This is a (kind of) recent photo I took, and it’s one I’m fairly happy with, though it is a bit blown out in spots. It’s just a band performing and the light is nice… mostly.
I hope you enjoy.
This lion is features as part of a sculpture of Gilgamesh.
When I was framing this, I was trying to make the lion look goofy, but I don’t think I pulled it off. Still, I like what details came through in the photo.
This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. This one is hosted by PR of Flights of the Soul, and she has chosen the theme “Sculptures”.
Participating is pretty straightforward and something I recommend. If you do, then include the tag “monochrome-madness” in your post. If not participating, then at the least check out Leanne’s photography as well as what other people submit.
I hope you enjoy.
One listen.
I’m pretty tired but thought I’d try and do another bit of music writing and I’m not sure I did as well as I could have had I done this earlier in the day. I was going toward describing the sounds but I didn’t go far enough.
Willebrant’s “Sands II (Awakening)” is from Desert Songs.
I hope you enjoy.
—
Sound grows clear, and rich, perhaps. It stretches long and feels almost cinematic. Parts fade, or rather change, and there’s some sort of freshness to everything.
As the sounds spread forward and out, they seem to look to express an expansiveness. They seem to look to reach for wonder, and they follow curvature and linearity when it spreads outward.
The sounds seem calm, and rather more interested in expressing the gradual rather than the immediate, and they look at things with an optimism and hope, or at least seem to. They come and go, and move, and nothing seems to change but it does, and everything fades out and the song ends.
Today I drove into the mountains. Nothing new there. Do it plenty. Left a bit later than usual, but arrived where I was meant to be at the time I said I’d be there, so, you know, all good. All fine and all that stuff.
I was meeting up with two friends; one I don’t see much at all, and the other I’ve seen only two or three times in the last… ten years, roughly. It was a good time; we went walking and hung out and had breakfast and all those things, and it’s nice to see where we are now in our lives. The two had been friends for much longer than I’d known them, and I met them whilst we worked at the same place; it’s just nice to know that we’re still kicking on, and we survived.
Anyway, we hung out and at one point said our goodbyes. They were heading to meet up with another of their friends and I was heading home, and so home I headed. I left Katoomba the way I usually do, which is by some backstreets and through Leura. Avoids a bit of traffic.
The way I go also takes me past a place of which I’m familiar with, which is the house that was one of my best friend’s mum’s. Was as she passed away last year.
When I go to the mountains, or most places really, I set a playlist and try to set it with rising and falling moods, and hope that it matches the scenery and time of day and all those things. When I left Katoomba I went back a few tracks, just to see if I could be back on the highway before one track finished.
I’ve been getting into Underworld a fair bit over the past couple of months. I’ve been getting into them quite a bit. I was passing the house, or rather very close to it when Underworld’s “Best Mamgu Ever” came on, and it floored me.
There is a lot of emotion tied into that house, and perhaps its foundations are defined by those emotions and memories. That’s my friend’s story to tell; not mine, but I have my own set of memories and emotions around it too, though vastly different, albeit tinted with understanding of some of my friend’s perspective. But it was an overwhelming moment.
I was wondering then, and I can’t help but wonder now, however, how much of my feeling what I felt as I passed and “Best Mamgu Ever” played, was me trying to feel something through my friend’s experiences and emotions. Was it me trying to claim his memories as my own in that moment, or was it me feeling for my friend’s experiences? I don’t know; I don’t think I will ever be able to say for sure, but I can’t help but wonder. I do know, however, that what I felt was very real, and heavy and intense.
I helped my friend clear out the house a few times last year, because I wanted to help. I wanted him to be able to get back to living his life. In a sense he had to put time on hold to do what he felt he needed to, and maybe it wasn’t the longest time, but it was years in a day for a while. I was just there for some parts of it, and I did what I could.
When someone passes I feel that, whilst they still travel through time, in a way they stay behind. They’ve exited the train at their station, and what we have left are the memories and all that those entail.
I know what my friend went through was pretty heavy, but again, that’s his story to tell. His memories are his to express. The best I can do is try to be there for him when he wants, or needs me to be there.
Don’t have much time, so it’s time for me to power through a bit of writing, and maybe it will be more sensible than the last bit of writing. Don’t know yet. We’ll see. And so on and so forth. And you get the idea.
So I was sitting here, minding my own business when all of a sudden I…
Wait, I was going to rant about peeling eggs.
So don’t you hate it when you put boiled eggs in the fridge, then grab them the next day and go to peel them, and they’re too cold to peel easily? Don’t you just hate that? I hate it. Shell gets everywhere, and my heart is not able to cope with that kind of tomfoolery. It just ain’t pleasant.
You know, the shell gets everywhere and then you need to pick up the bits and pieces of the shell and some of it is on the ground, and you also gets bits of egg on your fingers and you try to clean that up too, but it’s just going everywhere and it spreads outward and you can’t stop it as you’ve already made the mess. Actually, you can stop it, but in order to do so you need to stop peeling the egg, and why would you want to do that? I wouldn’t want to do that. Would you?
It seems like a bad idea to stop what has already started, but you’re going to have to and then you need to try and eat the egg whilst it’s still partially encased by protective layering, and that ain’t fun, let me tell you. I would much rather not risk swallowing the shell of egg, and I’d much rather pretend that what I’m doing is having a gourmet meal made for four and consumed by one. However, now I need to spend time being aware of the situation I’ve gotten myself into, and I just don’t want to. Who wants to be aware? Who wants to be considerate?
This should be considered a warning for all of those who try. Don’t assume that the egg will be fine if it was boiled and put in the fridge the previous day. Do not let the deception of the shell get to you. Peel with caution and peel with deliberate movement. That protective layer will do what it can to make your life harder, and you’ll only have yourself to blame if you do not heed my warning.
Sometimes I wonder if the egg was created to deceive and fool us. We so slovenly worship its existence, and yet it continues to elude our greatest senses and perceptions of the world around us, and I don’t even know anymore. Perhaps the egg just isn’t and we all think it is, and then it all goes bad from there. Everything ends up egg-shaped and this canoodling with desire is suddenly cracking open, revealing the deception, but there’s no escape and now you’re an egg too.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:09:65
Decent speed, and something a bit closer to what I wanted this blog to be about way back when I started it, so I’m mostly happy with what I wrote here.
Written at work.
And so another day crawls and slithers its way across a golden horizon of cloud and smog and haystacks that lean into themselves, or maybe they don’t, but the day does crawl and slither.
I’m tired. Such is life. Such is everything.
I’m listening to talking and all the sounds of talking, and I’m wondering about grand pianos and words and sounds, and wondering about lids going down when you’re finished. I’m wondering about other things.
Some things that are said about cooking and putting things back, and staring and leaving people struck silent, dumbfounded and wondering about broken locks.
I wonder as to how much longer the glasses I must wear in specific circumstances will keep impacting the way I see things when I am not wearing them.
Sometimes laughter carries in a stilted silence, and sometimes you’re woken up earlier than you’d like, and that might lead to odd reviews about staying somewhere on a cold day among a breeze that blows through the grass, and sometimes you want people to know where you are so people don’t get concerned.
There are times when one wonders as to what is and is not scary, and should we be afraid of things anyway? Should we wonder as to what is and is not constituting a season in hell, and should we wonder about squatters?
Sometimes the stories are so bad, and someone tries to kill someone else alive, but thankfully that doesn’t always happen. At the very least there can be entertainment among a dreary day as it keeps on crawling and slithering, and leaving a trail of destruction behind. That’s the problem, but if the donor doesn’t tell people what it is that is being donated, then that could lead to issues.
Apparently in The Netherlands there are terrestrial forms; that is to say, there is more than one terrestrial form. What if this is a lie? What if this is a gross misrepresentation of the truth? What if this delusion is… unsustainable?
There could be a longing to reveal what it is behind the veil, but who really wants to know, anyway?
Who wants to be emailed by randoms? This could be fake. There could be no verification. It could be a huge, huge thing, but there’s no telling at the end of the day as the conversation continues to flow onward and people go to met up with other people and chat, and there’s no sense of security. It gets thrown to the side as though reckless abandon is abandoning recklessly. But it doesn’t matter, so long as someone has the long hair, the illusion may exist regardless of how many are pulled down. It doesn’t change and nothing changes, but it seems like it changes.
But then there’s traveling and that needs to be considered, but who knows, really? There could be too many families to consider when it comes to all of those things, and perhaps it’s not something that should always be considered.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:34:28
I started writing and there was a conversation happening near me so I decided to let bits and pieces of that come in. Makes this bit of writing quite messy, but I do like the result.
Written at work.
One listen.
I wrote this yesterday and decided to sit on it until now. Other stuff to deal with and all that. Looking over it briefly, it feels a bit meandering in parts, and I’m not sure if that is beneficial, or detrimental. That said, I think some imagery comes through, and that helps to paint an idea of how the song feels… I think.
Willebrant’s “Sands V (By Night)” is from Desert Songs.
I hope you enjoy.
—
Silence, or quiet. Perhaps just too small to be heard, but eventually danger spreads thin and thick, and runs smooth over the space. It seems to linger, fade and then give way to something else in a grand emptiness that presses down and presses in, but it’s not all danger.
There’s danger, but in these sounds drawing out and moving upon lines is also a sense of wonder. There’s a sense of quiet framed by sounds at a distance. The sky seems to become even more massive; overwhelmingly so, and the sense of danger is there, but it also seems safe.
The space is framed by the sky and stars, and around is the openness of the desert, and all its ridges and shape and form, and it spreads beyond visibility, and it’s dark and quiet, and filled with low, soft sounds, and it extends in the dark with waves held still, and it continues on as the sounds fade and the song ends.
Alright, going to see if I can get some stuff done before work… again.
It’s nice. This is all nice. It’s nicer in here than it is out there, though that’s a matter of perspective, really.
What am I going to write? I’ve got nothing. I’m trying to let go and be free, but I just can’t today. My thoughts are wanting to be too aware and I don’t want to be aware of them, but they are here and I am here and so there’s a confluence of thoughts happening right now, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Such is the world of the way, as they don’t say.
So I sit here and I wonder “Is this all I have?” as maybe it is all I have. Maybe I’ve nothing left to offer, but that’s not something I want to face. It could just be that I need to warm up and get on with the getting on, and if that’s the case, then that should happen sooner rather than later. However, there is no telling with these things some of the time.
I know that wearing glasses seems to be impacting my ability to do much of anything, so I’ll blame those… even though I’m not wearing them at the present moment.
Sometimes you just have to deal with and accept that it’s your time to bow out, but now is not the time. I know that, somewhere within me, there is something left and I need to dig it up. I need to pull it up from the well. I need to get the bucket and fish it out and pull it out with the bucket, and go from there. That’s what I need to do.
I need to just think of something else to write.
I need to let go and feel the breeze as it falls through my hair and tries to pull my hair away from my head, and I need to stand there and pretend that I’m enjoying the sensation, which I might be to be fair. However, I likely wouldn’t in this particular scenario due to that being the only way the scenario works, but I think I might.
What else is there to say? I’m warm and that’s nice. It’s pleasant being warm. Actually, I’m not warm, but I’m close enough, and that’s pleasant enough. I’m feeling nauseous, though that will pass. I feel like I don’t get enough sleep, though I seldom have. It’d be nice to get a full night of sleep for a change, and maybe that will happen soon. I don’t know; I’m yet to get there.
I think that I’ll stop this bit of writing soon. I don’t think there’s much of anything in it. I tried, but I don’t think it’s working today. There’s other stuff to tackle anyway, so I should start working on doing those things. After that, I can then get on with the day and get through it.
The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:55:87
It could’ve been better. I think it could always be better, but this could’ve been better.
Written at work.
Stupidity Hole 