Quote Week - 6

"Travel is the only thing

you buy

that makes you richer"

Anon

Sub-optimal

We've been talking a lot lately about why our friends gave surfing away and let their boards gather dust. 

Some got into other scenes. Some pursued careers far from the brine. Some were seduced by their demons, never to return.

We've also been talking a lot lately about why we keep surfing. 

Even in dribbly conditions, after searching for an hour along scoured sandbanks. And we keep coming back to the social aspect of surfing a quiet spot with a couple of pals.

Doesn't matter whether they are riding one fin, no fin or three finned mals. It's the social aspect of sharing the brine under a big blue sky with people dear to us.

A big feed, a coffee or three afterwards and talking story is the icing on the cake.

Here's one for everybody who still goes out even when it's sub-optimal.

Gertrude Stein vs Neil Young

I don't set out to procrastinate or get distracted.

It just happens along the way.

For example, I'm cleaning up my desk. There's a pile of official documents, computer hard drive cables, business cards, shirt buttons (??), a funny note from my staff and other scraps of paper with stuff written on them - ideas from friends on where to buy silk for surfboard fabric underlays, repeat medication slips from the doctor, financial statements and then I spy a post it note with just this written on it "mexsgarage.com.au".

I have no recollection how that came into my possession, so I fire up the computer to investigate it via Google.
It's some sort of automobile website for a crew who do impressive classic olde cars makeovers.

I stare at the post it note again. Is it even my scratchy handwriting?
I decide not and turf it.

While the web is up, I check my email and there's something from one of those online travel agents promising bargain prices. Maybe I can afford that return trip to WA and catch up with Corey at Margaret River, I ponder.
So I send him a text to find out when he's flying out of that mining site in the middle of the desert - the one where he gets paid to blow stuff up and shoot critters like this.

In my distraction, I have let the water for the morning coffee boil and gone cool. I start to reboil it. The water here is suss in summer anyway.

While that's happening, I spot an interesting email from Byron Bay, the epicentre of the surfing rainbow. Ohhhh look at that! Jim Banks has a sale on and the photos of his new Indo board range have me dreaming of exotic locales.
Meanwhile,  the water for the coffee has boiled and cooled again.
I have lost an hour I'll never get back.

The photo below sums up my shifting focus and distraction perfectly.
I bought some beautiful little roses at the markets, thinking I'll do a macro Tina Modotti style shot. I got distracted too many times and now the blooms have gone belly up. Since we are having a heat wave I end up getting some nice shots of rosarian decay.

This is what they should have looked like.

"A rose is a rose is a rose" - Gertrude Stein

I'll probably get distracted and go off on an artistic tangent all the same again in 2014.

It's not all bad, though.

Sometimes artistic deviation can lead to interesting results. As the great sage Young once remarked when commenting on his various stylistic changes away from Mainstream Music:

"Travelling there was really boring 

so I headed for the ditch. 

It was a rough ride 

but I met more interesting people there." 

- Neil Young

Bush spring

bushfires 

and 

back burning

cold wax

to

warm wax

clear moons

surf checks

onshores

spring

Monochrome Monday (Electro Ghoulam)

M0n0chr0me MOnday (me and m0ffs)

Today's post is dedicated to the pioneering O'Brien's -  refugee, boat people who sought a better life on the other side of the planet.
About 150 years ago, a boat named The Queen of the Colonies brought three brothers and their families from Ireland to Australia. On board was a two year old girl, who eventually mothered a girl, who eventually mothered a girl, who now lives on the point overlooking a memorial to the crew of the same boat.
The circle completes.

The Bell Jar

“I saw the years of my life spaced along a road 

in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. 

I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, 

and then the wires dangled into space, 

and try as I would, 

I couldn't see a single pole 

beyond the nineteenth.” 

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Monochrome Monday (grammar optional)

Textish Tuesday (My idea of fun)

Texter Anon

"My idea of fun 

is killing everyone"

Texter Brine 

"Well the Election 

was a massacre.

What you talkin' about?

...Are you OK?"

Turned out my friend was referring to a discussion about the godfather of punk, Iggy Pop two or three days earlier and the Stooges tune "My idea of fun"as found in their first album in 30 years, The Weirdness. Iggy would go. I know it. Scientists should clone his DNA to discover the Indestructible Gene. I'm sure Keith Richards and Ozzy Osbourne have it too. Suggested reading:

"Now is the season

for war without reason"

from The Stooges "My Idea of Fun" 2007