Go Ichinose: Pokè Mart

One listen.

I pretty much wrote everything in the first two sentences. From there it was stretching. I feel I could’ve gone deeper into what was going on, or about where this piece is used, but I didn’t. Oh well.

Go Ichinose’s (一之瀬剛) “Pokè Mart” (“フレンドリィショップ”) is from GBA Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire Music Super Complete and Nintendo 3DS Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Super Music Complete. These soundtracks cover RubySapphire and Emerald, and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. The version I wrote about is the original version.

I hope you enjoy.

Energetic percussion with a bit of a skip in its step before keys slide down and everything moves into a bop. There’s energy and life in this, and it sounds inviting and joyous. It’s a place to be.

The sounds move neither quickly nor slowly. They keep a space and flow, and the rhythm stays steady and upbeat. The melody changes and there’s a little pause in there. Perhaps as a way of asking which way to go, how to move forward, what is needed, and it’s all kept brief enough. Brief, brisk and pushing onward as the sounds fade and the song ends.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1583: Eventually Someone Will Arrive

Right now I have to play the waiting game. I’m desperate to use the bathroom, but I’m the only one here. Being the only one here, I have to wait for someone to show up before I can use the bathroom. It’s a terrible spot to be in.

I’m waiting. I’m listening to the rain and I’m waiting. Yes, it’s raining again. I find this annoying as I need the grass around my place to dry so I can mow it and keep it short so it doesn’t overgrow and all that stuff. What a life. What a tough life for me.

I’m waiting and I need to use the bathroom, and part of my thoughts are going “Hey, you should try and come up with something that says something interesting. something that says something about the condition of society as it currently stands”. Part of my thoughts are going “Why are you writing when you need to use the bathroom? Isn’t it interesting that you need to use the bathroom? Have you considered that, as you need to use the bathroom, you need to use the bathroom?”, and other continuing forms of importance through in forms of nonsense.

At least I have some quiet, but I’m itching and scratching and I need to get moving. Oh please, won’t someone appear? Won’t someone show up and allow me to get moving, with the potential of grooving thrown in for good measure? How do I deal with this? How do I get through these horrible minutes if I am forced to tolerate a state of discomfort, and it is taking away everything from me? I cannot think, I cannot walk, I cannot move away, and I have obligations to attend to.

This is where my life has led. This is where I now sit and this is the torment that I must now endure. That I must now suffer. I go through it all and I hope for the best, but hoping won’t resolve anything. I cannot take action. I must become as though I am stone. I must become hardened and one with the earth. With nature. I must watch time and shadow draw long, and I must remain in one position, and I must do my best to overcome this grave transgression placed upon my being. Etched upon my soul. How do I? How can I? Is there any point in hoping, or is everything a lost cause held upon silence as it screams, screams loudly, erasing all other things and scraping the space clean?

Eventually someone will arrive. I know that much. I will be able to leave this chair. I will be able to leave this desk. I must hold out until then. I must not lose myself to discomfort. I need to keep on going and I will become some sort of enlightened being, or something. It takes time, but the path to understanding is never an easy one, and I am one to walk it.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:00:33

A fun bit of writing that came from discomfort. Stretching a bit in it, but I like how it turned out.

Written at work.

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Kimitaka Matsumae: The Act of Gehena ~ The Imprisonment

One listen and got through it, and I was thinking that this would be more about some wondrous cosmic exploration or something similar. Instead what came to mind as I was writing was a fathomless being weaving intricacies that could only be understood superficially, or rather an effect of them, or something similar. Somewhat like seeing just the tip of something significantly greater, if that makes sense.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “The Act of Gehena ~ The Imprisonment” (“ゲヘナの業〜封印”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

A deepness spreads and above it, some sort of otherworldly, perhaps cosmic, sound scatters and spreads thinly. Something drips in rhythm, and seemingly there are long, considered breaths taken. This is almost a swirling upon an eternal plain of existence, and something seems dire here, as it does a process. A step.

And the sounds spread and continue their movement, and that scattering flickers in and out rapidly, in instances, and disappears, and the deepness fades away, and sounds continue breathing. Breathing and lingering, until they come to their stop and the song ends.

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Kimitaka Matsumae: The Divine Tree

One listen, and this one felt really easy to just knock out. Probably feels a bit small and simple, and it is. Admittedly, going into this I was hoping to really build a scene of great spiritual appreciation, or at least natural appreciation and that didn’t come through, partly because that’s not where the writing went and partly because I’m not good enough a writer to be as articulate as I want. Still, I think this turned out well.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “The Divine Tree” (“御神木”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

Refreshing sounds create a reverence, and perhaps a breathlessness. Also a peace. A calm. A space seemingly protected, or rather a space respected. Thought deeply upon, explored. A space considered.

Slow moves the air, and lush the space appears. It holds frozen outside of time as though protected by great care and desire, and all in it seems deliberate. All seems massive, overwhelming and brings a peace. A calm. And continues to do so as the sounds fade and the song ends.

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Kimitaka Matsumae: The Blue Cocoon Master ~ Koris

One listen.

I thought I was done with this soundtrack. Put it on for my bus ride this morning, heard some stuff that caught my ear in a way it hadn’t before, decided to churn out a few more scribbles.

I don’t know what was going on here. I went more for imagery, or rather a sense of expression and it kind of works. Kind of doesn’t. Oh well.

Kimitaka Matsumae’s (松前公高) “The Blue Cocoon Master ~ Koris” (“青の繭使い〜コリス”) is from Tamamayu Monogatari Original Soundtrack, the soundtrack for Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu.

I hope you  enjoy.

A heavy and important tune starts playing, and the sounds keep it going. Percussion, strings and a whistle or woodwind continue on, pressing, urging and showing some reverence. Among it a sense of adventure; a sense of the dramatic flows forward as the sounds lower and lower, deferring to wisdom and experience.

They continue on, as though carrying upon a breeze. As though following a wind to wherever it directs, and that sense of adventure remains, and perhaps a little ridiculousness, too. But it is difficult to linger on that, for the music urges. It urges to press on and look forward, and it keeps going steady, continuing on to follow words.

Eventually everything pulls away, leaving one sound to fade out at the song’s end.

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Photographing the Dunes

Minimalism is a great thing to engage in, I think. You can do great things with it, such as flattening spaces, which is kind of what’s happening here. There’s a line along where the person is standing, suggested by their placement and the placement of the vegetation, but beyond that, it’s almost as though the dune is a flat, featureless space.

This is my submission into the three hundred-and-ninetieth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Color in Black and White“. I think this one works in terms of land and sky, as the sky is likely to be interpreted as being a sort of blue, and the sand close to a yellow, both of which were the case when this photo was taken.

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 Egídio. The next one is curated by Tina.

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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Morning Rainfall

I’m sitting in the rear room of where I live at the moment. Been sitting here for a bit, preparing to get some stuff done before the day properly commences, and it has been nice. Put some washing on. Low chance of rain. Have the back door open and it’s all nice. Sunlight coming through in rays among itself. You know, all that pleasant stuff. It’s a good thing to have at this hour, I feel. Then a storm hit.

It’s passed now, but it was great to be able to just sit here and watch it happen. See the rain fall and blanket everything whilst the sun kept shining upon a waking world, and now the rain has passed and the sun is brighter, and all feels quiet. And it felt like it was all mine to witness.

If you’ve been following me for long enough, you’ll know that I like the rain and I like water in general. I like watching it move and change, and I like how it transforms space, so being able to see it hit quite quickly, and now seeing how its result reacts with the sunlight is quite wonderful to me. I can barely hear any traffic or human action, and there’s bird sounds around, and all of this feels pleasant. It reminds me of why I want to eventually move to The Mountains.

But you get to witness these things and see change and movement throughout the day, and I think it’s great how, in the right situations, it sort of creates a pause on life. You know, it stops movement, scatters things, and then it’s all one moment of percussive sound and sheets of varying thickness. It interacts with the light of an area, changes things, creates moods and feelings, and seems to feel like a cleanser in some ways. Not always, though.

It has started and stopped raining again since I started this, and the sun is now out, brighter and more harsh than earlier. It seems like today is going to be a good day.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 261: Wrist Straining

Alright I’m gonna knock this one out as I’m far behind and I need to do a good bit of catching up at the moment. If I don’t do that, then I fall further behind and that is not something I want to do.

I think I’ve stumbled upon a bad idea in doing what I’m doing today, but I’m still aiming to get it all done. Still aiming, still should give up, but still aiming. Bad ideas come in good intentions, and bad intentions come in good ideas. It’s how it all goes, but I can get this done. I can get that done, too. A lot of things I can get done, really. Just keep going, aim for the goal. Aim for the prize.

The rain that had fallen is disappearing. It is drying up, and it’s a shame. The sunlight and the rain made for a good combination, I think,. but you don’t always get what you want. Hell, you don’t even get some of what you want, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Them’s the breaks, and I’m not in the process of breaking things so it’s not something I want to explore too heavily. Or at all, really. There are other, far more important hings that I need to do with my time and now is not the time that I need to do them in.

So where do I go from here? I find myself at a juncture in time and writing where I need to keep going out of pure spite for anything resembling sensible processes, but I don’t have any spite left in me to use to be spiteful about. I do know that I have an immense reservoir of stubbornness and I try to tap into that here and there, but it doesn’t always work. There’s always something pushing against me and there’s only so much against I have to push against with something against the pushing of… yeah.

So… bad ideas. Bad ideas come and go and I have plenty of them. I have one right now, and that idea is an idea that involves continuing this silly endeavour. However, I said to myself that I was going to do it sooner or later and that is what I am doing. Sure, I could be talking about plenty of other things right now. I could be talking about what is happening in the world, but doing so would involve not talking about me and I want to talk about me right now.

I’ll talk about other things later. Right now it’s all mine. All slick, all awesome, all a fool, all me.

And so it all goes on and I keep going. I keep writing crap, or maybe crap is writing me.

What if I am fictional character in someone else’s story? I mean, we all are, depending on how much you want to stretch the definition of fictional here, but we are all fictional characters. We only matter to some stories and not others, and we matter to ourselves, of course. But we are not real.

Well, we are, but you know.

Perhaps this is the moment where I start losing it from all the stress and pressure I’m putting upon myself, and then that’s that. What then? Who cares. Well, I care, but maybe you don’t. Maybe I don’t. Maybe care is not something to be had, but to be given and therefore what I should be asking is who gives a care.

Who gives a care? I certainly don’t. Or I do. I don’t know anymore.

And so with all of that being said, there are only a few more bits and pieces that I need to write and then I am done for the day, and then I can safely say that the day is done and I’m checking out. There’s a big night ahead and plenty of time to be an awful writer than, and I certainly will. It’s how it all goes, anyway. But who is to say that I will remain an awful writer? Maybe after all of this writing is done, I will find that I have become… a tolerable writer.

I wish.

So in this mad dash for the finish line, I find myself wondering if I think any of today has been worth it, and maybe it has. Probably hasn’t, but maybe it has. I think there are better things that I could have done and this idea is definitely not one of them. It’s starting to hurt me a lot, but I persist as I’m a fool and I’m stubborn. At the very least, I know that I’ve had some fun with it all, but fun is not something that should be had all the time. Or something.

There really are far better things that I could be writing right now and this is what I’m going with. This foolishness. This tomfoolery. This waste of time and utter load of crap, but hey, it’s mine and it’s my pile and everyone can take it away from me, and perhaps everyone should. I don’t know. Or I do know. Only one way to find out, really, and that’s to offer all of this to everyone and then go from there.

But I think that now is a good time to stop. Or continue. I am yet to decide. I will still try, however. I will continue on and I’ll keep going, and I’ll make another attempt on another day, and then that will be that.

I think what I’m saying is that I need to rest my wrists and stop doing what I’m doing unless I want further hurt. I don’t want further hurt. I want rest. I want luxury. But we’ll see. Either there will be more stuff today or there won’t. Either way, I’ve put in a really solid effort and I’m at least proud of that, even if most of the writing today was incredibly lacking.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 10:48:00

This one turned out terribly. The main issue with yesterday is that I tried to cram a lot of writing into a very short period of time and it did not work. I ended up hurting my wrist by doing so. Next time I’ll pace myself a bit.

Written at work.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 260: Little Creature

Once upon a time there was a little creature born into a field of darkness. It knew that it existed. It could feel that it existed. However, it did not know what existed around it, for it had eyes but could not see.

It could hear and it could feel, and eventually it learned that it could taste, but it could not see.

This creature, gradually over time gaining energy from sucking away at any growing lichen found covering a surface, shuffled and made its way around, and gradually it learned the small area around it. It learned the feel of cold stone and sharpened stalagmite, growing down, and it knew how to go around certain areas, but it did not know how far it could go and it feared going too far. Sure, it could find its way back, but it didn’t know if it could.

So much of the creature’s directions and navigation was based on understanding objects and proximity, and a little distance away from where it was most familiar, it could go fine. This helped when it came to taking in more food, of course, as things grew at varying rates and to scour one spot would mean that it would not be getting food from it for a long time; a lesson it eventually learned.

Going too far from the familiar, and the space became featureless. The creature could go backward from there, but there was no telling if it would go backward correctly. What if it turned? What if it went in the wrong direction? And turning around didn’t mean it would turn to face the right way, either.

This creature wondered what the organs that had coverings that opened and closed were, and wondered what purpose they served. When not covered, everything was dark. Everything was invisible. There was nothing that they provided. When covered, it was the same. The creature still felt somewhere in there that it was better to keep them open. They never knew. Maybe the organs would do something some day, but there was no telling as to how long it would take to reach that day.

As the creature grew, its food sources were not growing back quickly enough to match its increased consumption, and there came some days where the creatures was finding more hunger within itself. Eventually this would mean that it would have to go further if it were to survive, but it feared. It feared this featureless expanse. It feared going further and getting lost, and never finding a way out. Never being able to return. It feared not knowing what could happen. It did not understand mortality, but it knew that being hungry was not what it desired.

And its food grew more scarce, and its periods of hunger grew longer, and so it found itself no choice but to venture further. One last patch of lichen consumed, and it started making its way to the featureless place.

At the least, the creature knew that a stretch was featureless. It had prodded here and there, and it found itself lucky to be able to come back each time it checked. However, it had never gone the whole way, and it didn’t know how far it went, anyway.

the creatures approached the area, and it set out carefully at first. Carefully and with hesitation, but it needed to find a greater source of food. It needed to find something that could help it survive for a longer period of time. Something that meant that it wouldn’t be spending more and more time seeking out its food. And so it went.

The darkness of everything seemed heavier in this space, though maybe it was due to the unfamiliarity. It proceeded carefully, and picked up its pace gradually, for there was nothing there. It was all flat and smoothed out and, whilst the same stone as everywhere else, absolutely featureless.

The creature walked for so long that it began to wonder as to if it was still on the ground. It knew that it was moving, but it could not tell, for how uniform the space was. It kept going and going, and it went for hours, and perhaps days. Time didn’t seem to matter and the creature knew not any difference anyway.

And the creature grew hungrier and hungrier, and its energy started to dwindle, and it began to slow. All seemed like nothing had changed, and the creature could have been walking in circles for all it knew, and it did not know.

Eventually a crack appeared in the fabric of the darkness, and it was a slither. A small cut, and the creature wasn’t sure what this meant. It saw it and was distracted by it as it walked, and instinctively it turned its head as it walked, its unused organs sensing this thing, and the creature proceeded to walk into an object as it looked at this thing.

Suddenly stopped and suddenly feeling a sense of hesitation it had not felt for a while, the creature’s first choice was to move as far away from this thing as it could, but it did not go with that choice. It’s second was to carefully approach, see what was there.

It approached this change in the reality it knew, and it looked at it from close. It could feel another object near it, and that object quite easily moved, and swung open, and suddenly there was greater detail. This tear became larger as the object moved, and there was so many things visible that the creature had not seen before. The tear surrounded it, but did not swallow it, and the creature noticed that it no longer walked on darkness, and instead stood on something new.

Carefully the creature continued into this new thing, and eventually it found a lichen to eat, and so it ate. And carefully it explored this new space, this new thing, and it left the darkness it knew behind.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 18:22:78

With this one I was thinking of ending it on a grim note. I had ideas of making it sudden, too. These came to me as I was writing, but I decided to not do that. It’s a bit of a slow bit of writing and it’s not great, but I felt the ending that came about works better than going for something a bit heavier.

Written at work.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 259: Approaching the Halfway Point

Alright so now I’m approaching the halfway point of what I’m trying to do, and you may have figured it out already. If not, you’ll see. Or you won’t see. I am yet to work it all out.

What was the last thing I talked about? It was the rain. What is the next thing that I can talk about? Not the rain. Well, I could talk about the rain again but that would serve no purpose. That would be pointless, as they say. But maybe I do want to talk about the rain… but not yet.

When I think about doing what I’m doing now, I think about all the issues that I’m causing. This is a lot to read and talk on and all of that, but I told myself that I would do this and doing it is what I am doing. I can only hope for the best at this point, but I don’t know what the best is. Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Maybe I should do the next few bits of writing as fiction instead of anything else. One bit of silly story writing is only one bit. I could use a few more. You could use a few more, too. However, this bit of writing is not going to be that as this bit of writing needs to be serious writing. It is the only way ahead, and a head is what I have and so I will make sure my head stays on my neck. If I lose it, then who is truly to blame? Certainly not me, and certainly not the horseless headman.

So anyway, I’m thinking about writing. Again. Surprising I know. I’m thinking about how we write. Why am I even saying this? It is evident.

But really, what drives people to write in a manner similar to the way I write? I’m sure some people do not set out and do things like this, which are incredibly silly and possibly damaging in some way. Stephen King, from what I remember, writes something like five thousand words a day. That is something to admire, I think, but not necessarily something to aspire to. A lot of people approach writing in different ways and whatever works for them works for them. However, I do think it is good to try and write as much as you can at times, even if it is complete nonsense.

The path of improvement requires a lot of work a lot of the time, and I think people don’t realise this. Or maybe they do, but they don;t know where to start. I think the best way to start is by putting pen to paper, or whichever equivalent works best for you. And I think that, at least in my case, the best way to write is to start writing.

A lot of time can be spent just trying to figure out what to write. I don’t think there is a right starting word in a lot of instances. I think that, more often than not, the right sentences come in retrospect, or they just flow out then and there. Of course there are different processes to writing, however, but if someone is having difficulty starting, I tell them to just start writing and get it out of the way and then go from there.

Write whatever. Write what comes naturally. Write what comes to mind first. There are more important things than trying to write something the right way the first time around. It eats up a lot of time trying to do that, and so if you’re at least getting something down, you’re building a better habit of getting started. The more you do that, the easier it can be to write, and perhaps the sooner you get to writing what it is that you wanted to write. That is something to consider, I think, and I also think that it’s worth putting into practice where possible.

Editing is part of the writing process, and I think it’s something that needs to be thought about, too. Editing helps make things better, and it’s often good to have a good editor to work on your work. Someone will be willing to challenge things if they need to be challenged, and who can recommend improvements that help strengthen your work whilst preserving your voice. In some ways I’m lucky (and plenty of others are, too) in being my own editor as I’m quite happy to dig into my own stuff and see if it stands. However, I do think that I’m blind to some of my mistakes, and this is something I always try to work on, but I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get the whole way there. Still, it’s good to try and keep learning.

Writing is a wonderful process, and a hard process, and an easy process. It’s an art and should be respected as such. It’s incredibly versatile, and it’s always good to try and write more where you can. There is so much missed when the written word is not respected or appreciated, and the more you work on it and learn, the more you can better understand what is desired and expressed, and how words are being used and all of those things. It has a long history, and it’s everywhere, really.

I worry about people using content generators to write as they’re cutting themselves out from a skill they can develop. There are some circumstances where using a content generator may provide some benefit, but most of the time it’s better to keep plugging away where you can. To keep writing.

If you have the ability to learn how to write, then you should do what you can, I think. And read, too. You think more about how words are used, and you start using them more effectively, too. It goes a long way, and that work pays off quite a lot, in the end.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:29:23

This post, and the next two, were meant to go up yesterday. I ran out of time as I was meant to be heading off for food and didn’t want to be late, and so I stopped the uploading. Probably a good thing, too.

This is… okay. I think it was pretty clear that I was running out of steam by the time I wrote this. I should have stopped, but I persisted. Oh well. At least something came out of it.

Written at work.

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