverbend Drive, Bridgeport Street, and Riverbend Drive in Kitchener

Description: The road signs for an intersection a top a stop sign as seen from behind, with a tree on both sides.

Story: Situations change, and plans must adapt. There's a pitfall in planning too much, as filling in the fine details only leads to more erasing when something gets upset. Thus the choice is between broad strokes and adaptability, or contingency plans and incredible forethought. Both have their merits, yet we usually opt for the larger picture and fill things in on the way.

There's a certain beauty to planning everything, predicting how it will all play out, and trying to prevent anything from going wrong. You're not working to win, but solve an incredibly intricate problem and find the ultimate strategy. It's like planning a city and accounting for how things will change over the next two hundred years. How will rivers get diverted? Where will subdivisions be built? What new methods of transportation will be around, and how will that affect traffic? Can the initial infrastructure be expanded to accommodate a population that may increase tenfold from its original size?

Most often, the variable we account for the least is ourselves. How will I change? What will my desires be in a month? Where will my priorities lie? Knowing everything about a situation, necessitates knowing ourselves.


I've begun to restructure my life and I realized that seven posts a week is currently a standard I can't easily maintain. Instead I will begin mirroring others before me and post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, hopefully reducing my workload and increasing the quality of what I produce.