A Bridge for Trains

This is the same bride as seen in this photo.

I feel as though I could have done a better job of processing this, but I am mostly satisfied with the result.

I feel that in monochrome a lot of the detail in this image becomes much more apparent.

In regards to what is in the image, I like how the stretch of built up soil cuts into the reflection as well as part of the bridge. It’s a bit of noise in the scene that I quite like.

I do like the reflection’s clarity as it works well with the bridge’s arches. I also like how some of the reflection is overtly disturbed by small waves as it adds a sense of vagueness to parts of the scene.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s TPM photo challenge for this week. The theme for this challenge is “Windows”.

This is a bit of a stretch, but photos can be seen as windows to a scene.
In conjunction with the reflection, the arches almost seem like they are windows.

I suggest checking out Leanne’s photography, as well as checking out what other people submit into the challenge.

You can find the challenges here.

I hope you enjoy.

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A Poem About Relaxing

Don’t know what I was trying to do with this one.
I’m happy with the result, though I feel it could be much longer. I think I may have tried to cram too much into too little.

I hope you enjoy.

Leaning back, my eyes closed
To relax am predisposed
In a drift I choose to float
As though it were a winter coat

To let go of the day’s ire
Is that of which I seldom tire
It leaves the background ambience
During my state of transience

Soon enough I must resume
Tasks I have, and all too soon
For rest is only just enough
As tasks finely call my bluff.

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Parking Car Dream

I was parking Fe’s car out the front of where we’re living. Fe got out and then went somewhere and the car was parked. Then I was standing in the gap between the rear and front seats. Somehow even though there normally isn’t enough room and my height hadn’t changed, I was standing upright without any discomfort.

The car then started moving forward of its own accord. It had been parked properly and turned off. I didn’t quite know what was going on and I didn’t have enough time to properly react to stop it from slowly rolling into the back of our neighbour’s car.

I got out and told Fe (I’m pretty sure he was standing around but not there to see what happened). He said “I thought it stopped doing that.” We then went to our neighbour’s place and told them about what happened. They said something about not worrying about it right now and said to come and eat.

There was a table on the nature strip out the front of a house and they were bringing food out to it. I said that I’d have to move the car back first, which had now moved to being in front of the house after our neighbour’s. I hopped in and reversed it back to and parked in front of our house.

Once I was done I got out of the car and checked this panel on the left side of the car. It was sort of between the rear and front door and it was not there before. It had a few things on it that I did not recognise, as well as a key sitting in a lock. I think I took the key out. I then checked another panel that was roughly in the same position, but on the right side of the car. It also had a key.

I figured I should take the key but I wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good idea. At the same time I didn’t want to leave the key in case it ended up stolen by someone. I decided I’d let Fe know about the key.

I saw a sign next to where I parked and it said something along the lines of “Park Carefully”.

Then I woke up.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 63: Slowing Days Down

Slowing days down in order to get more in seems like a fine idea but it’s far better not to mess with the intricacies of time. You never know what you’re going to throw off, even if you do know. There are always hidden variables of which you cannot account for. Better not to do the thing and instead try to slow down time the hard way as the hard way is much more impossible and thus much more satisfactory and thus much more safe. Of course, the hard way often is seen as the easier way. It involves engaging in tedium, which is what makes it hard. It all comes down to your tolerance of how much tedium you can tolerate at any given time.

Of course, if you don’t want to do that, then don’t. There are other things that you can do with your time that are likely fare more worth the time and effort than it is to slow things down. Slowing things down ight end up taking the same amount of time as you would have taken had you just engaged in the art of doing the thing. Therefore there are no shortcuts (all of the time, but only some of the time, so you best remember that). However, if you do indeed find a shortcut, it is likely the shortcut of being more efficient at the thing you are doing than when you had started doing the thing as you’re improving your skill and technique and thus growing as a person doing the thing that is the thing that you are doing.

I think I was going to try and wrap this up all into a neat little package, but I can’t remember what it is that I was gunning for.

It’s probably a bad thing to wait until the last minute to get things done. Takes time, adds stress and adds pressure which creates more stress which in turn creates more pressure in some sort of never-ending cycle that does actually end when it feels it has reached a peak saturation that you cannot always perceive. It is then that you need to be in the zone, for if you are not then the whole things comes toppling down and the last thing you want to be doing is falling a great distance to some sort of surface. It hurts on the landing, unless of course you perfect the landing, in which case it would not but, but of course there are other things that you could be doing with your time other than procrastinating until the last minute and then risking your mental health.

Plenty of reasons to procrastinate though.

So yes; it is far better to plan ahead and make the most of the time that you do indeed have instead of waiting until the last minute. Of course you could try and do the whole slowing down time thing the easy way, but seeing as how time-consuming that act is, you may end up failing and end up having to work under unnecessary pressure anyway, so might as well get an early start on the thing rather than a late start.

Then you can do the work on honing your craft and getting toward something else entirely. Perhaps you will turn it into something beautiful as you grow your garden of skill and talent and multiple skills upon multiple talents, thus ending up with something that is entirely your own and yet something you can show the whole world, or something. Of course you don’t have to show the whole world; there is no one person out there forcing you to do so, unless of course there is someone, in which case I don’t know what to say. Might not be the best of situations, but then again perhaps that being forced is of the gentle, “trying to boost you out of a rut” variety, but of course not all forcing can get one out of a rut and sometimes you just need a break and the thing will eventually return to you, whatever that thing is.

Sometimes, however, you do have to hunt down that thing and those hunting times are not always the most fun. They can involve great journeys of unexpected ardour, but of course they can also be great journeys of unexpected ease. There is a lot of variety in the whole thing and who is to say that you cannot be the decider of the route and the shenanigans along the way? Well, there are plenty of people who say so and not in every situation will the flexibility be there, but that’s all part of the fun of the journey. The suffering? Not so much, though it might depend on what you get out of that suffering. Doesn’t make it any more fun, of course, but it can make it far more rewarding; especially if you come out on top.

Now, there are other things that need to be taken into consideration but that can all wait until another time at another point in another day, which I guess is another time. All depends on how it is that you are looking to perceive time at any given time, if there is indeed any time at all.

I think that I’ve hit the end of what it is that I can and cannot say at this particular point in time, so instead of going on I think I’m going to pull out my book of sketches and start sketching things in the hopes that something comes forward. It has been a few days and I really want to get back into sketching, which is something I used to do… well, not quite a lot of, but something fairly regularly. I’m at work and it is quite quiet, so who is to say that I should not capitalise on the current time I have?

Maybe I will, but first I need to slow down time.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 10:23:98

I think there is a point (or perhaps points) in this. I think.

I was near the end of my lunch break when I wrote this. Felt like doing a little bit more writing for the day.

Well, it certainly turned out.

Written at home.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 764: It’s Fine to ask for Help

Sometimes you aren’t prepared for what comes, even if you try to prepare as much as you can. there’s only so much that you can do and there’s so much more that can and cannot happen. Such is the way things go, but so long as you’ve done what you can rather than not, then you can step forward without regrets, or at least with diminished regrets.

What, then, do you do if you prepare for as much as you can and the situation turns out to require something else entirely?

Not something I’m going to try and answer right now. I have my thoughts on the question and I imagine that plenty of other people out there would also. However, I might just try and posit something just in case it leads to something else. See where it leads. And so on and so forth.

So I guess that if you prepare as much as you can for whatever it is that you’re facing and it turns out that what you’re facing is something that all that preparation did not help prepare you for due to it being something entirely different to what was understood, then you just do what you can to get through whatever it is to the other side. Hopefully you get through intact, or at the very least not too damaged, but of course there is no guarantee. There is hope.

Sometimes in situations where the unexpected is the entirety you may need help to get through. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help so long as you help out wherever you can, and there’s nothing wrong with relying on others where it is necessary. Maybe it won’t happen when you’re going through whatever it is that you’re going through, but perhaps there will be people ready to catch you and help you along at the other side. Maybe you won’t need help at all, but it would be nice to talk to someone just so you can bounce something off of someone which could help you understand whatever it is that you’re going through a bit better which could lead to then working out whatever it is that you do or do not need to do, which (now that I think about it) is a form of help, and that’s fine.

It’s possible that help might be needed at the start but not any further and you get through everything that you need to get through with no further issues whatsoever. Of course there is the possibility that what you are prepared for is what happens and then you get through it all with no difficulty whatsoever. All are possible.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help if it’s need. When it’s not necessary, it still is fine to ask for help. You can go a long way when you’ve someone (or something) else by your side and helping you get through whatever it is you’re going through.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:44:49

I think this is one of the most coherent things I’ve written in a while.

After I finished I had a moment where I felt this would be better if I had written “Plenty of great things have been achieved with help.”, or at least something along those lines. Oh well.

This was going to start off as some sort of fiction but then quite quickly it became something else. I feel as though perhaps I might have overstated the point, but at the same time I’m fine with how it flows, as well as the clarity of the thing I’m trying to get across.

Written at home.

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Porphyrio melanotus in Motion

Yesterday afternoon I went on a short cycle. During the cycle I saw this Australasian waterhen underneath a transmission tower looking for food as I passed on by. On my way back home the waterhen was still there so I took a few photos, such as this one.

I think this is interesting in that the waterhen appears to be a bit more “upright” than it usually appears. I’m pretty sure it appears that way due to it being mid-motion, but I’m not entirely sure.

I like how the waterhen appears posed. There’s a sense of stillness, though it’s clearly moving.

I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 763: Either Way’s Fine

Well, a day of considerable length at work it certainly was, though realistically it was no longer nor shorter than any other day out there. It just felt like it was a long one and now I am here trying to make up for lost time. Reminded I am that I was going to work on stopping doing this at night when I’m tired, but here I am and here you are and now we’ll see how all of this turns out, if it turns out at all. I think I’ve use that before, but considering most of my stuff is stuff I’ve used before that’s not really saying much, but instead of rambling I guess I really should just get on with it and get through this and then do the other thing so I can then go to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day of the day of working. It is another day of being inside and doing things in front of a monitor whilst taking calls and dealing with things. Right now it is a time of rest but there is little time to rest. I can rest later. Right now I need to keep on going and get things done and so on and so on and so on and so forth. Perhaps I do need to rest more than I need to do things, but doing things is going to happen.

There’s a gentle, yet aggressive melody massaging my ears as I type this out. It’s something that I need to be listening to and thinking about so as to be able to write about it at a future date, but right now it’s a form of comfort music. Sure, it’s loud and probably a bit too energetic for me at this particular hour (if only because I’m at home and looking to sleep soon, and not at a gig for whatever reason I’d be at one), but it’s still nice and pleasant and pleasing and all those other things that I want to rattle off but cannot at the current moment as I’m winding down and soon am probably going to find myself in bed to fall asleep and drift off into a state of bizarre and intense dreams that I only remember an implication of rather than a stating of the whole thing, unless I do end up remembering them as the latter rather than the former, in which case I may or may not end up writing about them, depending on how I feel about them when I work out if they are indeed something I may or may not write about, if that makes sense.

It probably does, or it probably does not. I don’t know right now. Instead of trying to work that out I’m going to use this time to make some sort of exit, so please pretend that this is my leaving of this post to find myself in a different post.

Either that, or don’t. Either way’s fine.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:15:99

This is much more of a mess than I had hoped. Probably much too tired for something a little better in terms of quality, though what I should do is try and find a way to use my fatigue to my advantage.

Written at home.

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GoldLink: Diaspora Review

This is a review I sat on since last year. Grabbed the album from a list, then didn’t listen to it properly until last month. Maybe two months ago. Occasionally I’d remember that I had the album for review but I’d forget about it. Don’t know why.

I don’t think I did the album justice. This review feels a little too disconnected and doesn’t dive enough into what is going on with the music.

I think that, at the very least, it kind of gives an impression without revealing much. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing, but it certainly is a thing.

Most of my interview and review work now appears on Culture Eater.
My colleague and I set up a Patreon to further develop Culture Eater as a source of good quality arts coverage from both ourselves and our contributors.

We’re looking at what we can give to supporters as we don’t want to set up a one way relationship, so suggestions are welcome. Podcast Eater is one of the things we’ve got going.

Please consider supporting, or at least sharing the Patreon page with others. Please also check out what our wonderful contributors are contributing.

I hope you enjoy.

GoldLink put out Diaspora last year. I’m not sure as to why it took so long for me to get around to writing about it, but here we are.

On Diaspora it seems as though GoldLink employed the idea of diaspora as a musical concept; as such, there’s a few different styles of music and artists throughout the album. This had the potential to come out sounding a messy mishmash of ideas, but just about everything clicks quite well.

As Diaspora is a guest-heavy album the songs rely a lot on what they bring to the proverbial table; It’s here where the album is at both its strongest and its weakest. Rather than dominate everything, GoldLink is much more willing to let the guests deliver; Allowing them to do so gives the album a greater sense of variability. There’s a flexibility with how each guest works with each other, as well as the underlying music, allowing for a decent flow and and cohesive feel. At the same time the album doesn’t quite feel as collaborative as perhaps it should. There’s a sense of disconnect in a way that seems like the artists aren’t really bouncing off of each other; often it seems like a “wait your turn” type affair.

Perhaps that disconnect wouldn’t be there if GoldLink was more willing to step up, though to be fair, he does put in an ample appearance. Furthermore, if he had made himself more visible, then the conceptual approach would suffer as the album would sound more nakedly singular.

That said, the artists put in quite the effort. The flow works well and everyone is quite tasteful for where they appear. There’s a veritable amount of skill coming forward that helps bring the songs to life. No one lags or struggles, and no one sounds dull or uninterested in what they’re doing.

As far as everything outside of the vocals goes, it’s all smooth sailing. Diaspora has this rolling, pumping energy that gives the whole album a fun and celebratory vibe. Even in the more relaxed and quieter moments the energy keeps on going. the vocals capitalise on it at all the right moments, keeping things rolling forward whilst elevating the performances a fair bit.

The songs are somewhere around minimal; there’s enough for structure and thrust whilst leaving a lot of space so vocals don’t have to fight for attention. As such, there’s a lot of quieter, muted sounds spread throughout Diaspora, so when there’s something a bit louder than the norm it easily draws attention. The overall effect is that the songs feel much fuller than if they were “every moment full of everything plus vocals”. There’s a balance and everything locks in nicely.

However, that doesn’t really say much about Diaspora overall though, which is a really tight album. “Days Like These”, “Zulu Screams”, “Spanish Song” and “Swoosh” are all great songs, but so are the rest. The album feels much like a gathering of its influences and sounds rather than a layering; Everything blends together in a most pleasing and satisfying way. Ultimately there’s a style to the whole thing that is all GoldLink’s own; even when someone else is in the spotlight. On both a conceptual and non-conceptual level, Diaspora sees that style shifting without sounding narrow or singular. It incorporates, grows and expands whilst providing a satisfying listening experience.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 762: By The Ocean

Alright, so we’re galloping headlong into the end of the week, or something like that, but there’s still a lot to do, or something like that, and some such nonsense or something or other and so on and so forth and you get the idea.

The sun shines down and asks vegetation to follow its lead. The vegetation leans toward where the sun runs but the majority of it lacks the ability to go anywhere other than where it is; thus it is up to the offspring to spread. Those flora that do move generally are only interested in moving uphill rather than wherever the sun may lead. If the two align, then it really just is a happy coincidence.

But anyway, that has nothing to do with anything and realistically this is a writing about anything at all that I can think of. Just driving through the muck and the thick of the muck in order to try and pull something out, to bring it to the surface and show it off to everything in the hopes that it reveals something that was not revealed before… I wish. In actuality, this is just a rambling ramble. The hopes are that I get to the end without breaking a sweat and freaking out and making a mess of things, but I don’t think that will happen. Instead what might just happen is that the ocean will come and claim me in a way that I have not been claimed before: by the ocean.

If it does so, then who am I to try and resist its awesome might? I cannot fight that kind of massive force of unrelenting nature. It’s impossible for me to win. Sure, I could prolong its attack, but it would just be the act of prolonging the inevitable and I would just have to give myself over to whatever it is that it would want from me. There is no choice; there is only acceptance.

Still, that is something best not written about at this particular hour of the day. The day us still young and what I want to do is find a way to make sure it is filled with stuff. I don’t want it to be pointless stuff, but stuff that has some sort of meaning and something more than meaning within its confines. Looking for definitions and all that jazz of the proverbial variety.

Actually, now that I think about it, I should probably spend some time listening to jazz today, There is no real reason other than I enjoy it quite a lot and as such I want to enjoy that enjoyment. Throw a bunch of things on with no respect toward consistency and cohesiveness. Might be bad, might be good. The only way to find out is by trying and at the end of the day, regardless of the situation, all we can do is keep on trying to do things for the betterment and enjoyment of ourselves and others.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:12:01

This was just a messy ramble. Bounced around a little too much.

Somewhat-related: There is a tree that “walks”, which is where the bit that I wrote about flora moving uphill comes from, though I’m pretty sure the actual trees that move about follow sunlight rather than slopes.

Written at home.

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More Taka

Yet another shot of Taka of MONO.

So with this shot I really like the sense of space around Taka. Whilst Dahm Majuri Cipolla is in the background, the space around Taka still feels empty.

I like that most of Taka’s pedal boards are visible, rather than their entirety being visible. It’s not much that can’t be seen, but their size and and the amount of pedals is more suggested rather than stated, but you can still see that they’re the boards and the collection of pedals aren’t small.

I think there’s a strong sense of Taka really being in the moment.

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.

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