C. Alex de Freitas

This Tumblr has died!

This Tumblr has died. It lived a good life….but It will live on in the form of my BLOG, and my PHOTO BLOG. PLease make sure you have those bookmarked/on your reader instead :-)

many thanks 
and happy tumbling

Alex

Perhaps the last post from over oceans (at least, for the time being)

Buenos días mis amigos maravillosos. Ha pasado algún tiempo desde mi última carta! Hasn’t it been some time - about a month, it seems. We ended my last letter with Hemingway, so that seems a fitting place from which to start this one.

After spending a few weeks reading about his youthful exploits in Paris I became fascinated with the man’s life. It was not enough to read a story and leave it at that - it seldom is for me these days. I want to know context and background and what happens before and after in the life of the author, where and why they were writing - with who and what they surrounded themselves. I didn’t need to look far.

As it turns out. I was unwittingly living in the middle of this guy’s life. Prior to leaving for Paris, young Hemingway worked as a journalist for the Toronto Star. One day I rode out to visit the house he lived in. Later, roaming the halls of the Canadian National Exhibition (think, Easter Show), I kept my eyes fixed on the banners hanging from the roof - archival images from the Toronto Star of Toronto in the early 1920s, the period Hemingway was writing for the paper. Life looked muddy and grey back then, though I know if I was really there that the colours would be as just as brilliant as today. Perhaps even more so, because, well, you know, the world was slightly more youthful and all. I can never properly imagine life over forty year ago without the help of video, images, or illustrations. It’s as if my imagination will overly skew anything that uses only words. Maybe I lack the knowledge of the culture to begin with. I don’t like imagining ‘incorrectly’ (and I do realise how ridiculous and contradictory such a statement is).

From there, I followed Hemingway to Cuba. Although Coralee and I spent the majority of our time on the white sands of Varadero, in a kind of Cuban disneyland, a mirage of tourists, hotels and cheap souvenirs we were able to catch a ride on a tour bus filled with French Canadians to Ciudad de La Habana. It was a tour bus in a Spanish speaking country filled with French speaking Canadians - interesting to say the least! Only spending a day there, we conducted our own whirlwind tour of the narrow city streets and grand avenues extending out from El Capitolio (think, Washington State Capitol, but amidst third-world-esqu Habana streets. I climbed the stairs to the room in which he slept…..and passed by the hotel where he would drink and write (Old Man and the Sea, supposedly).

Needless to say, the past few weeks I have been enjoying inadvertently living in Hemingway’s shadow. Other things have happened too. Coralee has been enjoying nannying for adorable two year old triplets….and I have been roaming the streets of New York City in hope that I might stumble upon the answer to the question of how one writes a PhD scribbled on a scrap of paper laying in a East Village gutter or something. I’m writing to you from the park and would you believe, a pigeon just pooped on my screen. Ah well, I suppose that’s better than running out of battery.

We miss you all terribly, but soon we will return. Friday 3rd of October, in fact. I plan on eating a hearty steak and cheese pie with lots of ‘sauce’ (they call it ketchup here), going surfing, and generally just hugging and high-fiving you all. I’ll leave you with some photos from Cuba and the second album are Coralee’s awesome lo-fi film photos from the same trip.

See you soon (or will be saying goodbye to you soon, depending on where in the world you are).

Love from Alex

Cuba photos one click HERE

Cuba photo two click HERE

The right place

I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable about using this Tumblog for what I have been using it for. As if I should shift to a proper blog. Is there room for a personal blog as well as a professional blog? I suppose so….especially because personal writing would undoubtedly be much more prolific. Would I keep the tumblr too? - To link to pretty pictures and interesting pages? Hmm.

Light-headed

Hi World,

I’m feeling a little light headed so I figured rather than sit at this screen flicking between browser tabs for no apparent reason at all I’d give you a call.

I’m not sure if it’s related, but my lightheadedness arrived last night about halfway through the latest Quentin Tarintino film, Inglorious Basterds. As always, Tarintino’s dialogue was second to none. He tells a great story….but I can only watch so many scalps being sliced off of Nazi heads before I begin to feel a bit queezy. Anyways, for whatever reason, my lightheadedness remains and I honestly feel on the brink of fainting in this chair…..but don’t worry….as long as I keep tapping my left foot on these polished floorboards in rapid succession, everything will be just fine. You see, I’ve made a deal with my mind. Plus, I’m skulling back coffee, then water, coffee, then water. So I will be both wired, and hydrated in no time :-).

Whats up on the Canada front I hear you ask? Well, Coralee has resigned from her position at Adidas and has decided to nanny some two year old triplets for the remaining weeks. I suppose it will be nice for her to have a change, but that change means commuting all the way out to Oakville each day and not returning home again until past 9:30pm. I farewelled her off on her first GO Train voyage earlier. I do enjoy the challenge of negotiating foreign public transport systems and timetables, so I hope she finds some of that same pleasure this morning.

In addition, for reasons that only seemed logical at the time, we are vacating our current apartment at the end of this week. I suppose we are taking a short vacation to Cuba and it made sense not to be paying rent whilst away, but we quickly realised that our decision to leave left us with no roof over our heads for much of September. Although I know my family would happily host us for the final month, we can’t help but feel as though we’ve been abusing our relational privileges. Instead, I managed to find us a nearby apartment to rent just for the month of September. So that’s cool. We’re still sheltered and safe, although I’ve basically sold all of our furniture already…..so now you can picture us camping out in an empty bedroom on the 5th floor of a 70s style apartment block with a few suitcases and a single foam mattress on the floor.

My brother Andy has been in Toronto which has been nice. Someone to ride places with and, of course, he is renowned for his great vegetarian dishes of which we’ve been privileged to enjoy a few. If I close my eyes I can still taste last night’s rice dinner with basil and mango and green beans and sweetcorn. Mmm. Together, Andy and I watched a film at the Bicycle Film Festival entitled Where Are You Go. The film documents an epic bicycle ride - 12,000km across the African continent. I highly recommend seeing it if you ever get the chance (at least click above and watch the trailer). During the film I was reminded to be wary of routine. As I grow older I am learning to fear sameness. I refreshed a vow I’ve made many times before - to always take on something new, ride the unknown path and never settle for a mediocre life of comfort.

So that’s that. We’ll be back in NZ before you know it, but will truly miss Toronto the Good and all she’s provided us with. If there’s one thing I am jealous about, it’s that my brother has only just arrived here. It takes this long to find beds, and friends, and churches, and eateries and bicycle pumps, and to learn the potholes on the road - and just like that - we’re off again.

I suppose it will only be in hindsight that I will know if the work I’ve done here for my PhD studies has been sufficient. My biggest fear is leaving and not having accomplished everything that I had hoped to. But, with that said, all that I have done since being here is nothing at all like what I had initially proposed. I suppose that’s the way the PhD cookie crumbles. I know one thing for sure though. This is no simple task I’ve agreed to take on. I don’t think I can do it without your help. Even then…..how on earth am I going to be able to do it!? Time is of the essence. I’m past halfway in my stream of funding. While chilling in Toronto’s West End or Brooklyn would be nice…..my sensibility tells me I need to come home, lock myself in a dark room and figure out how one writes the damn thing!

For those not adept in the ways of social media, I shall leave you with some photos Coralee and I snapped in New York City. Aah, NYC, now there is a place that I could grow old yet never fall victim to routine. I’m almost equally in love with Paris thanks to E. Hemingway - but that’s another letter altogether.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=116186&id=501906850&l=c74218dc3a

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113956&id=723796688&l=4068cb066f

XO

When I come back to New Zealand...

When I come back to New Zealand I’m gonna drive to the beach and spend the night there in the car
When I come back to New Zealand I’m going to spend a week visiting my favorite Auckland cafes
When I come back to New Zealand the first thing I’m gonna do is hop on my bike, and ride all the way from Devonport to the CBD (via the Waitakeres!)
When I come back to New Zealand I’m gonna hug each and every one of my friends……twice!
When I come back to New Zealand I will have my fingers crossed that my favourite Whiskys are still there - and if they are, I’ll enjoy a drop - all on my own.
When I come back to New Zealand I’m gonna photocopy something for free, just cause I can.
When I come back to New Zealand I’m determined to weigh the same as when I left
When I come back to New Zealand you will find me wearing the same shoes and jeans as when I left
When I come back to New Zealand I will miss Toronto. Even though I may not give that impression now.
When I come back to New Zealand I’m going surfing
When I come back to New Zealand It’s time to get busy writing a PhD
When I come back to New Zealand I really hope I’ll get some help doing that last thing I said
When I come back to New Zealand I’ll be glad to not have to share one travel power adapter among dozens of electrical devices.
When I come back to New Zealand my wife will be happy
When I come back to New Zealand we’ll finally be home