Five-Hundred Word Challenge 702: Temporary Sedentary Placement

Trying to buy and trade in time but it’s a dead commodity. Maybe.

Anyway, that’s not the point of the writing of today. Today the point of today’s writing is to find a point and stick with it, but there will be no searching for in order to search I must get up and getting up is what I want to not, so therefore there will be no getting of the up, or “down” for that matter. Temporary sedentary placement is the ruler and that is fine, for now I can find myself in space and time, but maybe not. I mean, I can within a limited range, but outside of that limited range I am lost and have no idea.

At least I know that right now where I am relative to the keyboard and the mouse and my hair, but then there are other things that I need to consider in my immediate surroundings to know where I am in relation to them and the further out I go, the less knowing where I am in relation to other things and thus too far out and I’m going to have a bit of an issue on my hands. That is an issue I’d rather avoid.

If I don’t avoid said issue then I could very well become quite lost and if I do indeed become quite lost it might prove a challenge to find myself once more. There is only so long the rope runs. Too far out and I might lose grip. Not quick or noticing enough and I might not be able to grab back on and are then thus forced to float around in the vastness of whatever it is that I am in, unable to return except for the act of pure chance. Therefore today I stay where I am and just think about where I am whilst not looking for anything. No looking for words to try and express anything. No looking for anything to try and express words. Probably not going to try and buy and trade in time either. Bit of a fool’s errand at this point. The only thing I can be sure of is the moving of the hair out from the front of my face so that I can see a bit better, but that might happen later as I’m trying to get into the zone right now.

Whatever the zone is, it does involve a lot of sitting and spacial certainty, or something. Where am I even going with this?

I think that at some point there I kind of came off the rails and my train of thought became far too aware of itself. I guess I could try and re-rail, but I think that, seeing as I’ve come this far I won’t and instead will just focus on the sitting. Maybe that isn’t productive, but on the plus side I don’t have to worry too much about finding a way to end this thing sensibly.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 05:39:85

I really don’t know what happened with this one. I think I switched my train of thought a few too many times.

Written at home.

 

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Cumulus Accumulation

More clouds during a sunset.

I can’t tell if this feels more like a building up or a scattering. Either way, I think this image is somewhat-pleasing in terms of contrast of light and colours. The clouds give the sky a bit of a textured feel and help to move the eyes along certain paths.

I hope you enjoy.

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Jaz Coleman: Magna Invocatio – A Gnostic Mass For Choir And Orchestra Inspired By The Sublime Music Of Killing Joke

With this review I feel as though I could have written more without revealing too much.
I think I hit the wall and came to the conclusion that it would be better to try and say less.

Not sure if I succeeded in doing so effectively, but I am glad the review is out of the way.

Along with most of my review and interview work, this is also 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. We’re going to do a live broadcast of the podcast soon and are looking to add more things for supporters.

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I hope you enjoy.

Low hum. The morning comes. The sun rises. Horns usher in a triumphant sensation. “Absolute Descent of Light (Magna Invocation Choral Fanfare)” is the celebratory, victorious opener of Jaz Coleman’s Magna Invocatio – A Gnostic Mass For Choir and Orchestra Inspired By The Sublime Music Of Killing Joke.

As its title partially suggests, Magna Invocatio features Killing Joke songs reinterpreted as orchestral pieces. Considering Jaz Coleman both fronts Killing joke and is an established composer it isn’t too surprising that he eventually looked to rework the former into the realm of the latter.

As far as reinterpretations go, this one might work better if you’re familiar enough with the original songs. Might. The songs remain recognisable but there’s a great deal of translation that went into them which allows for appreciation detached from the source material.

Often the songs seem to focus more on the gently dramatic rather than going as all out as possible, lending a calmer, more meditative quality to the album. “The Raven King” is thoughtful in how it handles its sense of tribute through soft, though clear swelling and waning. “In Cythera” carries a strong feeling of longing buoyed by a sense of comfort and perhaps acceptance. At points it rises, but the song is more willing to keep things low and let itself permeate.

That said, there is room for the overtly heavy. “Invocation” is massive, intense and expansive whilst avoiding becoming overbearing.”Into The Unknown” sounds quite aggressive and urgent. It rarely lets up and keeps the pressure on the whole way through.

On the surface Magna Invocatio works well enough. Jaz Coleman’s decision to work with The Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra was a decision that paid off; they bring a lot of rich texture to the compositions and elevate a few parts  with a sense of grace. They sound passioante and driven, and handle the material with ease. The songs flow on their own and as an album well, though the whole thing does feel long in places.

The thing is though is that this album is not much of a surface album. It requires repeat listens to get the most out of it, which now that I think about it isn’t saying much. However, it’s difficult to say much about Magna Invocatio without taking away from what it provides: a highly rewarding, and in some ways affecting experience.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 53: Pressure and Journeys

There’s a pressure building up inside. It’s building but soon it will see its release, but not right now as right now the pressure has to go on the journey in order tor each its release. Right now it’s just building. It’s gestating, as some might say. Once it has reached a point where it can travel without outside assistance, that is when it must head on the journey of which it will head on in order to finds its release.

Before then it is all learning and growing and adapting to its surroundings. Tiny pressures do often need to grow big, after all. It takes time, but what is a long amount of time to a tiny pressure is often a short amount of time to a person.

But of course it grows and adapts and learns and eventually it must begin the journey that it needs to undertake in order to get to its release. It isn’t necessarily the hero’s journey, but it is a journey nonetheless. There are many forms of journeying and this just so happens to be one of those forms. To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to tell you as to which kind of journey it happens to be, but it does happen to be one of them. That is the way of the journey, though perhaps the journey does not have a way. Perhaps the journey is meandering and aimless and truly the path is what is left in the wake of traversal and not the thing that you follow, even though there are some journeys that involve following a path.

Perhaps there are some journeys that have no path and no thing that is left in the wake and thus require ruminating upon them a bit more deeply than usual, though perhaps that ruminating is not actually that much of a deep thing. Perhaps. It is possible that many journeys out there don’t require much thought at all as we may deceive ourselves into believing that it’s easy to come to the conclusion of the meaning of action and reaction. In some situations it often is, but it’s quite possible that more often than not that is not the case and we just don’t think deeply enough about what it is that we do, where we go and what we leave behind us in order to keep on moving forward.

Perhaps the idea of a journey is one that is best not thought about too often anyway and we need to change what it is that we are and are not thinking about when it comes t o the idea of the journey. Perhaps we need to rethink the whole thing. Tear it all down and rebuild and see what it is that comes out. Quite possible that if we do indeed need to do something like that we will come back to establishing the idea of the journey as it once was. That always is a possibility, but… well… I don’t really know as to what I’m going on about at the moment.

This all started off as the idea of writing about pressure in some sort of semi-anthropomorphised form in that I was trying to impose the idea of human-like actions on something that is not human-like, though certainly can come about from human action or lack thereof. I don’t know as to why I thought about doing so this morning, but it was something that I wanted to work on and tease out, but instead of doing so I got a bit sidetracked there and now I’m racing on toward an end and feeling a sense of pressure building that I want to release so as to be able to go back to doing other things. I need to work on a few things right now and realistically I could drop all this and go do that which needs the doing, but instead I’m seeing this through to completion as whilst this is probably not worth the time to write (or read), it still is something that I started and sometimes it is interesting to see as to where these things end. Also I feel a sense of pressure on this little journey, so once this is over that is the end of one journey and one form of pressure and then onto new ones as that is the way this morning is going, or something.

Perhaps I will drop all of this and it won’t be read by anyone, but I don’t think that will be the case as inevitably I will see this pushed out and thrown into The Internet abyss as that is how I often do things, but right now I’m not expecting any bites, though I do like the idea of the imagery of fishing in this case. Perhaps not quite appropriate, but you get the idea.

It’s all about throwing things against a wall and seeing what sticks, but of course once it sticks the thing needs further development so it can fully form. Well, they don’t. They could just be left there. That is always an acceptable form, but it doesn’t mean that any of it will be good. Probably better to develop things further in a lot of cases, but not all cases. Need to know when to and when not to, which I guess is in a sense a journey of its own, depending on how much you want to think of something as a journey.

Right now I’m on a journey of writing and I’m putting myself under undue pressure, but soon it will need to follow a path in order to find itself released and off into something else as pressures manifest in different ways and in different forms. They quite often change and shift around, but remain constant in many ways. I guess that is one of the things about pressures that make them what they are, though the same could be said for many things.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 14:56:98

This is a rambling mess. I think I have an idea as to what I was exploring (other than what is surface, of course), but it could have been said in far less words.

Written at home.

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Sun Casts Shadows

Taken recently whilst at The Royal National Park.

After I took this shot and looked at it I didn’t think I’d use it for anything. Ended up processing it as it looked more promising on my computer than it did on my camera.

The sunlight is by far the most prominent thing in this image as it influences how everything else looks. Shadows are hardened, the image feels warm and the shape rather than the detail gets a bit more focus.

The whole image feels warm and relaxed. It also feels quite still.

This is my submission into the one hundred-and-first Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.

The theme for this one is “A Quiet Moment“.

The reason as to why I think this image fits is due to the sense of stillness it holds.

The challenge is hosted by four people and cycles weekly:

Week 1 – Patti

Week 2 – Ann-Christine aka Leya

Week 3 – Amy

Week 4 – Tina

This one is hosted by Patti. Next week’s host is Leya.

Come on in and join the challenges. They’re fun to interpret and there’s a nice community developing around them.

I hope you enjoy.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 701: Jar of Hubris

But of course and verily so that when it just so happened that as the door opened and led to a new experience, the old experience had had enough and thus decided that it was time to leave as the borscht wasn’t going to repudiate its own being and there just wasn’t enough gumption for the action dissatisfaction to spread all over the fibrous tube of spiraling away from the task at hand. However, there were some feet and a lot if explaining to do, but then again when it was in vogue explaining still wasn’t touched upon and so whoever the protagonist was decided that it was time to hightail and head to wherever it was that needed the bristling spines of the yawning earth expressing wakefulness in spite of a bleeding sun.

Wherever it was that led to the paths unknown was the best thing but there was no danger form the waves underneath. By underneath I mean at the cliffs that touched the ocean as the ocean kept on throwing itself against the continent, unyielding in its might and awesome power, but of course always able to be dragged back a little, if only for a few seconds, for the ocean had its own desires and they did not involve horses. Bit of a shame, really.

Now there needs to be the remembering that some journeys are perilous and this one may have been different, as there was little else going on other than the clutter of words twisting themselves into orders that made no sense as other words invaded the scenery and began to tease the polling car that could only wink on certain days so long as the hat in the man was able to remember that you knew the password involved some nods and no nods at all, but not necessarily in that order as there was a certain order that needed to be remembered. Only then could the occurrence that needed to happen would lead to the expression so fine and pure that the horns announcing the return of the sky to the ground would know that they whom suffer the longest are not necessarily the wisest, but also those who require some sort of care and comfort that leads to a release, though they may not receive that which they need.

Instead the many fish will visit in the perfunctory form of a doctor that functions as a poor disguise for a fish, for few fish go to medical school and far fewer can pull off the look of someone who is wearing a stereotypical doctor coat, but of course that is another matter for another discussion that shall not be visited upon here as soon the cracking will open and in sidestepping the event that quarrelsome worrier known as the equine inquisitor will doubtless wake up. Upon their waking, they will feel for their jar of hubris, find the omen of the crusted floral orange and thus proclaim “I’ve been hornswoggled!”

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:38:15

So I thought I was going to reach one thousand words, but apparently that was not to be on this fine evening.

Instead there’s only five-hundred words of whatever this is.

Written at home.

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Brushed

I think the colour came out really well in this photo.

The clouds feel massive and get a lot of focus. There’s a sense of the striking and relaxing that I think I’ve captured.

I hope you enjoy.

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Drained Room

So this is influenced by a rather small happening that happened today.
I wanted to write some bad poetry about something else but instead I wrote bad poetry about said happening.

I hope you enjoy.

Dust once still shifts
It flows away
It moves from its home
Objects long standing lift
Stir particles and force
Into a float and drift
Disturbance remains
Until the room is drained
A slow and steady action
Repeated for all shapes
To transfer them elsewhere
To create a new old
The dust settles
In an uneasy space
Filled with recalling
The memory of shapes

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 700: Light Writing on the Australian Bush

Thinking about a continuing march forward and I can’t help but let my mind wander once more trough he various fields upon which everything might just so happen to be trampled, but also on other things.

I am trying to imagine the unemotional force of an unstoppable thing that tramples all underfoot, but all that comes to mind is the existence of nature and how much it is something that I love. I don’t know why I cannot imagine such a menace right now. Perhaps I have not been awake for long enough. Perhaps it is due to the start of my shift not yet reaching its commencement. Whatever the reason happens to be, I know not what it is, but perhaps not being able to think of something of that specific kind of design might be a good thing right now. Maybe.

On the plus side, I’m thinking of things that I do find pleasing. I’m thinking of the perceived beauty and wideness of nature. I’m thinking of all of its different textures and hues. The different environments fit together and express something far greater than the human collective.

The Australian bush is somewhat-unique, though many environs are, now that I think about it.

Australia is an old continent and as such its flora and fauna are (as far as I’m aware) highly specialised so as to be able to survive and propagate further within their ecosystems. A lot of the flora in Australia does appear wiry and bent in a few ways. It can often lack a perceived vibrancy, though is seldom as it appears.

The Australian bush is often filled with far more fauna than is perceived and that is a wonderful thing. I think. There are a lot of things that I think when it comes to the Australian bush and perhaps some of them are quite removed from the actuality of that particular form of landscape as that is the way things can often go. It can be human to imprint and transform things into something removed from the perceived reality of their nature, but in some ways that can make us appreciate them more than if we didn’t.

So this was going to start as a bit of fiction, but somehow it ended up with me writing a little bit about the Australian bush. Such is the way of this writing, or something.

Anyway, perhaps my favourite parts are where the bush meets the ocean. There is a particular spot in Australia that might just be my favourite part in  the world and I’m sure that I’ve created a perception of it that might not actually be reasonable. Oh well.

So I guess I should wrap this all up with something succinct, but I don’t have anything right now; besides which, writing about the Australian bush is not something I think I can do with justifiable detail in a short period of time.

Oh well. Perhaps in the future I just might do so.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 10:44:84

This took a bit longer than I thought it would. Part of the reason as to why is that I stopped for a bit and thought about the idea of writing about the Australian bush at length instead of occasionally touching upon it and not giving a good overall impression of what it is and is not.

This bit of writing is rather light and perhaps a bit too dragging, I think.

Written at home.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 52: The Case

Alright, so where it all starts is at the beginning. sometimes it is not the beginning as to where something starts, but in this case we are pretending that where it all starts is at the beginning. It is better for the case of whatever this is, but of course the case is already formed and inside of its body is nothing at the moment other than its own interior. Soon it may contain something more, but at the moment there is nothing; such is the case of the case and it is up to us all to accept this matter as it currently stands.

I think that, in knowing that we can see that even though there is nothing other than itself inside of itself, we can accept that that still constitutes something and from there we are able to expand and explore what it is that constitutes the case of the case. Of course this all means that there will be a lot of questions and a lot of rambling. There may be the tracking of the sides, but then again perhaps instead of all of that the subject at hand will be addressed with little issue and we’ll all be able to go on our merry way and into the further depths of exploration and rumination so as to divine the nature of the case as the case is something that must be examined and observed in whatever ways possible, as that is the way that this will all go down.

However, what few, if any seem to realise is that the case is nothing more than a case. It has an interior, an exterior and often can act as a receptacle for objects of varying forms. It did once have a beginning but it no longer exists in that state. It just exists and does what it needs to do in the way that it needs to do it.

So, in knowing all of that now, the true inspection of the case can begin, but perhaps even before that there needs to be more examination of other things, such as the seams (assuming that it has seams, of course). The materials are yet to be known and this is key information, for in knowing the material, the durability can be estimated. If the durability can be estimated, then surely it is easier to understand as to what the case can and cannot handle. In knowing that, then perhaps it can be known as to what can be put into the cas3e and in knowing that the object reaches its full utility.

It is possible that, in knowing what it can handle, there will be many attempts to overload it as much as possible. The case might strain, but it will handle what it can for a while. However, due to the pressures induced it will eventually begin to break and fall apart. Of course then the case will be blamed for its inability to handle more than it is designed to handle and thus promptly replaced.

Eventually the case would wear out, but there is a big difference in wearing it out unnecessarily and having it wear out over a time. A case looked after is a case that will hold. Often it will hold together so long that it could be decades before it needs replacement, and even then instead of a replacement it might just need a quick repair. Maybe it came faulty, but of course in those instances it can still be fixed or replaced.

But of course those who overload their cases when knowing how it affects them care more about how far they can strain something for their benefit before it breaks more than they do about handling with care and as such they shall not be included within the discussion and examination of the case as they will seldom provide anything productive to the conversation. Sometimes cases do need to be pushed a bit further, but those instances are few and far between. They aren’t every possible moment.

Instead the people who will actually try and understand the case and its interior and what it all means and how it is made and its purpose will be included. There will be room for questioning and challenging the arguments put forward, but the ultimate goal is to reach a singular consensus agreed upon. There will be the measuring of objects and the checking of the materials. There will be the sizing up of the shape and there will be the wondering of how it was that the shape the case is in was decided as the most optimal shape for its intended purpose.

Perhaps all the thinking and ruminating and examining and exploration and testing will not lead to any form of conclusion, but instead more questions than anyone could hope to address in a period of time afforded for the addressing of those questions that would have arisen from the whole affair. It is possible, but that cannot be treated as a deterrent as the case is in the present and the group is there to try and learn about the case and what it could contain, though all it seems to contain at the current moment is its own self.

Perhaps they do not know that at this current juncture in time, but given enough time and they will learn that too, though to get enough time they will have to petition for more time as the case, whilst seemingly plain, remains rather more interesting to this group than they initially expected, though it is difficult to tell what they were initially expecting. Apparently it wasn’t much.

There will be the consideration of how its beginning began, though it will become readily apparent that it had one and that is where it started and its beginning is more humble than expected and is actually less important than first believed; at least, in the case of this case, that is.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 17:15:83

Slower than I thought I’d be, but faster than the twenty minute time on these word lengths.

I’m not quite sure as to what it is that is being expressed here; well, aside from one thing, that is.

This feels like there was a potential thought experiment that I veered away from.

Written at home.

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