Akihiko Narita: Pokke Village Theme

I felt that this was a little difficult to write about as I kind of hit a wall as I was writing.
I think that’s why this doesn’t really talk about the song much outside of imagery, but even working out the way forward with that imagery was difficult. Part of it was that I was trying to get forward an image of the village the song represents, but I was also feeling that that wasn’t necessarily the best thing to do. Not sure if that means the result is worthwhile, but I’m glad that something came forward.

Akihiko Narita’s (成田 暁彦) “Pokke Village Theme” (“ポッケ村のテーマ”) is from Monster Hunter Hunting Music Collection ~3rd Anniversary Commemorative Best Track~, an album comprised of compositions from Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter Dos, Monster Hunter Freedom (and by extension Monster Hunter G) and Monster Hunter Freedom 2.

I hope you enjoy.

Sounds stir in a quiet and calm. A new day arrives and the light is out and the sounds remain gentle. They remain soft. Percussion guides but stays simple and space remains throughout. Woodwind moves on through and explores and looks around, and soon strings lightly underscore as the scenery remains small and peaceful.

Seemingly things build a little more but keeps things soft and easy, and the peace remains. It almost is a questioning; perhaps it is apprehension to journeying out, but it is accepted and so a return to the start comes forward.

Space and simplicity remain and keep things going forward and even though there is a quietness and perhaps a relaxation, there still is a business. There still remain things to do and so through the sounds actions go ahead.

Once more that questioning returns and once more it carries the acceptance, and so all seem to settle into place and make sense, and soon the sounds fade away as they’re moved away from and the song ends.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1106: From one Chair to Another

Alright, now this time I will churn this out as quickly as I can.

Today is now a day of cramming. There still will be relaxation but I’m gonna spew out as much as I can. I need to go on an adventure and it is an adventure of tedium that I embrace. Need to embrace it so that I can face the thing that I need to face and there will be a destiny of some sort.

The adventure will feature getting off this chair and walking to another one where I will sit and read for a while. It will be as intense as it will be majestic. My pants… cleanish., My shirt… cleanish. My attitude…. somewhere. There will be looking and searching and I will be as equipped as I need to be.

Somewhere along the whole thing I will face challenges. These challenges will take forms that I am not familiar with but they will be surmountable. I will surmount them and in surmounting them I will be victorious. I will learn about myself and through that I will find a new way forward. There is no way forward without moving forward though so I need to make sure that I keep on moving forward.

Maybe I will move backward but this will only be so that I can keep on moving forward. There will be shuffling and maybe a step of sorts.

I don’t know what it is that I will do when I reach the conclusion of this journey, but I know that along the way I will have learned many a thing. I will have united the nations of this house and under one banner there will be success and growth and hopefully improvement for all. Every person will be entitled to a fish and they may need to look after that fish. There will be restoration of a sorts.

There may even be the enjoyment of the liquids.

Maybe some solid too, but that is neither here not there.

So I think that soon I will need to get on with this, but I don’t know if it’s something that I will get on with now. Maybe I’ll do it later. I don’t feel like getting up too much, but I will have to eventually.

Now that I think about it, the journey’s destination will change. It will now be to the bathroom and it will be in serving the purpose of going to the toilet, and not necessarily in the way that makes sense. There will be trials and tribulations and there may even be sacrifice, but there will be success, but at what cost?

Who knows how I will be changed by the end of it. I may not even be the same person anymore, but there will be things that I saw and in seeing them I bore my soul and became fragile, and I changed, and so I would have to move on and journey to somewhere else.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 04:58:80

I wanted to write something silly and I did.
It hurt one of my wrists and was not worth the effort.

Written at home.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One Thousand Word Challenge 177: Rambling About Photography

It has been a day. It has been a day and now I am here and I’m going to try and mash this out as quickly as possible. I don’t know as to why I keep on trying to do this, but I feel a desire to do the thing and so I’m doing the thing.

Sometimes a relaxed time is a good time and sometimes it is a bad time. In this particular instance it is an alright time. There isn’t much happening, but I’m feeling relaxed and I’m feeling at ease. Maybe the stress will hit later; it is difficult to tell at this particular juncture and I probably don’t care as much as I should. I don’t know.

The sky is clear and in that clarity there is something else to see; a lot of blue. That’s not what I want to see, however. I want to see more clouds as I want to photograph clouds at the moment. I don’t know why but I feel compelled to. I feel compelled to and I feel a desire to enjoy the music that I’m listening to at the present moment. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do want to and so in that want I shall… enjoy the music and keep on hoping some clouds drift on over.

I think that photography is a great thing to participate in, but I guess that’s pretty obvious. However, I still feel that sometimes it is something that needs to be stated. It’s a form of creation and it’s always good to create. I think, even if it is something that you think you are not good at doing (or “know), it’s still something that should be done. It helps train up certain skills and ways of going about things, and it’s also a way to extend oneself often in a way that is positive, though of course sometimes the extension is of external rather than internal factors, but that’s not something I want to get into at the present moment. I just want to write about doing things and getting a sense of the process through doing said things.

Photography is great. You can take a camera to so many places without issue and you can think about how to frame things and what ways you can improve on scenes you’ve shot before. You can think about form and function and, more importantly, you think about light and how it falls upon things. You think about how you can work with that light to show things that may or may not be interesting. Sometimes you paint something fascinating; sometimes you paint something mundane, but you end up capturing something if you make use of photography as a form of creation.

Sometimes you have to be patient, but that of course only invites the option of taking a book with or, or perhaps something else that may help pass the time, though of course this is dependent on how focused you  have to be on the capturing of whatever it is that you are trying to capture. Maybe you won’t have the option and you’ll need to spend a lot of time focusing so as to make sure you won’t miss your chance. Maybe you’ll be doing long exposures and so having something else with you becomes more suitable.

Maybe you’ll be shooting an event and so there becomes no room to do anything other than shoot, depending on the event of course.

Maybe you’re just out having fun and you’re just doing photography because you enjoy engaging in the process of photography.

I’ve been doing photography for a long time, but it didn’t really kick off until I had a proper camera. I think at this stage it has been somewhere around twenty-one years since I started, and it has been around eleven years since I bought my first proper camera. From there I became quite active in what I was photographing. However, it wasn’t until Japan until I started really pushing outward.

When I went to Japan almost seven years ago I took a lot of photos. I did a lot of wandering and so it was easy for me to go a bit overboard. When I came back I noticed that I had taken a larger amount of photos I thought were good than I’d normally would. From there I started pushing myself a bit more. I was growing before then and feeling my way around things, but from there the idea of pursuing photography in a more professional capacity became something that was more than just an idea I had. However, I still didn’t actively pursue such a thing until soon before getting a better camera which was around four years ago now.

I’m still not quite professional, but I’m getting there. That said, whilst being in a position where photography was generating a regular and semi-stable income is a main goal, it’s not necessarily the main reason as to why I do photography.

Much like music, writing and drawing, I do photography as I love photography. I love the process and I appreciate how it makes me think about and interact with that which is around me. It develops skills and challenges me to work toward being better in a few different ways, and it’s something from which I keep on learning.

There are times when I’ve thought I’ve taken the best photo I’ll ever take. A few years later I’ll see that photo again and realise that I’ve gotten much better. I still like the photos I took in Japan,but I can see how I could improve on them, or at least look at those things I photographed in a different way and see how that changes things. It’s appreciable to know that there still is a long way to go, and hopefully it remains that way. I don’t know if I’d ever become a master because there’s just so much to learn about and absorb.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 15:53:37

Initially I was trying to get this out as quickly as possible. When I started writing about photography I slowed down and I feel that that was a massive benefit to the text as a whole.

This isn’t a good bit of writing by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel it gets something across a lot more effectively than my usual attempts.

Written at home.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Swan Preens

So I’m pretty sure this swan is doing the preening thing.

Whilst not the most clear in terms of detail, I really like the swan’s form in this one.
It seems kind of odd, but it also makes sense.

I hope you enjoy.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1105: Meaningless Piffle

It’s cold but I’m going to do my best to get this done as soon work starts and I need to do the work in order to earn the money in order to keep going on with things.

I sit here and I bang away at the keyboard. I express things but I don’t express them in a way that make sense. Sometimes I wonder if the clouds drifting on by are representative of my thoughts floating away as I narrow down on one singular thing. Of course, there is no guarantee of this and I’m just projecting something onto an external force that exists so as to be able to create some sort of relation so as to be able to make things more simple to explain in some manner, but at the end of the day it all ends up meaningless piffle.

That is to say that I’m using a lot of words to say very little, but perhaps that says a lot about something that I am yet to understand.

Anyway, I think that now in expressing that I can appreciate the music that is swirling around the room, though it isn’t really as it is just coming out of the speakers on my desk and it is quiet for it is not yet time to be loud with things. That will come later so for now it remains soft and quiet and gentle which is kind of a contrast as the sounds that are coming out of the speakers on my desk suggest something a bit more menacing and eerie and uncomfortable. They suggest a dread, albeit a gentle one due to the volume being low.

The sun filters onto my desk and that is filtering through a window. It creates a sense of morning as it currently is morning. It also creates a sense of waking up and in that waking up it is morning (though some people wake at night due to various reasons) and as such it is a time to take action and get things done before there is no longer any time to get things done. Such is the way of things, I suppose.

I think I’ve stopped throwing things at the wall and now I’m just throwi0ng myself at the wall to see if I stick. Sure, it might be a bit drastic, but sometimes that is the way that things go. Sometimes you just keep on going with things and eventually you break through, but I think the wall might be too thick. As such, it might just be better to stop, but I cannot stop as I’m currently on a role and in that role I have to keep on rolling so as to get whatever it is that I’m trying to get across across.

Maybe that won’t happen today, but at least the gentle breeze outside rustles the leaves as the branches sway and that is something nice.

That also has nothing to do with this writing.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 04:44:12

So I knocked this out this morning before work started and then work started.
It was an intense day.

When I started this bit of writing the only aim I had in mind was to finish as quickly as possible. I think that, had I not done so, the result would’ve been better. Oh well.

Written at home.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Junya Nakano: Luca

Two listens for this one.

I stumbled during the first listen and couldn’t get my footing back so I waited for the song to finish. I then resumed writing and I’m not sure as to what I was trying to get across. I think feel, but I’m not sure.

Junya Nakano’s (仲野順也) “Luca” (“ルカ”) is from Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Final Fantasy X. The soundtrack was composed by Nakano, Masashi Hamauzu (浜渦 正志) and Nobuo Uematsu (植松 伸夫).

I hope you enjoy.

Gentle sounds lap at shorelines and structures whilst a sunny sky hangs on above. Soft percussion comes in and joins the soft sounds. Bass joins and plays relaxed whilst the percussion becomes livelier whilst keeping itself gentle. All is flowing with ease and there seems to be a sense of peace in the air.

Soon a shift; something gently dots away whilst the instruments seem to step upward and allow more space. There’s a firmness in the bass countered by something a bit more soft, but it melds well and it’s a lively spike without an aggressive attack.

The sounds loop back to where they started and once more ride and move through, keeping things feeling loose and easy, and once more they return to their shift with a liveliness. It’s smooth and easy, but soon something new comes in and it spreads out more of the calm. It’s lower, and gentler, almost as though a coolness has settled whilst shade spreads outward across a large place, but it doesn’t last long and soon a return to how the song started comes in as it fades out and the song ends.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1104: Thinking the Thoughts That I Think

Day ticks away and so I’m going to try and get this done in under four minutes. It is something that I have not done in a while and it probably is a bad idea, but I still think it is something that I want to try and get done because it actually is something that I want to try and get done so I am going to try and do it.

I need to think about the things that I write and be more conscious of what it is that I’m putting out into the world. A lot of this is about the tedium of boredom and that isn’t always a bad thing, but surely there are better things that I can write about. Surely I can use what gift I have and write about things that are more worthwhile. I think about this sometimes and right now it is something that I am thinking of.

I think of a lot of things and sometimes I wonder if any of the thoughts that I am entertaining are worth entertaining. I imagine that, due to my thinking the thoughts that I think, I think that they are worth entertaining to some degree, but perhaps they really aren’t and all that I am doing is deluding myself about what it is that is and is not worth thinking about. Maybe I need to change the way I think about things and the way that I think in directions of some sort, but maybe I do not. It is something that is probably worth thinking about, but maybe not today.

Maybe later I will think about these things some more. I guess that sometimes that is the way that thinking goes. Sometimes you don’t want to think and sometimes you think that you’ll think about some things a bit later than you normally would. Sometimes you want your brain to switch off and sometimes you don’t. There are many things here that I am blaring out right now, and yet I say very little about anything, if I do indeed say anything at all. However, that is not something that I want to entertain right now.

No, what I want to do is get to the end of this and then when I am at the end of this I can get on with whatever it is that I was getting on with, which was a whole lot of being lazy and a whole lot of not much at all. Sometimes that’s just the way that things go and today is one of those days. It is not a day of productivity but I still should try and make the most of it, if there is indeed anything close to the most to make of it at all. However, that is not something that I’ll worry about right now.

I think that sometimes I try these things and they don’t work. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t, but sometimes that’s okay.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 04:22:62

I’m happy with the speed and I think I may have been onto something somewhere in all of this. However, I know I dropped the ball and moved away from that something, so… yeah.

Written at home.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Birds on Bare Branches

Birds in a tree from what I can see.

I’ve taken a photo of this tree before but I can’t see if I’ve shared said photo here.
Maybe I haven’t.

Anyway, there’s a bit of space in this photo and I think that has more to do with my like of space than it does anything else. It has a way of framing things.

Obviously there’s only part of the tree visible and it’s probably easy to imagine what the rest of it looks like. However, I feel that here what’s outside of the frame almost doesn’t exist. In a literal sense what’s outside of the frame doesn’t exist, though it remains important, but here I just feel as though the image almost suggests that the rest of the tree doesn’t exist.

I don’t think I’m getting across what I want to get across in a clear way.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week.
I suggest checking out Leanne’s photography, as well as checking out what other people submit.

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

I hope you enjoy.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1103: Change

Less tired. Being less tired is good. It is an improvement and I like feeling improved.

I went for a walk this morning and I saw the passing of time. Places that were once smaller are now bigger and look very different, and some parts of the area around me I don’t recognise as being something I recognsise. Sure, they still are in the same suburb, but these are buildings that no longer fit an area that I have known for many years.

Things change and change is inevitable, but we need to think about what we do and do not affect, and who we leave behind when change comes. Change should not exclude, and gainperhaps it should not also impact the feel of an area. It should be inclusive and expansive, and it should lift us up to a better position. Change should allow people to feel safe and comfortable and allow a view of the sky for all and not just some. When we look at the sky we should not be seeing buildings enclosing around us from all sides.

I think about change and how it seems to push people away from an area; mostly those who can no longer afford to live in an area, but of course there are others who are pushed out too and they should not be excluded.

If all we’re doing is changing things for the pursuit of personal gain, are we really offering anything other than a superficial gesture?

I think about change… not that much, actually, but I’m thinking about it right now. I’m thinking about its existence and how it leads to a lot of things. I’m thinking about how the promise of change can lead to a lot of hope and end with a great deal of disappointment, and I think about how change often is wielded callously, and that worries me. However, at the present moment I am unable to do anything about that. Maybe soon I will be able to, but right now is not a time when I can do much of anything.

Anyway, I think I’ve said all I can about the issue. This form of writing doesn’t really allow for a great exploration of the subject, but I do worry about how change can makes things far too expensive for people to be able to function in a healthy manner. I worry about how history and shape and form can get erased for structures that often appear tacky and tasteless, though I also imagine that this is a complaint a lot of generations and people have.

Change should also incorporate better protection and strengthening of animal habitat and ecosystems, or at least facilitate their ongoing stability.

Really though, change should be focused more on habitat restoration and protection of ecosystems, as well as their further incorporation into urban environments over building more buildings unless those buildings also facilitate restoration and protection, but that’s another thing for another day. For now, that’s all.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:52:88

Slow speed. Or fast. I don’t know right now.

I feel as though this is too vague and also a bit unfocused. Maybe I should come back to this at some point in the future and flesh it out.

Written at home.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Bit of Plant

This is the same dusky moorhen (Gallinula tenebrosa) as seen here. It spent a bit of time trying to take this bit of plant that, whilst appearing dead, remained firmly attached. Eventually it left with a twig.

This is my submission into the two hundredth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.
The theme for this one is “Every Little Thing“.

I feel this one counts as the bird was relatively small.

The host of the Lens-Artists challenges cycles weekly between the following people:

Week 1 – Patti

Week 2 – Ann-Christine aka Leya

Week 3 – Amy

Week 4 – Tina

This year three people are joining the Lens-Artists team:

John Steiner of Journeys with Johnbo

Sofia Alves of  Photographias

Anne Sandler of Slow Shutter Speed

As such the above hosting order is likely to change.

This one is curated by Amy. The next one is curated by Leya.

I recommend participating in the challenges. They’re enjoyable and allow room for interpretation of the theme without straying too far. If you don’t participate, then I recommend that you at least check out what others of the Lens-Artists community are submitting.

I hope you enjoy.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments