Ah! The cool, cool winds of the North have come. That means Yule season is here.
I've always said that I love the cold better than the heat because when you're cold you could easily warm yourself up by wrapping layers and layers of cloth around you; but when it's hot... it's still hot even if you take all your clothes off. On warm days you can't spend all day bathing just to cool off.
Still, that's just one of the reasons why I love a cold weather.
I remember someone once told me that the cold weather allows me to dress up without being inappropriate and that is just so true! I can put on layers of clothes, play around with my style, mixing and matching shirts, sweaters, jackets, and overcoats and nobody would think that I'm a fashion faux pas. Well, at least not many people would...
Being in a tropical country means, most of the time, dressing up means putting on a button-up shirt and slacks. One shirt, a pair of pants, and a pair of leather shoes are about all you need to wear to make people start thinking you're either going to a party or a date.
That is just unfair!
Anyway... moving on...
The cool winds are here and now so that means I can play dress up. Although I dress up everyday, the cold winds give me more flexibility. It gives me reason to wear a jacket and an overcoat, or a sweater over a jacket, or something like that.
Anyway, last week, since it was really cold, I really had to put on multiple layers of clothing: I had on my T-shirt under a brown knit cardigan and a black denim jacket. Of course, I couldn't possibly survive walking down Session Road without my black cut-off gloves and red muffler. One day, I had to wear a sweater, a really warm jacket (our old team jacket) that had a snood, and, of course, a muffler and my gloves.
Last Sunday morning, I wore a gray suit over a blue-white-and-yellow striped shirt with a navy blue tie, and a blue-white argyle knit vest. That's my church outfit.
Oh! And, yeah, my gold shoes (yes, my shoes were gold... well, a gold and black meld, actually... it may seem totally off from the gray suit but, believe me, the ensemble went perfectly well).
I realized, though, that no matter how many layers of clothing I put on, the layers could not deny the fact that it was really cold all around me. My ears still hurt from all the cool air. I still could not feel my nose whenever I go out to walk along Session Road and my finger tips still feel frozen stiff and feel like they'd fall off any moment.
No matter how many protective clothing I wrap around myself, the coldness is never gone...
Well... here's one of things I've been busy with lately...
This is an event poster I did for a friend. It's really uninspired and not one of my best works, but I think this works just fine.
The idea was this:
The music should be a derivative of ska, reggae and samba such as these genres--Rocksteady, Dancehall, Dub, Ska, Calypso, Mento, Early Jazz, Early R&B, Raggamuffin as opposed to mainstream Dance and R&B music. This event thus uses images that relate to the world view of that particular period of time and the cultures of the Caribbean.
.... and the deal:
I'm not so sure I got the deal or the idea in the poster but I think it looks better than the first version:
For the umpteenth time! I have failed to update this blog... and even this template that I was working on hasn't progressed since August.
I've really got only one excuse... I've been very, very, very busy! Really!
So I finally decided to upload the template.
It's still a little buggy and not quite complete yet. There's more work to be done.
I haven't been able to fully dedicate myself to developing the new template so there are still a lot of touching-up to do. The sidebars' backgrounds aren't set yet and I still need to fix the CSS codes for the widgets.
The background images also load with delay, so there's just text and black background at first before all the images load. I'll either have to optimize the images or find a better place to host the images.
Give me another month or so and I should be able to finish the temple... though, by then, I probably would have another design in mind...
Windmills of the Mind version 4.2 is almost finished... almost...
This is roughly how it should look like. Of course, it isn't complete without the text and all, but that's how the layout's gonna be.
I wanted something uncomplicated at first, seeing that version 4.0 was a little too grungy, dark and a little bit crowded. I ended up creating something a lot brighter, a little less grungy, but still quite complicated. Although it felt pretty okay so I decided to go on with this version.
I'm doing the design section by section and widget by widget, simultaneously editing the images while coding the CSS template then testing it in seven - yes, seven - different browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, Opera 9, Google Chrome, FF2.5 and FF3). I'm still not sure how it would work out once I upload the template to blogger, though.
Like a lonely child lost in the wilderness, I wandered wary, ever watchful. This world, though I have walked for years, felt new and raw to my senses. The air I drew into my lungs, the sights that fed my eyes, the constant shifting of cold and heat on my skin, and the bittersweet taste in my tongue were not the same as the ones I had been used to. It all felt so new because for the first time I walked this earth and I was complete, my feet on the ground feeling its coldness against mine, my ghost at last in my shell.
Gingerly, I took my first step. The earth felt cold beneath my feet and the coldness swept to my spine making me shiver.
Shivering from the cold? I asked myself wryly, how could a soul as cold as mine shiver from the measly cool of the earth?
Yet, in all truth, I knew what the answer was even before the question was asked. The answer was something I have always tried to deny, a fact that I tried to escape. The answer was the reason why I built my sanctuary and stayed in that limbo. The answer was something more than I was able to admit to myself because it meant opening up a world of possible pain and suffering, of sadness and hurt... a world of reality.
Still I continued to ignore the ever-whispering truth, denied the nagging fact and dismissed the answer I had always known as foolery.
I took my second step, more gingerly this time. One toe landed first, testing to see if another shiver will run down my spine. The ground was still cold and the chill still had the undesirable effect. Still I went on...
Feet flat on the ground, the cold travelling from my heels to my spine, reaching my head, I felt nauseated. I never realized there were too many sensations a simple walk on this earth could bring. I felt the tingle of dust between my toes, the roughness of the earth beneath my feet, the silky caressing of the breeze on my skin. There was a plethora of intruding sensations and I felt them all and then some.
The sudden surge on my senses was astonishing, it made me want to withdraw... run back to my sanctuary. Only there was no sanctuary left for me to return to. I had no choice but to face the new world I have braved to enter.
