One Thousand Word Challenge 231: Rambled Thoughts

Got a bit of work to do today so I’m gonna churn. I say that a lot, but I am churning at the moment. Got cleaning, got mowing, got other stuff; now churning. Now churning and getting a lot of words out and flying. Watching the breeze move the trees. How moving.

It’s a wild world out there and it’s full of the most boring shit you could ever imagine. It’s full of excitement, too. It’s full of lots of stuff you could see in one lifetime, and plenty you won’t. You gotta get out there to find out what you will and will not see. So is the way of things and so is the way it goes. And so on and so forth, and you get the idea.

What an introduction.

But I can see a breeze and I know it’s warm outside and there’s not much of anything I can do about that. I just need to keep on going and find where the everything lies. Find where everything sits and find where, among all the crap, the diamonds lie. Then I will discard the diamonds and admire the mud. You know; the way it goes here, because there is only one way to be about things and I will not hear any other way offered as that’s not what I want to indulge in. Too many other things I need to indulge.

I need to indulge my desire to produce silly fiction, and maybe some good fiction, too. I need to engage in a lot of things and I need to find nothingness and find how it shapes everything and nothing, and then I need to go from there. That seems like a bad idea. Could be a good idea. Only one way to find out.

I don’t want to think about the amount of words I’ve written as of yet, and I don’t know why I’m writing this. I guess what I’m writing is a bunch of disconnected thoughts again. How true to life and how true to this space. I shall keep on going, though I feel that it si not good as I should be more responsible. No wait, I shouldn’t; I made this time for myself and I’m gonna capitalise upon it. That’s what I’m gonna do as that’s what I need to do. Or I don’t, but I should.

I can feel that I am exhausted. I need more rest and rest will come. It won’t come right now, but it will come. Also, I’d much prefer to watch the breeze than write right now, but I also know that if I stop writing I won’t watch the breeze. I will be compelled into indecision and that’s not what I want right now. Right now I just want to force myself through what I am doing and then get on with the getting on. Get on with life and living, and get on with finding my way to wherever I may be. I guess where I will be is outside, in the car, giving the inside of the car a good clean whilst outside.

It’s a good day to do this though I should’ve started earlier. Still, I’m making progress. I’m making tracks. This is one step and there will be a few more to come, hopefully. Maybe today is the day where I churn everything out. I wonder. Maybe this will be when everything starts properly, and then once that is done and is the case, I’ll be good. I’ll be fine and I’ll just produce so much rubbish that I will finally feel like I am celebrating the end of this space. Maybe that’s what I need to do. Maybe that is what I will do.

Don’t think I’ll be able to keep it up, but I’ll try.

Or I won’t.

New sentence.

The people across the road will probably start blasting music soon. Don’t want them to, but they will. They do it here and there and it is aggravating, but there’s not much I can do about it. I could go over and tell them not to, or rather, ask them not to, and maybe they would actually stop. Unfortunately I have my doubts. This, however, does not matter. There are so many other, more important and pressing things to worry about and I’m gonna worry about those and not this. I don’t need to worry about this right now. It’s not even happening.

Maybe I could blast my music back at them. I could do that. Would be incredibly shitty of me, however, to do so, and so I don’t think I will do that. Besides which, there are so many other, more important things to worry about, that are also pressing, and I definitely did not say this a few sentences ago.

I think I should stop and get to it. I should get to the work of the house and the maintenance of the yard. I should find the brow on my sweat annoying and desire to stay fresh and refreshed, and that’s not gonna happen today. Too much nothing to get through and too much everything to get through. Who has time top consider the sweat of their brow when they are playing the eternal game of catching up to being merely a few months behind rather than a few years? Not me, that’s for sure.

I guess, however, in saying this, I know that being productive is good. Balance, balance, and not balancing. Finding balance; striking balance. Getting through things one step at a time, continuing on and then going on from there. That’s what I need to do. I need to get on with my life and that means chores need doing, so I’m gonna do them. Don’t wanna, but gotta. The way it all goes and it’s not really the worst thing in the world, despite my protesting.

So there was a point I was gonna make, but I forgot.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 10:37:30

Good speed; crap writing.

Written at home.

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Framing the Face

This is another reference photo that turned out well enough to share. I was thinking about trying to get form in what I hoped would be an interesting way, and I think I did, but this one I’m not much a fan of. I like the form. I like the angularity in my arms and I like that my face is in shadow. It feels a little too “cool” to me, if that makes sense. Very unintentionally, but it feels like it’s touching a little on mysticism in a shallow way, or just the idea of some badass. However, people have told me they like it and I do like it, and it is just a reference photo, so I figure it’s worth sharing a bit more than I have.

This is my submission into the three hundred-and-seventy-eighth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Last Chance“.

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

Tina

Patti

Ann-Christine aka Leya

John Steiner

Sofia Alves

Anne Sandler

Egídio

Ritva

Beth

This one is curated by everyone. The next one is curated by everyone when they return on Jan 3rd (4th in some countries) from a hard-earned break.

I recommend joining the community and participating in the challenges. They’re pretty straightforward, allow room for interpretation, and provide a good way to think about photography in general. If not, however, then at the very least you should check out what others submit to the challenges.

I hope you enjoy.

 

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Time Wasted

Given myself a little bit of time to churn out a number of words. Bad idea to do at this juncture in my life as it causes little else other than strain in my writing. And everything else, really. So what do I say to that? Where do I go from here?

I go to the writing and I write and churn and churn some more. And then once done churning, I churn some more. All churning, all the time. Get the words written; get the words done. Get everything in an order that makes as sense as it does, much.

I could be editing right now. I could be editing essays and reviews and a bunch of other things that I need to work on. I could be doing that and I’m not and that’s on me. Instead I’m doing this, which right now feels like a waste of time. Still, it’s an enjoyable waste of time and that’s the main thing, really. Or is it?

There are so many ways in which we waste time and in doing so, time is wasted. However, what actually counts as time wasted? A life lived is still a life lived, even if it is between frames. That’s okay. Sometimes you just burn out and need rest, and sometimes you get distracted by whatever it is around you. That is okay. I need to tell myself this. I need to tell myself that it’s okay to not be as productive as I would like, and that I can rest here and there. I don’t tell myself that nearly enough. Not a good move on my part. It happens.

So what do I say from here? I’ve said what I feel I need to say. I’ve written plenty about wasting time. I don’t need to say more. I need to not drag this out further than I already am. I am wasting more time. I need to get on with the getting of the on and move toward wherever and whenever I do that I need to make sure that I get there in as may pieces as necessary.

Okay. Now I’m feeling something push its way out of me, and it certainly isn’t gas. That… could be a good thing? I don’t know. I feel it and it is coming and I feel it rising out of me and it is coming to you in the form of text as represented by images known as letters that form structures and on a screen of the digital variety.

Imagine writing all of this out by hand. No thank you.

Where was I? Oh right, so you know when you’re on a couch in a room lit not as bright as it could be, and the walls are weatherboard and the joint smoke curls around the space, and you’re not down for it, but because you’re at a moment in your life where you don’t give enough of a shit, you partake anyway? Yeah, that was a good time. Was a bad time, too, but it was a good time. Laughed about pointless shit and didn’t get on with much of anything. Got food delivered from a restaurant that was around fifty metres away. This was a good few years ago now and they’d always get a little confused because we were so close, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. It was a good time and a bad time, and that room had a dinginess to it, but it was clean.

The day me and my housemates moved in, the place was crawling with roaches. Had to bomb it before we could actually move in. Had to wait around for one housemate to disappear and return as they didn’t want us moving stuff in before then, for some reason. Who knows. Who cares at this point.

Somewhere around then I’d stumbled upon The Mark of Cain and a few other things, and I was with the ex that broke up with me, which helped get me moving on writing again, all those years ago. I was stressed and already not wanting to live with the people I was living with, but I hung on as I’d had not much of anywhere else to go. It was a tough time. These people cost me a place I wanted to live in and cared about. It wasn’t the best of places, but it was a place I liked.

Since moving out of home I’ve lived in eleven places. Ten, depending on if you don’t count a short stint at Ewe and Anna’s place. But that’s a lot, and I’ve collected a lot of time spent doing very little. A lot of time wasted. A lot of time depressed and empty and full and stressed out, and I wonder if, perhaps, if any of that has to do with the likelihood that I have ADHD or not. I think about it, but I try not to think about it too much. Need more money before I can go through the diagnosis process as it’s a bit expensive here. Probably expensive in a lot of places to do this as an adult. But I don’t know. I don;t know much about that stuff; I just know that I feel more functional when I’m looking after myself, though my procrastination still reigns supreme. Just not as supreme as when I am not tired and all that stuff.

But yeah; this place had cockroaches and we bombed them and then we still had cockroaches. You’d get food and have it in your room and they’d gradually start coming out of the walls wherever they could find space and you’d try to deal with them however you could. Once food was gone they’d usually disappear. It was an unpleasant house to live in, but it was a pleasant one at the same time. The kind of place where you become a little more tolerant of housemate behaviour, because you’re united in your loathing of the real estate you’re renting from. You tolerate housemates being shitty at you because of rent reminders coming through because of your pay not aligning with the time the rent is required. You tolerate them being angry at you despite your telling them that it’s fine, and you accept their apologies when you get a letter from the real estate showing that, yes, it doesn’t matter so long as the rent is paid.

It was a place where I tolerated a housemate coming home from work and losing their shit over not being able to find where their weed was, and when they finally found it, calming right down and acting as though nothing happened. It was a heated place; a heavy place, where little in the way of creativity was done. It was a place of disaffected existing and emptiness, where days sort of blended into each other, and little changed. A lot of wasted time.

But some of it was good. A lot of it was definitely bad, and like anything in my past, something I am quite happy to never revisit, but some of the time there that was wasted, some of it was good.

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To the Quad

Today is a bit of a lost day, so just a photo and nothing more.

I took this a good few weeks ago. I should’ve accounted better for the light as the shadows are a bit too strong, but otherwise I like how this turned out. Probably too busy, but there’s a pleasantness that appeals to me. Maybe it’s the sense of quiet.

I hope you enjoy.

 

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Drifting Above Buildings

I was trying to capture a sense of drift and massiveness in the clouds. I feel I got the drift well enough, but the massiveness not so much. Still, there’s a certain looming that’s there. Sort of aids to a sensation that maybe Sydney CBD isn’t that big.

Having so few buildings in frame probably suggests that the most. Realistically, this could be so many places, but it’s not. It’s still firmly within Sydney.

This is my submission into the three hundred-and-seventy-seventh Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Holiday Fun“. I feel this photo fits as part of holiday fun can just be looking at the sky, relaxing a little.

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

Tina

Patti

Ann-Christine aka Leya

John Steiner

Sofia Alves

Anne Sandler

Egídio

Ritva

Beth

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

I recommend joining the community and participating in the challenges. They’re pretty straightforward, allow room for interpretation, and provide a good way to think about photography in general. If not, however, then at the very least you should check out what others submit to the challenges.

I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1550: Want Sleep

Sleep. Sleep is what I want. Sleep is what I won’t get. Gotta work through the rest of the day. Not long left, but I want sleep. I crave sleep. I desire sleep. Sleep is what I desire, and perhaps because of that, I am… on fire?

So anyway, lack of sleep. Windy outside. Wind is great, should’ve done my washing earlier. Oh well. There’s always another day. It was meant to be raining right now, too. It’s not.

Today is a day of slow thoughts. Need to take advantage of that, I think. Need to do a few things and definitely need to take advantage of that. Try and speed up. Try and work up a sweat whilst thinking. Try and get some things done that normally I would not do. Try a few things, too. Who knows. I know I’ll try something.

I will try and go fast and I will race the wind. I will type so fast that my legs will spring into action and I’ll just charge on to wherever. I’m really tired and this is a bad idea, but somehow it will happen. Somehow it will happen and everything will be fine. There will be no issues whatsoever. I know this to be true because it is true. Totally, utterly true. Nothing wrong at all, and definitely nothing that relies heavily on the imagination. At all. Ever. EVER.

So I’m gonna go fast. I will ride the breeze and I will let it carry me to somewhere, and then I will start outpacing it. I will outrun it and I will run so fast that the sound barrier will not have enough time to know that it has been broken. There will be no sound of the sound barrier being broken. There just won’t. Somehow.

In saying all of this, I will probably look for somewhere comfy to sit, so I need to make sure I keep my thoughts slow. Or rather, they need to be quick, but I need to relax. They can seem slow, or something.

What am I even saying? This makes little sense. I need to sit down. I need to stand up and then sit down again because I can’t believe how silly this all is. It’s terrible.

There are people who died and created masterful works; works that will likely never be read by anyone until they are discovered many, MANY years after their passing. I am filling the world with this pointless drivel. There’s nothing here. There’s no substance and I’m still working on it. I need to stop. I need to do something else for the day. I need to do my job. I need to do that and get on with it, and I am still writing this.

I know I can stop, but I need to go faster than the wind before I do, but that’s gonna take a while. That’ll require a lot of training or something and even then, there’s no guarantee.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:51:86

The lack of sleep was really getting to me at the point I wrote this, though I wasn’t feeling as tired as I am. I think it comes through quite strongly, however. The random flight of fancy followed by the crash; it’s where I see it.

Written at home.

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Patrick Sansone: Press to Null

One listen and got through it with what I felt was a good deal of ease. I’m operating on nowhere near enough sleep today, so getting to this one and being a bit more loose and relaxed about what I was writing than I was the prior music writings from today is a good thing.

Did that looseness come through well? I think yes and no. There’s uncertainty about what I’m hearing and what is coming forward, which might be a good thing. I found images of structure, of natural scenery, and of finality. I feel I could’ve explored these a bit more than I did, though maybe how I covered them does work well for the song. They came at different moments rather than all at once, so there’s a flow, but maybe that’s me trying to convince myself that what I did works well.

Patrick Sansone’s “Press to Null” is from Infinity Mirrors.

I hope you enjoy.

Keys call out, and a bright shining vibration responds. Keys call out once more, and maybe they actually are creating and guiding the vibration. It’s a gentle moment. It’s a peaceful moment. It stretches on through this quiet space that could be as bright as it could be dark. Nice and gentle, and more sounds come forward between keys.

Filling out, building to something. Building to nothing. Building to everything. Almost a symphony of crystalline sounds, humming, shining, vibrating their way into mass and form. Into defined shape.

A deeper sound underscores and changes the flow. It rises when necessary and now everything is a low grandeur. Massive. Small. Emotional. And everything grows. Slowly. Everything grows and takes new shape, becoming new form that remains as it always was, and it’s all calm at a quiet shoreline, or above clouds, moving smoothly, floating away, floating among pretty skies.

There’s a wonderment to everything. A wonderment, a deep sadness, but a deep peace. Perhaps an acceptance, and a pleasantness among it all. And it’s all climactic, but low. Low grandeur, carrying forward into the last moments before everything stops and the song ends.

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Patrick Sansone: Phosphenes

One listen and I felt I was a bit more loose than with the prior one, and I think that’s good. At the same time, I can see where I was grasping for anything and I don’t think that’s good, though it is much less than I have in some other recent writings.

Patrick Sansone’s “Phosphenes” is from Infinity Mirrors.

I hope you enjoy.

Low hum, pulsing, sending a signal. Keys step up around it and other hums appear here and there, fading in and out. Slow and gradual this is, showing various shapes, or rather, glimpses of them, and in the space a rumble is heard whilst the space between hums lets the memory of sound linger.

Something a little harsher appears and disappears; like the hums, it’s only a glimpse. The keys increase in frequency, stepping around the low hum. Some hums draw longer, possibly calling out  to something. Rising and falling, and eventually the low hum deepens and becomes fuller. Seems to become unstoppable, so to speak. It grows bright though remains low. At one point it seems to rise; to lift its body before lowering once more, then rising and lowering, or perhaps filling and emptying.

The sounds around it change and seem to grow. They gather and grow, and seem to rise toward a focused point. They are static but they are moving, rising, pushing higher and higher, filling out yet wholly minimal, and eventually they fade away and the song ends.

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Patrick Sansone: Jupiter Removed

One listen.

Some imagery came through, but perhaps not enough. Can always do better with these things. That said, I think I covered the song well enough. I think what I wrote makes enough sense.

Patrick Sansone’s “Jupiter Removed” is from Infinity Mirrors.

I hope you enjoy.

What could be a shoreline appears, and then a long horn as an instrument. It draws long, stops for a brief moment, then starts again. Another long sound joins it and at the breath, changes. It lowers then rises, and finds itself in a loop. Another sound appears and alters the sense of melody, and something at a high pitch slowly moves through the space.

There’s a slight twinkle, or at least what seems like a twinkle here and there, and there’s something gargantuan, almost. Something beyond massive, moving slow and moving quick. Soft steps come in and the sounds seem to grow stronger. Seem to.

The sounds form this odd beauty; things feel off, but they feel so right. They drift on, old and worn out and as strong as the day of their youth. They haunt slow, and are familiar, and still and in motion and changing whilst never growing.

Eventually a new, deeper sound comes in. It guides, lowers and rises, like breathing in a sense. And it soon stops and takes with it most of what was here, leaving a few sounds on their own to fade away as the song ends.

 

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One Thousand Word Challenge 230: Awake Enough

The last few weeks have been incredibly interesting and there’s so much to say, but I don’t know how I even go about covering everything. I don’t know how I go about covering all the bits and pieces of my life in a way that speaks more than just words, because it was all life lived. It was all interesting and all nothing, and none of it mattered. And everything did matter and still does. But I just want tow rite. I feel awake enough to write and I’m trying to get as much of it done as quickly as I can, and that’s the best way to go about things right now. I think. Just write and get the details down and then get on with life. Get on to what comes next, and there is a lot to come. There always is a lot to come, really.

I think of 2015 and how that year was great and sucked, and ten years later it seems all the same and entirely different. Well, probably closer to 2014, but you know. That’s something for the people who have been reading this space for a long time. But it’s been a lot of depression and grief and misery, and realising that the relationship that ended this year was quite possibly an abusive one, and in getting away from my ex, I am doing significantly better.

I want to be clear: I contributed to the problems in that relationship. I will never deny that. I will also never claim that my ex was intentionally abusive, or set out to be. There was no physical violence and there were plenty of good times, but it was quite possibly an abusive relationship, and as the time passes I feel more and more relieved to not have her in my life. And that’s the way it goes, sometimes. But what else is there to say?

There’s something I want to write about that’s sort of related to classism in photography, and that’s gonna be a tough write, I think. I’ll need to start gathering interviews and all that. When I say “sort of”, I mean it’s about classism in photography, but likely will be more about attitudes in photography. And I’m going to rant it out soon, because that is something that I’ve realised is near and dear to my heart. Perhaps I have a massive chip on my shoulder. I don’t know, but I do think it’s something worth exploring. Something worth digging into. There are others who could cover it far better than I can, but I’m going to give it a good go anyway. I just want to see if I can get into it and get something forward and out there that says something.

Beyond that, a lot of bad driving, a lot of everything and plenty of nothing. Trying to look after myself. Working on this new relationship in my life, though it doesn’t feel like work and that’s nice. It’s part of a hopeful way to end a fucked year, really. And, you know, I’m not so much looking toward the far future, but I am looking forward, and that’s nice.

I think about this year before it’s over. There are still a good few days. I think about it and just how awful it has been. There has been plenty of good and a lot of bad, and getting dumped sent ripples and echoes throughout the days, and still continue to to do so. However, I’m feeling lighter. I’m not feeling like I’m lost without my ex. I don’t feel like something is missing, and that’s good. I feel more annoyed and frustrated, but I don’t want to go back. It’d take a lot and the circumstances would have to be incredibly exceptional. I’m not interested. I’ve a lot to see and do, and I’ve now someone in my life who wants to see and do things, too. See and do things more often. I don’t feel I have to be emotionally and mentally strong enough for two people, and that’s great.

But that says little about the past few weeks, of which there is a lot to say and nothing at all. Just… things have been getting better. There have been spikes of shittiness here and there, but the more I think about it as I write this, the more I realise that there’s little point in covering most of it. Why should I? It’s not what I want to be writing and I keep writing, and today I’m just gonna try and get out a lot of things if I can. I can do it and I will do it and today will be that day, but maybe it isn’t. I don’t know and I don’t need to know as of yet, anyway. I just need to keep doing what I’m doing.

I also need more sleep. More sleep is good, more sleep is great. But I’m getting there.

One thing I don’t like doing is going on these lengthy strands talking about how I’m getting better. I’m always getting better. Plenty of others are, too. The year isn’t over yet. It nearly is, and I’m sitting at a table and I’m writing about it, and I think it’s nice that I can do this. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world. That’s okay, but I desire to go elsewhere. I desire to explore other things and the only way that I can do that is if I actually go and start exploring those other things. So I need to do that and I can try and do that and see where it all goes. But that’s all soon. Not yet. But soon.

What a few weeks. I’m sitting here, crapping on about myself and I don’t know how to articulate all that has happened. But it’s been mostly good and I’m doing well, and right now what matters is that, and not what has happened.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:57:03

Decent speed. Bit of a mess.

I’ve an idea of what I wrote, but it was a few days ago and I don’t want to read over it at the moment. I do know that this didn’t go the way I hoped and that’s fine. I think the overall quality could be much higher, however.

Written at work.

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