40/80

The varying speed limits, on account of the road in this area being narrow and windy in places, as well as the region being used predominantly for farming.

I don’t know what it is that made me want to take a photo of speed signs. I think it might have had to do with the angle and framing more than anything else.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. The next one is hosted by Leanne, and she has chosen the theme of “Taken Within 10km (roughly 6 miles) From Home”.

This challenge is open to all, and I recommend joining in. If want to, check out more information about it here, and include the tag “monochrome-madness” when you share your photo. If you’d prefer not to join in, then at the least check out Leanne’s photography, and what other people submit.

I hope you enjoy.

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Kimitaka Matsumae: Staff Roll

One listen, and I was a bit surprised as to how little I was able to pull from what I was hearing. I think I went too hard early on which caused me to stumble a bit.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “Staff Roll” (“スタッフロール”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

Keys rising, asking questions among bird sounds. Asking questions and feeling relief, and soon the sound of insects comes in. The familiar is remembered, and the journey is reflected upon as a sense of normalcy returns.

There is tension in the gaps, and it eventually releases among the sounds of nature, among the space, and gently, gently, gently the last notes play before the song ends.

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Kimitaka Matsumae: Syrus Village

One listen.

Went in, wrote away, stopped. Usually how these things go. This one, I think I was trying to paint the imagery of where the song is used and I didn’t do well there. Some vague notions, but that’s about it.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “Syrus Village” (“サイラス村”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

A gentle, doleful theme plays, wafting through. It descends and it carries burden, and moisture in an ideal location. And there is that, but there is some happiness, too. There is the sense of community that spreads out through and spreads on to the edges, and all is gentle. All is growing quiet and small, in a strong community, or a caring community, and it’s all plenty nice, but it’s a space marked with concern, too. Of seriousness. And it sees out its days in hope and working toward a tomorrow, all the way until the last sound plays and the song ends.

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Kimitaka Matsumae: Legend of Alcana ~ Main Theme

One listen. Went right in, did little active thinking, wrote and wrote and wrote some more, and it was great. Not good writing and it doesn’t quite capture the song. There’s so much more that can be said that gets it across well. Still, I’m glad I was able to write this.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “Legend of Alcana ~ Main Theme” (“アルカナ伝説〜メインテーマ”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

A serious wind, it sets the stage of drama. It sets the dramatic, of graven situations. And woodwind calls across, and soon strings rise, then fall, then rise again, and carry across this grey wind. This heavy space. Percussion emphasises and settles back into its pattern.

Woodwind and strings now move with each other, and they move through this space, this heaviness, and they point at focus. At task, and they point toward another day, and they all weigh heavy. Woodwind alone falls, and soon all return to the start.

There is hope in this all. There is belief and faith in things improving, and there is urgency. Urging, hoping, pushing along. Realising the task at hand and its need, and it weighs heavy as there is care and desire for resolution in it all, flowing through as sounds fade and the song ends.

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Strip of Sand

Sand: it’s everywhere where sand is.

So I took this photo as I felt I had a good opportunity to capture the sandbar’s shape, and I think I did quite well there. Whilst processing, I cropped a fair bit out, just to keep the focus on the sandbar and make it feel more like a strip. I think it works in that regard and also through creating a more “cinematic” feel, which is a bit overboard, but it works and I like that.

I also think the cropping makes the photo more about shape rather than scene as there’s less visible activity and fewer objects in view.

This is my submission into the three hundred-and-eighty-fifth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Unusual Crop“.

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 Ritva. The next one is curated by Patti.

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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Kimitaka Matsumae: Opening ~ Genesis

One listen.

Went in, wrote, wrote some more, finished. That’s how it went. I was just throwing words out with this one. There was a pause for thinking, but otherwise it came really quickly, which was good, I think.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “Opening ~ Genesis” (“オープニング〜創世記”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

Hums sound as though rays of light. Birdsong, wind, water, and woodwind calls out as the hums change. Eventually the sounds move to something that seems a bit more open and wondrous, but only for a moment. The sounds move back and gradually fade away.

As they do, percussion comes in. It is thunderous, echoing, firm, precise. It builds and builds and becomes almost a frenzy. They suddenly diminish and new sounds start ascending and descending, rising up and pushing down, before other sounds like brass call out and strike. The percussion comes back in full and everything is intense and pressing, and it builds and builds and builds and strikes once more before stopping and leaving a little something to trail off at the song’s end.

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Looking for Something

Another bird, and it’s a purple swamphen and it was walking around looking like it was looking for something. It probably was looking for food. Maybe. I don’t know what swamphens eat, so… yeah.

I hope you enjoy.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 238: Go to the Point

Alright, so I’m going to try and write as fast as I can and I’m going to try and break some sort of nonsense barrier that only I can break as I am setting all of the rules and no one can stop me from doing so. This needs to be done in order to prove the justice that I provide is true and far greater than any justice that anyone else provides. I need to do this in order to do this, and in order to do this I need to do this.

I wonder if I am full of shit, sometimes. I guess I am. But anyway.

I should probably try and use more complex words more often, just in general. I sometimes worry that I am limiting my vocabulary, but sometimes the vocabulary worries about me. That is not a good way to be. It should be the other way around, but it’s not and all I am doing is causing no end to the silliness. I don’t know how or why I stop this, but if I do stop this, then am I even me anymore? I don’t know. All sots of questions to ask and all sorts of questioning to do. That is the way that these things go, I suppose.

So I guess, in order to become a better me, I need to destroy me by using longer and more complex words, and forming sentences that go on needlessly long. Words with lots of syllables and complexities, and use them in a way that doesn’t make sense. Incorrect usage. How piquant an idea that is! How fancy and full of folly, and only I can do it… only there are others.

Therefore, in order to destroy me, I need to destroy others. I need to be the sole holder of this ability, and I need to make sure others don’t get to it first. Therefore, I will set up a situation so ridiculous and so absurd that everyone else will give up. Is this destruction? Yes! But it’s a destruction of a nonviolent manner and we don’t like to get violent here. Or there. Can’t comment on others, but we don’t.

I don’t know who the others are that would form the “we”, but just go with me on this one.

So anyway, this situation would be so intensely ridiculous that people would look at it and go “That’s ridiculous. And intense. How intensely ridiculous” and I could be happy with that. I could be happy with the end result of that, as that would provide me with something to believe in.

If I have something to believe in, then I have purpose. I have drive. I have something that pushes me along to achieve great greatness, as opposed to greatness that isn’t great. Quite frankly, that’d be great and I really would like some greatness. It’d be great. But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is getting across the divide in order to find the self in order to destroy myself and the self so that I can… I can’t remember where I was going with all of this, if I was indeed going anywhere at all.

So I don’t know where to go or how to say, but I do know that in sifting through all the crap, the diamond might reveal itself and then the point of everything will be revealed and I’ll go to that point. I’ll go to the point and I’ll pint at it and then I’ll be pointing at a point, and maybe in my other hand I’ll be holding a pointer so I can then be pointing even more. There will be no point to this, but what it will achieve is something. It will be of scene and of scene you can then see something, and maybe it will be frozen in time in the form of a photograph. And then it will gain meaning through people trying to work out what the point of it was.

Through history it will change and it will gain resonance and through resonance it will become an important moment, and the narrative will change. No one will realise (or maybe some will) that it was a pointless exercise, and that will be lost to time and the action is reborn and reframed in new contexts that didn’t exist when the idea was thought of, and then that will change the shape and history of me and who I was. My identity will be lost to the sea of time and fog of ages, and I will become someone else. I will continue to live but I will be lost, and there’s nothing I can do about that, so therefore there is nothing I will do about that. Well, I’ll be gone anyway so it wouldn’t matter.

So then what can I do about all of this? I think I need to start using longer, more complex words in my writing. Then I can write a thing about the thing before it is done, and therefore I will be destroyed, but reborn as myself exactly as I am, but speaking in a way that people are more likely to either bounce off of or be more receptive to. It is difficult to tell at this particular juncture in time, and to be honest it doesn’t matter at all. What does matter, however, is the way that things are put forward, so that they can be pointed to in order to show change and growth and the strengthening of character, and if that can be done, then who am I to say that it cannot be done? Who am I to say that nothing matters, or everything matters? I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. What I do care about, however, is finding something that I can point to and then walk away from, but only so long as it offers incredibly tiring and horribly weak arguments.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 11:00:48

This one was done as I wanted to get some writing of this length done in under ten minutes. Didn’t quite pan out that way, but it was still fun doing this writing.

Written at work.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 237: Corner Store Journey

Alright, I’ve got about ten minutes to spare so I’m gonna cram as may words as I can into that space. I’m gonna write a whole lot of crap, pass it off as gold, then make my gold. This writing will be… goldworthy. Crap.

So anyway, there I was, standing at the precipice of been and gone, and wondering to myself where everything meant something to someone at some juncture in time. I wondered about hope and despair, and how these things circle the drain until the drain circles back. I wondered about circles and their meanings, and how they found their way through flames and fans and all the other positions jutting out in more circles. Jagged circles along the markings of the precipice, where nothing meant something and something meant nothing. Suddenly, there I was on the couch of the colour brown, back at home, back inside, confiding within myself about all the torture that I had wrought upon my wallet, and hoping for the best whilst expecting the worst. It was the way to be on that fine day and only I could know how to get to where I needed to get: the corner shop.

This, unfortunately, meant I had to put on pants and that was not something that I wanted to do. However, eventually I made a compromise and put on shorts. Practical, and comfortable. That’s what I needed most. However, it was a cold day.

I went outside and I felt the cold. I went outside of the room in which the couch of the colour brown was, and I was outside. I found it odd that all there was was that room and suddenly I was outside, and so I questioned what it was that I was trying to do. I questioned everything, and everything came back to me and reassured me of its making sense. I figured that this was okay, and so I began my walk.

I walked through the valley that lay ahead and I walked through the truth until I found the truth. I then took a turn along a brisk autumn leaf event, where the leaves fell en masse and the trees grew back the leaves but only so there could be some sort of fish springing forth, as fish springs eternal. It all made sense, but it wasn’t too long before I realised I was hopelessly not lost.

“Curse thee, strong sense of direction based on memory”, I muttered to myself as I continued on with my pace brisk. Everything was catching up to me and this was not something I desired, but it was something I had to deal with. there was no choice. I had to pick up my pace.

Suddenly everything was moving faster, and so I decided to try and trick it all into passing me. I slowed down a little. I tried to anticipate. I anticipated well. I did a little sidestep. It worked. For now. For then.

And so I continued on my little journey. I continued on to the corner shop. It took a while, but eventually I got there, or so I thought.

You see, when these things happen; when these journeys go along their merry way, despite all the knowing you hold within yourself, they have a way of deceiving you. I felt deceived, and I was deceived, for I hadn’t gone to the corner shop, or rather I had, but it wasn’t there. It had gone elsewhere, and this was not something I anticipated. Now it was in the mountains and so to the mountains I had to go.

Unfortunately as I turned, everything found me and suddenly I was engulfed and found myself back in that room, presented with all my happenings and experiences, and I was forced to provide answers to that which I had no answers for. It was not a good way to be.

A parade of swathes of everything came to me with nothing. Eventually I had to provide my answers despite having none. I had to think of something. I had to speak from the heart, and there was nothing. And so I advised of that. A chorus of voiceless voices came back to me and told me that I needed to answer. And this went on for a while. And so, eventually, I found a way to speak from the heart.

And so I spoke, and in speaking I pulled out from within, the greatest power of truth that I could access, and that bit of truth was the budgie of retribution, and so I summoned it into being, and its tiny chirp silenced and soothed all my enemies both within and without. They fell to it as those chirps cut them into shreds, and turned them into a fine fibrous paste. And then all was done, and that was that, and there was nothing left.

And now I found myself with no past, and no experience and no history, and this is not something I had thought about, and this was not good. However, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe I now had a clean slate, and though I lost everything, I now had everything else to gain. Nothing else to lose.

This was terrifying, however, as my identity was in part informed by my experiences. Now I was truly a blank slate, but I still had myself, and I still had who I was, somehow. Despite everything gone, everything was still there. Within me. No longer judging me. No longer encouraging me. I didn’t know how to go about all of this, but what choice did I have?

The budgie, satisfied with the work it had done, satisfied with its purpose fulfilled, flew off in slow motion whilst also fading from reality. I was alone in this void and I knew not what to do or where to go. I thought about it, and eventually I decided to stand up from a sitting position, and walk toward tomorrow.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:57:79

I was hoping to finish this faster than I did. Not the worst thing in the world.
Pretty happy with the result, overall. It’s a slog, but it’s silly. Fun bit of writing.

Written at work.

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Rain on Water

Not the best photo I could have shared. Could’ve had more rain in it, but there’s a peacefulness to this that I like. Perhaps it’s cheaply idyllic, but that’s what I’m feeling like seeing right now, and so this photo that has that a little bit is what I’m sharing.

I took this at a river as I was wandering about around Hawks Nest at the end of last year. I can’t remember exactly what I was going for,  but I do like the indistinct reflection that comes through, and I like how the insects and rain affect the surface.

This is my submission into Leanne Cole‘s “Monochrome Madness” for this week. This one is hosted by Dawn of The Day After, and she has chosen the theme of “Circles”.

This challenge is open to all, and I recommend joining in. If want to, check out more information about it here, and include the tag “monochrome-madness” when you share your photo. If you’d prefer not to join in, then at the least check out Leanne’s photography, and what other people submit.

I hope you enjoy.

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