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.