Plotting on a curve

This image, below, is the type of thing I usually do when I procrastinate; during my dissertation-writing time these Microsoft Paint files absolutely littered my computer desktop.  In this case, though, I've been trying to figure out how to map out a series of geometric shapes (composed according to two fixed perspective points), as if they were careering along a curve.  Problem is that here I've opted for a circle, and I think that somewhere along the curved line I got confused and the anchor-point on the shapes reversed... hopefully I'll produce something more consistent the next time.  Anyway the whole point of the exercise was to give me a means of taking the next step in a painting I've been working on since November, I'll have to see how that goes.

Last night I had a dream about surfing; I was taking a lesson, and as the instructor was speaking I knew, just knew (I think because of the force of the waves although it was perfectly easy to stand there in the water, calm and unmoving), that the wave I would catch would be at extremely high-speed, and I was anticipating - half-fearfully, half-excitedly, the rush that that would bring.  The sea was grey and the sand was that sort of golden-grey that you get at Irish beaches, and I was wearing a wetsuit but just as I was looking at the shore, knowing that I would soon be zooming towards it on my board, I realised that I wasn't wearing any surf booties and thought, "damn!", wondering how on earth I could have forgotten something so essential.

I've yet to surf properly, though I've definitely given it plenty of tries.  The first few occasions were on the Mayo coast, with the wind slamming into you as you even try to make it to the water's edge, pushing the board back in your face and it's an ordeal to get out to a point deep enough to start.  Those were during group lessons in a restricted area of sea, and I was extremely conscious of not crashing into anyone else and still managed to do it - thankfully no-one was hurt.  It was freezing, exhilirating and unsuccessful, and my only true fond memory is of sheltering in a trailer afterwards while waiting for a lift, drinking hot orange juice out of a flask.  I never thought I'd like hot orange juice but this was lovely.  Then there was an August in Biarritz, where the sea was absolutely crazy, terrifyingly forceful and crowded; there were times when I'd half-stand and start flying, but would force myself to wipe-out because of people milling about on the shoreline.  Then last year I was determined to learn properly; college was right on the Pacific coast, after all.  Students would cycle about campus with a board under one arm, and if you walked along the shore or on the cliffs by the pointy aloe-vera plants, you were bound to see groups or individuals out there with the dolphins.

I wanted to make sure I was a strong enough swimmer first though, so spent a few months perfecting that, and by the time I'd done that I had to wait for the weather to pick back up and for the sea to become fairly surfer-friendly again.  In my last several weeks there, provided I didn't have disruptive coursework, I'd attempt it once a week.  There was a specifically outdoorsy house very near the beach, with lots of kayaks and wetsuits and boards in the back yard, and you'd cycle there after class - past blocks of pretty bungalows with rose-bush gardens and beer pong tables and comfy couches on the lawns - and park your bike in their driveway and venture on in through the gate, grab a suit, stash your stuff under the table, and you were good to go.  Over time the board-carrying became easier; initially I found it (literally) a drag - not good for the board - but soon it became easy to just hold it under one arm like a pro.  The main tricky part was getting it down the flights of steps that brought you from the cliff to the beach, and once that was done it was grand really.  Booties were an absolute must though; the seabed was extremely stony and rocky - if you didn't have some sort of footwear you'd just step on something sharp or uneven or yuck-feeling and you don't want to be too distracted by concern for your toes.  The first few times my board had a problem with its fins - I think it should have had three but one was missing or something, so it behaved weirdly to begin with.  Also, the currents were still quite strong, even in May; no matter how many times I kept flipping over there was always this urge to try again, "just once more and I'll do it!", but it was often a struggle to get back out to that lift-off point.

Over the weeks I got more comfortable with being on the board, and the getting-centred part would take less and less thought, and it became easier to understand the timing; that the wave would help to push you up into standing position and so on.  And your skin got used to the surface of the board; my hands were less prone to blistering and it was nice to just dwell there, sniffing the salt on the nose and occasionally looking behind to see the swell flatten prematurely and wait for the next one.  Then afterwards you'd take the boards back up and shower off under a tap in the wall, and change quickly and hop back into your flip-flops and onto your bike and into the sunset evening, and your muscles would be exhausted but it felt so invigorating all the same.  I still maintain that if I had had one more hour (just one more hour, even slightly less than that!) of an extension to my final lesson (which was awesome and seemed, like a lot of that year, like it was made-up; a very handsome blond surfer with a typically monosyllabic American soap-opera name was the instructor and he made my progress his complete focus; could have been worse), I would have done it properly, but as it was I only managed to get half-way up and go.  Oh well, I think I'm going later this week (in colder, breezier climes) so hopefully I'll succeed... not sure though - I definitely find it quite difficult!        

Ummmm...

SO...


Here's the first one, though not sure yet if "first" is the appropriate word... we'll see how it goes.  You see, my sister started a blog a while ago and told me I should do one too, and when I searched my mind for a particular theme or topic that would warrant consistent discussion she shrugged and said, "random crap" - or something to that effect.  We were drinking copious amounts of tea in my kitchen at the time, and just as she was leaving I decided to have a go at dismantling the scenic mountain of recycling that had accumulated in the corner.  If its obtrusiveness hadn't provoked her joking criticism/horror, I might have continued to ignore it... but instead I filled paper bag after paper bag with the packaging of final-year student-living; primarily, baked bean cans and plastic milk cartons (some of which had residual weeks-old traces of their contents; eew), took them, in several trips, down to the bins in the courtyard and sent paper, glass and aluminium on their separate ways.  All this was all extremely uneventful until I reached into the gloom of one bag and sliced the little finger of my right hand on the jagged edge of an incised butterbean-tin; the blood oozed out in a large drop that pushed out and spread to the neighbouring digit and I was conscious of its slowing progress as I finished up with the rubbish, returned, washed it, and applied a very effective bandage (from one of those airport packets you buy when you're about to go on a trip that'll involve a lot of walking).  I didn't mind clearing the recycling mountain - I was the one who instigated it; I'm riddled with guilt if I throw anything paper-esque in with the food, and separating it all out just seems to make more sense (although, from my observations of on-campus rubbish trucks, I'm not sure about how massive a difference all this actually makes)... In in any case it leaves more space in the "proper" bin for real, smell-accumulating rubbish; otherwise someone would have to empty that the whole time and that'd be annoying.

So yeah, random crap.  There are whole worlds of design dedicated to making use of this kind of refuse, and I'm definitely one to horde - last year I'd keep rice-boxes and cereal packages in my wardrobe, primarily with a view to making things to send to people by airmail, or to making a sculpture, but these things never actually happened and were ultimately destined for the massive recycling dumpster in the carpark - like much else in that apartment.  That was the thing about America - if you were finished with something you'd just leave it somewhere fairly public and someone else would take it, almost right away.  Like everything - the cutlery, the kettle, the chairs, the table, the bedsheets, one of my paintings, lamps, gosh I can't even remember... anyway I had to take it all down to this giant bin and there were people in the bin who'd take it instantly, and the stuff had mainly come from charity shops originally so... So this stuff wasn't technically about to be recycled but I suppose was going to be re-used.  I'm not sure if I can say the same about the stuff I dumped this evening; hopefully it'll get refabricated into something worth using but there's no way I can track that...

Anyway, as I was sorting through these various empty containers and so on, I was like, "yeah I could so write about stuff, what'll I write about?" and in truth I guess my reasons for forging ahead and doing the oh-so-difficult task of setting up a blog like this one maybe lie with my decision that it's a good way to organise and order my mind... there's too much free-floating thought and information that I just can't give expression to most of the time and when I have to focus on, say, more academic things I just get swept up in unrelated stuff, and perhaps allowing me to flesh things out or at least channel some observations in textual form might be a good way of letting me get on with things that, on-the-ground anyway, are a tad more important.  I had thought that swimming was good way of de-stressing, where your breath gets into the rhythm of plunging and surfacing... and in a way I do think that that sort of cardiovascular exercise is very important, but it definitely doesn't allow for the same kind of individual expression that writing or something like that can... but I suppose (maybe) a case could be made for parallels; like, writing usually involves delving into something and pulling it to the surface... and it has to be done using standard techniques that "work" - in the same way particular swimming strokes allow one to stay afloat and progress.  So... I dunno, maybe this blog might help clear my head of the various crap I allow it to accumulate, or at least to get it more ordered and organised and functional and useful, and perhaps refabricated into something worth consuming.  Hopefully.

I had a Nutella milkshake today, t'was good.  And I'm breaking in a new pair of pretty shoes, which is worthwhile, I think; my last loyal pair were suede-ish, originally a rich Harry Clarke-blue, and survived several sprints through the seawater of various oceans and extremely contrasting coasts - I resurrected them recently for ball-purposes and they are now caked in mud and rather shoddy-looking, and are finally - it must be admitted - bin-bound (though they will have "pending" status for a while yet).  This new pair have ribbons but are not as comfy and I doubt they'll have the same longevity, though time will tell.  Distintegration of soap-bars and the various trajectories of the orchid on the kitchen windowsill, and it'll show itself again in my contributions to that recycling mountain, which will reappear and draw commentary and disgust once more.