[col-sect][column]So I’ve been up since about 3am. Discussion: I had a couple late nights during the week and the accumulated depravation was a chief contributor to my becoming a grouchy bastard over the last few days. Not that I needed much to push me over the edge. But with age I’m finding I’m much more susceptible to the effects from skipping sleep. Man, I can’t write. What a garbage sentence that was. I’m not susceptible to the effects, it’s that the effects are more significant. I can’t bounce back as quickly. Through architecture school, only 7 years ago, I was doing all-nighters all the time. It was rough but I survived; but now… I do a couple consecutive evenings to 2am and that’s that. I become even more irritable and intolerant than usual. So what you say. Well, so what? “So what” would apply to almost everything written on this site. So nothing. There is no “so therefore bla bla bla something profound.” This is just some guy typing. So Friday night rolls around and I’m completely zonked out in bed by 8:00. 7 hours go by. What does somebody do at 3am all refreshed. Well first of all he appreciates the coolness.  Must have been about 11 degrees up on the mountain here. A completely civilised temperature. Ahhh. I thrive at about 11 degrees. Crisp and fresh.

Tangent: Patrick’s diatribe on Summer heat

This summertime upper 20’s stuff is just garbage. Heat is oppressive. It sucks your energy. You get nothing done. In spite of that, I love how everyone’s all like, oh it’s so beautiful and sunny. It’s this culturally wide self-deception: everyone thinks they love the summer sun. But then you look around and they’re walking around half-dead dragging their asses to the nearest Starbucks for a cool drink. Or they are sticking to the seat of their car.  That grittiness. The short-tempers. The veins popping out. The damp watch strap. The sweat in your shorts. The thick air. Your girlfriend curling up on you when you lie on the beach. Ridiculous. It’s 30 degrees and out at Englsh Bay girls are crawling up on and intertwining themselves in their guys’ limbs. How incredibly irritating this must be. Honey, that’s great that all the bodies around and the thought of being half-naked in public crosses some wires in your head and is making you beach frisky. And it’s not quite hot or uncomfortable enough right now, so why don’t you just climb up on me and snuggle right in there out here in public. I don’t mind. And make sure your legs are tying mine up too. Like a spider demobilizing its prey. Awesome. Yep, love that heat. That’s some good stuff. Why don’t we all just admit it: Summer heat is not comfortable. It’s just not. Here’s an alternate rationale: it’s not the heat you like; it’s the skimpy clothing. It’s the summer skin, not the heat. Accept it: we all love the skin. Girls enjoy wearing very little and guys like it when girls wear very little. So it’s a good deal all around. But the heat? No thanks.
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Back to the story

So it’s three something in the morning, the cool air is coming in through the open deck door (and so are three neighbourhood cats) and I’m refreshed and quite content – for the first time in a week. I LOVE Saturday mornings. All is good: the cats just hanging out, Temptations. cool air, the quietness, the stillness. Just the right conditions for some good thinking. And so what did I think about? I covered a lot of mental ground actually. The big ticket item is career. For a while I’ve been thinking about writing a piece on what I do and how my job and I are so ill-suited for each other. It’s like a bad relationship. And I am tempted to articulate the details of how my job and I are rubbing each other the wrong way, both philosophically and in practice. But maybe another time… kind of negative. Bigger picture, it’s about using your time on Earth well. Which I am not. At all. Kind of troubling. What else. Let’s see, I have three weeks of vacation time coming up. Think I’ll go to New York for a few of those days. My personal Mecca. And sure I could go on a short venture to a city I haven’t been to, say like San Francisco. And yeah, I’m sure it would be cool, but I know myself and I just know that when I got there, I’d be saying to myself, “Damn, I could have gone to New York.” And that preference to return to a place I’ve been to a few times before, but loved rather than trying some new destination reminded me of this other concept that’s been batting around in my head recently. It has to do with depth as opposed to breadth. So a couple examples. I went to Woody Allen’s latest, “Whatever Works” a few weeks ago. And I was noticing all the themes and in some cases phrases used in his previous films. In fact even the name of the film was a phrase spoken by Sydney Pollack in “Husbands and Wives.” So here we have a film maker who is exploring the same material in each project. Employing the same techniques and variations on those techniques over and over. Depth over breadth. That’s another long piece waiting to happen. Last weekend I went to Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” and once again, you have a guy doing his thing over and over with each new film. A short sidebar here: this young couple walked out halfway through the movie. And I’m not going to jump to conclusions, but given today’s ADD psychological state, it wouldn’t surprise me if they left because they felt the movie had long stretches with little action. Forget about the fact that it is the most beautifully shot film and every scene is a masterwork in colour, composition and shadow. Whatever. Point is that that is Mann’s M.O. All his films have the same qualities: heavy and dark, long stretches of still beauty punctuated by brief exchanges of intense gunfire. I happen to love that formula, by the way. And backing out now to the previous level of discussion, these guys have found their element. They are not bothering to try other stuff, other directions, other experiments, in their films. There’s a clearly legible lineage throughout their work. There’s a focus. Depth over breadth.[/column][/col-sect]

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