Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1289: A Cycle Today

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Earlier today I went for a cycle. It’s the first one I’ve been on since shortly before moving house. Been meaning to get back on the bike before now but… yeah.

So I went and it was a fairly easy ride. Nothing out of the ordinary. I also went on one yesterday but that was during lunch break and this was before work and I guess in a way they compare to each other but that’s not what I’m trying to write about right now.

Anyway, I went for a ride and it was a pretty easy one. Don’t want to push myself too hard; just want to get back into cycling regularly again. I rode and I went down Cooks River and through a spot I walked through when I lived at my previous place.

Walked and cycled, but you know.

There was something about it that felt unfamiliar even though I recognised it as how I remembered it, and I wonder if that means I’ve begun to detach from the area. I wonder if I’m no longer part of it in a sense. It wasn’t something I thought much of but still it’s interesting how we are no longer part of something soon after we’ve left. Sometimes it takes a while but it’s only been slightly over two months since I moved.

I rode along the familiar pathway and I kept going forward and once the sense of unfamiliarity passed it was all smooth riding, or at least as smooth as my bike will allow as I need to change some parts. I reached a point, turned around and started cycling back so I’d get home with enough time to get ready for work.

As I headed back I saw an object, realised it was a blue-tongued lizard and thankfully reacted quickly enough to be able to move around it. I stopped, took a few quick photos; it’s not often I get to see one. They are around Cooks River but I’m seldom there at the right times.

It moved into an area that’s fenced off from foot traffic and I continued on my way, heading home.

Sometimes when I see a creature of some sort I wonder as to what world we are creating and what we’re leaving behind. I think about how they haven’t chosen to see so much of their habitat become fragmented and diminished in size, and I wonder if we will ever do more to improve things for the better.

Anyway, I cycled on home with a few thoughts on my mind and they turned to music at some point, and I kept on pedaling, and it wasn’t a hard cycle. It was easier than I expected but it still was work, but it’ll never be the hardest thing I’ll do in my life. There’s plenty of things I can think of that require much more effort. Regular cycling is tough, but like many things it gets easier the more you do it.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 10:40:56

Slow but I was also doing something else at the same time as writing. That wasn’t a good idea as, even though going slower should allow for something a bit tighter (I think), this is a bit sloppy.

Written at home.

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Akusmi: Sarinbuana

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

One listen for this one and it was quite easy to write. I’m not sure why as I was doing a fair bit of thinking about what it was that I was writing.

Anyway, I think this covers the song well enough. I think there are betters ways in which I could’ve described what was happening, but I also think this song is quite flexible in that regard.

Akusmi’s “Sarinbuana” is from Fleeting Future.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Percussion hangs in the air and echoes out both long and short. Woodwind buzzes here and there, and lingers and cuts short, or at least seeming does. A beat reveals itself, seemingly cutting into everything whilst creating a sense of relation. The woodwind buzzes a little less and starts following the beat. It moves up and down and elongates and cuts short, and more and more come in. More percussion and more woodwind and it almost seems like everything is getting in line with everything else.

Low bass hums along and now there’s a sense of floor as the instruments go marching along. They march along with a slight sense of the twisted but there’s a bit of joy and festiveness there too, and suddenly it all stops.

In this new space the buzzing is back, but it’s a bit more like a squeaking, sort of. Bits come and go and maybe it’s Morse code, and there are some sounds in the distant background, seemingly looking on, seemingly not. Maybe those sounds aren’t actually there, but the focus is on what the woodwind is doing, and maybe there’s some brass there too. Some become smooth and flow over space and others seem to bounce, and that percussion returns and everything is joining everything again. Everything is creating a form and now the bass is there, underscoring and taking a more active role.

This is a low and yet high dramatic form to take and it’s steady. Most of everything smooths out now as the beat reveals itself more. It’s all quiet and smooth; well, maybe not quiet but it’s not pushing for being loud. There’s a comfortable space here where everything feels lively, but it seems to flow too. Maybe it flows in a breeze or maybe it flows underwater, but it’s as gentle as it is steady, and there remains a liveliness.

There’s calm, even as the percussion seems to become louder and other sounds pull away, and it all flows and drifts and moves in stillness. It all suddenly stops once the percussion does, leaving a few instruments to drift away as the song ends.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 205: Sometimes you Walk Through Space

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

My gut has been churning and now it is no longer churning. Change is happening and perhaps all moves to a state of equilibrium or something else. I don’t know.

Anyway, I was hoping to write something more grounded this morning. I was hoping to capture a sense of the mundane and find myself returning to a place more firmly rooted in consistency, but I do not think that that is to be on this particular morning.

I think I’ve let myself slip quite a lot over the past year or so. I think there is more that I could be writing about and I could do a lot more writing that is, at the very least, of a good quality, but I don’t think I’m going that way. I think I’ve gone off the rails and instead of continuing on, I’ve just sat there after attempting to drive the wheels into the ground.

Of course I may not have been going anywhere at all, but that’s not for here. Maybe another post some time down the track, when I’ve worked more things out. Maybe for the last post here. Who knows at this point in time.

It has been a long morning but I think that might be a good thing. Waking up early, eventually going back to sleep, only to wake up after a few more hours of sleep. Gone for a walk, ate and now I’m here. Now I’m here once more wondering what it is that I want to convey and how to get it across. Of course I might not be thinking that at all and really I’m just stretching an idea so thin you can see through it, but I don’t want to admit that.

Sometimes you sit somewhere and you think about nothing but you don’t think about why you’re thinking about nothing. You stare off into space and thoughts drift around but you don’t recognise them, maybe. You’re elsewhere, detached and floating away. You’re lost in one particular thought but it’s so intense and you’re so lost in it that you don’t actually recognise it, and eventually you snap out of this and you end up coming careening back into a place of awareness. Maybe the idea of the thought lingers. Maybe it’s gone. Maybe you do remember it and you talk about it with someone, but often you just get back on with the getting on with things. Sometimes that’s just how it goes.

You walk through a space that is one you inhabit and people go on by and maybe you wonder as to where they themselves are going. Maybe you don’t. It’s possible that you’re just weaving around them as you need to get somewhere, but the leaves in the few trees that are around are pretty at this time of year and it’s a bit of a shame that there are fewer of them every year, it seems. The city would be nicer with more trees and maybe it would feel less uncaring and callous. The natural environment can seem callous in its own ways, but that’s how we perceive it at times. Nature just is and we recognise things in it that we associate with our own behaviour. That’s not to say that those things are not the same as ours, but just it’s what we recognise.

But it would be nicer to have more trees and so it’s a bit odd that they keep getting removed, but you go on and keep weaving around people as you need to get to the office at some point, but really you’re just wanting to walk and get around people and not have to worry about dealing with them as much as you are, and it’s sort of a nice day and you’ve got your coffee in hand so you just keep walking. Besides which, it’s a day off and so why are you hurrying to the office anyway?

There’s a park somewhere that people associate with the centre of the city and maybe it’s not, but that’s how it’s seen. It’s a place to relax but most people just walk through it, treating it as a shortcut of sorts to get to wherever they go. You do see people there though and some of them are relaxing and you remember how you used to do that once, and you liked how doing so seemed to cut into all the human traffic and seemed to remove it, or at least space it out, but now you’re part of it and you wonder if maybe you could relax a bit too, but you’re going on this meandering walk and so there’s little, if any time to relax. You still want to make good on time so you jsut keep on walking and you’ve got your coffee and the leaves are dropping from the branches and there still are quite a few trees here, but over time it’s feeling more and more like an isolated pocket.

It all used to feel like a park that was stretching lines outward, but the trees are disappearing and it’s a shame as the trees are pretty at this time of year and you’d want to see more of them. Maybe it’s time to move out away from the city and maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the hustle and bustle and eventually you do, but that’s all creeping toward wherever you go anyway. It’s all a temporary reprieve.

Perhaps you start zoning out whilst you’re walking and eventually you decide to just go home but you do so without realising, but the next thin you know you’re on the bus, or maybe the train and you’re reading a book and you don’t remember how you got there, but that’s because you were elsewhere and now something is doing the moving for you so you distract yourself for a bit as you’ve seen this view more times than you care to try and remember.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:20:84

To be honest I wasn’t expecting to write something of the mundane after starting off saying I wanted to but didn’t think it would happen. I think this bit of writing would be much better had I written the whole thing about just walking and sitting and all that, but I’m still happy with the result. It all came out with little difficulty and that’s nice.

Written at home.

 

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1288: Not as short as I’d hoped

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Alright so I’m going to try and get a bit of writing done in a short amount of time. I’m quite cold but I’m going to try and do it anyway. Maybe it will help me warm up. It might not, but it might.

Now the thing is I’m not sure as to where I can go from here. I make these proclamations of the small variety and then I find myself stuck. I don’t know if I should go here or there and I don’t know if I can really achieve what it is that I’ve set out to achieve. Of course I should try, however, as that is much better than not trying.

Well, doing something more productive is better but I’m going for the next best thing.

So in a sense I’m now stumbling through a bit of writing but I’m getting there. This isn’t working as well as I’d hoped but maybe it is. Maybe I am warming up a bit and through that warming I am getting better and creating these lengthy sentences; at least for the duration of this bit of writing. Maybe I won’t be better at doing this in about twenty minutes when I inevitably go back to being cold, but you never know with these things.

Or you do.

Or you do and don’t at the same time and then you need to work out things about how to go about doing the thing that you’re doing at that particularly point in time as you know not anymore and you’ve spent far too much of your life living in a miasma of confusion and deceit and suddenly all has been revealed and it was just you the whole time, trying to work out where your head had floated off to. It was always on your shoulders and you just didn’t bother to check, and that will teach you a valuable lesson about making sure that all is good and all is fine before you step out of wherever it is that you live next time.

Anyway, before all that there are things to take into consideration and if you don’t do that, then who are you? Who are you to claim that you truly know what is best and better than all?

Where am I going with this?

So I don’t know what it is that I’m going to say with this bit of writing, but it’s a different kind of not knowing this time as I know less than usual. Not too worried, but maybe I am not worried enough. Maybe there is a lot of worry I need to take care of so as to be able to trust in what I’m saying, even if I choose to deny it later due to receiving new information that reveals a whole bunch of things, and then some. Maybe this is something that I need to truly and utterly think about so hard that I shake the very foundations I have.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:40:40

This feels like a mess. The idea of looking over it just makes me want to not. To be fair, that’s a reaction I have to a lot of the writing I do, but I’m more hesitant than usual with this one.

Written at home.

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Thalasseus bergii

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Also known as greater crested tern and (from what a friend told me) silver tern.
This was a lucky shot in that I was able to get quite close to the tern without it flying off. I wonder if maybe it had been injured, or if it just didn’t feel like leaving.

I hope you enjoy

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Akusmi: Fleeting Future

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

One listen and a lot of it came easy.
I’m not sure why but it just did. Not a great writing but I feel it works well enough. There’s a sense of the song here and the words keep moving with it in a sense. I do feel this would be better if I didn’t start getting into critical mode, but otherwise I think this is fine.

Akusmi’s “Fleeting Future” is from Fleeting Future.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Seemingly bouncing out a rhythm, a sound, possibly a woodwind jauntily plays out. Something in the background appears and sort of enhances it, and then there’s more build. The space is being filled with a light step, and sort of a fluttering of sorts.

There’s a joyous sense to it all… at least thus far.

More details come in and with that more a sense of liveliness. The sounds are congregating and as they do they create form and direction, and it’s all tight and in a sense calculated but it doesn’t feel rigid. There’s a nice sense of play going on.

A slight low dip of sorts as new sounds dance their way into view. A space is made in the group for them to come in and as they do the lightness is kept, but now a sense of the emotively dramatic also comes in. More building and bass, or at least something bass-like underscores whilst a melancholic woodwind reaches out. Maybe it’s not melancholic but rather reaching into an uncertainty and looking to expand outward whilst expressing the grandness and beauty of the land. It seems to rush and it feels a bit like a loss and a cheapening of what came before, but it’s nice. It’s an easy reach but it’s nice.

The sounds seemingly build without building and all flows along. All carries upon it that growing intensity and it was building, but it releases through stopping; it suddenly dissipates and leaves some sounds to linger in the stillness. They float and drift away, and all grows quiet as the song ends.

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Cliff In Sunlight

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

I remember thinking that this formation looked interesting to me, but I’m not entirely sure why I found it interesting. I think it mostly has to do with the shape. Anyway, I like how this turned out in monochrome as I think the contrast with the shadows is quite nice.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. 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.

A lot of what people are submitting will likely end up here.

I hope you enjoy.

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Bark Psychosis: Finger Spit

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

One listen for this one.

I put off writing about this song for a while and I’m not sure as to why. I think fatigue played a large role, but I can’t say for certain. Anyway, I like what I wrote here, though I feel this would work better had I focused more on the atmosphere.

Bark Psychosis’ “Finger Spit” is from Hex.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Outward notes on a guitar play for a moment, seemingly taught. A faint idea of percussion fills the space between the guitar’s moments. Eventually keys come in along with hushed vocals. It is all soft, but soon the guitar starts building, growing louder and the vocals become more urgent, and they pull away. They return, joined by bass and pull away once more.

A return to when the vocals first came in, or at least a strong idea of it. Bass is here, carrying a thickness in clarity. The percussion now becomes more prominent, but it could not be there. It’s not long before that build and urgency comes back, but it is only a brief reappearance.

In the space now the percussion remains quiet and seemingly circling. Bass steps carefully and only in certain moments as the keys seemingly rise and fall, and perhaps it is all a pulse. Eventually rhythm becomes clearer and during this a few words are uttered as the bass joins the percussion in a steadiness whilst the keys and guitar roar and rage against each other, in unison.

A sudden space for gentleness, almost a breather though once more the build and urgency returns, though with a slight bit more percussion matching. It’s as though a return to memory, or statement, or perhaps it’s a reinforcing of expressiveness. In the following space the percussion steadily shuffles and bass murmurs here and there, and it’s a quiet and still air that holds.

Guitar returns once more and it stays low, and vocals remain hushed and brief. Sounds linger in the quiet and gradually fade out, though it is almost as though they were never there in the first place. They fade out and the song ends.

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A Bit of Rock and Some Vegetation

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Just a photo of some plants and a bit of rock. Maybe it’s more than one rock. Not sure.

I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1287: Wondering What to Write

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

I’m sitting here, staring into space, wondering as to what it is that I should write.
The last few weeks have been pretty intense but it has been a good intense. Maybe not the best, but it has been good and good is better than bad, but now I’m here and despite my strong desire tow rite I can’t think of anything that I could put to digital paper.

Of course I’m writing this but this is just a stretch. This is just something to help buy some time, or at least spend some time being productive and I’m not doing too well at that, but I have to keep going. I have to keep on trying.

Currently I’m wondering if I’ve lost the club event photography job I managed to land. Sent through the latest batch, was asked to send them through again but unedited and that’s always a concern. I guess I’ll just have to see what happens from here. Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe not.

So that sums everything up. Other than that it has just been a lot of doing things and trying to get out of my job and… yeah. Now I’m here and I’m trying to think of some words to provide some sort of clarity and expression that makes everything gain some sort of poignancy but I’ve got nothing. I’m just floating here, hoping for the best but nothing comes to mind and so I’m just floating along, but really I’m sitting and I’ve got nothing.

Perhaps trying to fill this desire to write was the wrong move. Perhaps I should’ve remained sitting in silence, stewing on what I could’ve done better and all that stuff. Perhaps that would’ve been the smarter approach. However, I’m here now and I’m doing this and it’s too late to turn back, though maybe it isn’t, though maybe it is. Who is to say?

I’m struggling at this point and perhaps it is the way that I’m sitting here which I’ve realised is not conducive to getting some writing done. It was awkward but now I’ve fixed myself up and so I can gallop to the end of this, but there still remains and so on and so forth and you get the idea.

I need to write but I need to do better in writing and maybe I’ve just hit a wall again in everything. I don’t know and I hope I haven’t but I cannot rule out the possibility that I have, as that is a very real possibility. I am tired and I want to go lie in bed at rest, but I’ve started this and so it is time to finish this and I am getting there, but I will be thinking about stuff and I will be hoping to improve and… yeah. What else is there to say?

I guess I could talk about how I’m in a bit of pain but that’s as dull as everything else, so I won’t.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:12:93

It was a struggle to write this. Had I done so about three hours earlier it would’ve been much less so, but it also would’ve been quite different.

Written at home.

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