flickering pictures

flickering pictures

“Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport
of flickering pictures – in this century as in others,
our highest accomplishments still have
the single aim of bringing
people together.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote that in 1939, five years before he lifted off from a lonely Corsican airfield and disappeared forever into the mist. Just 44 when he vanished, Saint-Exupéry was defined by his years of solo flying through the North African night sky, and the wind, sand and stars gave him a wisdom beyond his years. They taught him that “a pile of rocks ceases to be a pile of rocks the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” They taught him that “there is but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.” And they taught him that at the end of the day, all our material goals, career advancements and stainless steel dishwashers will flicker away and follow him into the fog. All that’s left in the end is that single aim that drives us, that pushes us to write and sing and paint and perform, and to share all things together, be they mystical or mundane.

With that in mind, flickering pictures will explore this spirit through all my filters, biases and neuronal neuroses, and I hope you’ll join in the discussion here. Some days there’ll be news items or photos, other days event postings or unsolicited musings. Sometimes I may rail against some perceived injustice, other times I might just be ranting about how wonderful the world is. I may even contradict myself or change positions as time goes on, as my experience grows and my views mature — a wiser man than me once said that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” Either way, it’s probably best not to make too many promises about the content — except that despite the site’s name, there won’t be any awful flashing images or blinking text. If your screen is flickering, adjust your refresh rate.

mark

Between part-time government work, beer bottle refunds and freelance hackery at newspapers, school boards and NGOs, Mark scraped together just enough coin to get himself through school. He headed into the summer of 2004 with a journalism degree and a grinning sense of bewilderment, and no idea what to do with either. Eventually, he started putting together corporate seminars in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver — some more successful than others — working a soulless job with an office full of good people who politely pretended it wasn’t.

In March 2007, he finally decided to stop settling for things he didn’t enjoy, quit his job, and stepped into the sublime uncertainty of self-imposed underemployment. He got himself TESL-certified and started teaching a few hours a week at two Montreal high schools, to bulk up his English-teaching CV in preparation for a year-long stint in Tunisia. Drawn by the sand, the culture and an inexplicable desire to see ancient Carthage, he blew a big chunk of his dwindling savings on the laptop he planned to bring with him. For many good reasons, that trip never happened, but a few months later he found himself in India instead, on a five-week adventure that blows his mind to this day.

In a ramshackle, gecko-infested internet cafe a few steps from the Ganges, he got an e-mail from a Canadian university congratulating him on the new communications job that he still loves today. Safely home and planning his next escapade, he’s thrilled to be writing for a living — and for fun — again.