There’s a lesson in that for all of us– Change jobs more often.
I saw this video on the Le Container blog, a nice minimalist picture blog that, despite it’s penchant for bicycles, has a lot of inspirational creative muse for me. This big-wave surfing video posted today really struck me and I don’t want to lose it, so I’m reblogging it, which I don’t do often.
shipsterns from Dave otto on Vimeo.
I also realized tonight that I’m suppressing the writing urge again. When I get those ideas I’ve just been pushing them down real far until someone else finds them, or something. I had a goal for not doing that so much this year, as I’ll eventually write about when the year ends.
I tried to prep as well as I could last night tying the home-made kayak rack into the truck but somehow neglecting to buy gas, or get cash for the trip. As I ran around this morning in the dark trying to get these errands done I stopped at McDonald’s for a quick breakfast. While my paranoia required a third checking of the rigging securing the kayak to the truck I watched a guy browse DVD’s at the Redbox out front. I briefly wondered what kind day you have lying ahead of you when you’re renting movies before sunup. Perhaps he just likes to plan his evenings well in advance.
I managed to roll into the Provo Harbor marina right about sunup after a missed exit due to construction and a quick trip back up to a near gas station to break a $20 to pay the State Park fee at the unmanned entrance. Brian and Jason were just getting Brian’s little aluminum boat and Jason’s float tube into the water. I quickly joined them excited to get out on the water. In my haste I dropped a can of Pepsi that exploded on the pavement, showering me and my truck with a sticky mist before I managed to kick it safely towards the laughing Jason.
I showed Brian my net and basket and he recommended I borrow his basket because his opinion of the one I got was that it was too small and I should return it and get the bigger one. Since I hadn’t got as far as rigging mine up I figured I’d give it a shot.
Brian got going and towed Jason out beyond the jetty to the open lake where we were fishing. I had declined the tow because I wanted to get a little more experience paddling around. I soon began to question the sanity of this as I was sure to get more paddling in than I probably bargained for in getting around the fishing spot. I made a couple adjustments to the (also home-made) outrigger to keep it more square to the kayak. It either needs a better, permanent mount on the kayak itself, or another brace to keep it from rotating towards the rear as it drags. I tied a bight of the anchor (also also home made) rope from the outrigger to a bracket on the side near the cockpit and that did the trick for now.
Once we were just out past the marina jetty near where the Provo River empties into the lake we started to fish. There were seagulls a-plenty around diving and catching small fish. I had bungled my line setup back on shore and while I was correcting the pole setup I heard Brian’s son over the radio announce he had caught his first fish. Jason quickly responded with another success, and once I got my line in I had one on within a few casts. Then we were all in the thick of it catching White Bass almost as fast as we could. I was limited by the fact that my net, which I had bought for scale-friendiness, was not in the least hook friendly. The first bass had buried his mouth and all three treble hooks into the net and got so tangled I had a tough time getting him free. When I did finally loose the fish from the hook he got a little more liberty than I had intended and disappeared back into the green water, leaving me to struggle with the remaining two barbs imbedded in the net. After that I took precautions in netting all but the head of the fish as best as I could to prevent further cursing.
In a short time I think I had more fish than I had ever caught in one trip. The lure I had been using was getting a bit chewed up and was missing most of the fluffy dressing it had, so I started throwing on lures I’d never used, or had no previous success to just give them a shot. It turns out that these fish would take about anything. I was having a bit of trouble getting them in the basket. Brian had told me that with the floating lid I could pick it up with the fish in the same hand and drop it in one handed. I had very little success at this, but it became sort of a game of roulette for one last chance at escape for the fish. One poor guy managed to leap out of my hand before falling in the basket, hit the kayak flipped off and into the water, but was scooped up by the basket right before the getaway. I started tossing back almost every one I caught unless they were particularly fat. There’s not a lot of eating on White Bass anyway, and I didn’t know how many I could reasonably eat. Secretly I was hoping I could sneak them into Brian’s load.
I actually got a little tired around the 40th catch or so and decided to head over to the weed beds to see if I could get something different. I tried a couple different lures hoping to find a crappie or bluegill, but with no luck. I dug into my tackle box and found a larger lure I hadn’t tried before. I flipped it out near the weeds to the left and brought it in and then flipped it over the other side. It had hardly hit the water when something took it suddenly pretty hard. I thought I had another bass, but as it got near to the boat it almost scared me. I’d never landed such an ugly fish before, and I’ve caught Arctic Grayling.
I ended up paddling over to where Brian and his son were landing crappie and hauled the basket out because my description over the radio wasn’t giving enough detail to identify it for me. It turns out it was a Walleye. I had hooked one before and got it close to shore several years ago with my brother, but it got off before I could land it. I don’t remember it being this scary, though.
I did decide to keep that smaller basket.
P.S.
Brian wrote the trip up on his blog http://hnaf.blogspot.com/2011/09/september-21st-white-bass-action-provo.html where I yoinked a picture of us being towed back in.
I’ve had this dream before, or one just like it. And I’ve had several this month. They’re interchangeable, so it doesn’t really matter. nothing I can do matters. I can’t save the people with me, but really they’re all me, and I get to play all their parts, and one of their demises, my demises, sets up the way I win in the end, and I can remember how it ends, I just can’t ever get to the ending. So I die and die and die. And one by one there are fewer people in the dream. And I cut, and shoot, and smash the villain and I feel all the damage as if it’s done to me, so I guess I’m him too, and maybe that’s why I can’t die, but I do, just the good parts of me die. One by one. So I run away, but no matter how I try to lose him, and I even get lost myself in all the random turns, I end up always running right towards him. And he always smiles before he kills me.
Tonight I had him. I’d fooled him good and come back towards him running up towards the canoe loaded with the ill-gotten treasure that he’d killed so many for. And I shot an amazing shot with the rifle I’d found in the crawlspace between the flumes that I had dropped when I’d been killed. The shot went true and I heard it plink through the ceramic mask he was wearing in the boat. But as I got around to the side of the kayak I saw it was his son in front, and not him, and I remembered that killing his son makes him mad. He got out the scissors, and I hate the scissors, so I run.
The sets on this one were great, a small island with victorian amenities and mechanics, lots of mechanics. Water flumes and lifts, cannons, silver scissors and blunderbusses. Treasure that one character dies trying to collect, but he… I… explain to me that it’s not even valuable, just really neat, right before I get a bullet in the head and the collector dies in front of me in his delay to look at the vintage glass labels eroding in the perpetual, ankle deep torrent. I run from the body still feeling the heat of the blood and bullets splash around me.
The villain’s henchmen can die, and they’re not me, but they don’t die easy and they are endless so I have to slog through that, too. I can even wake up, I just did. But if I don’t stay up they’re right there below the pillow waiting for me to return, so I don’t go back until I can’t help it.
I made some resolutions near the start of the year, and I’ve been thinking about them some as half the year is gone. There’s still too much snow on Lone Peak to have ventured up there yet, and with the late spring (and more than a little laziness) I don’t know if I’m going to make my running goal. But the one I’ve been thinking about most this week is my failure so far to increase my writing output. I think a lot of things, but unless they really grab me by the throat and demand to be born, I find it really easy to just push them to the back of my mind where they whither in the dark.
I spent the evening putting up drywall in the garage (at least that resolution is moving along) and came in the house just after sunset, dirty, tired and thirsty. I decided in the absence of an open smoothie shop to just run to the store for something tasty. On the way back I was ambushed by one of those thoughts. It was well into twilight and the streets were dark, but the sky was still shining with that last glimmer of daylight. The air was cool and I drove with the windows down. I just wanted to keep driving aimlessly. There was a little lightning in the distance and it was just one of those nights, the promise of which can get me through a winter. And I remembered countless nights like it, driving alone or with friends. Hanging out and drinking sodas on the trunk of a car and watching the stars come out. All these gilded memories were from so long ago, none of them recent. And I wondered, is it because I was so young that those first experiences were seen with new eyes and had no better memory with which to compare? Is it that I am too shackled to the reality I’ve molded about myself to actually just cast free and explore and enjoy at the spur of a moment? Or is it that I’m now experienced, and driving aimlessly is not the adventure it once was, and any attempt to replicate the past will only prove a sad counterfeit?
I used to live for summer, especially summer nights, and the rest of the year was torture waiting to get to that point where I could feel like living was actually worth something. And then the years started flying by, and I found that I didn’t get what I used to out of the brief season of warmth. At first I thought it was, perhaps, that I finally grew up and spent my summers behind the desk my dad used to tease me about, but the more I think about it the more I’m inclined to say that it is a lack of new. It’s so easy to fall into a routine and to accept that every day is going to be much like the last. To fall back into the security of day-to-day duties that eat up the months without much growth. But I think I need to start pushing a boundary here and there. It’s not enough to just trade idle downtime for task completion. I am happy things are getting done, but it’s time to start living again, as difficult and scary as that may be. Driving aimlessly filled a purpose once, and the memories of those golden times could be fuel enough to get me moving again.
Roughly seven months ago I sat on a Jackson Square curb on a warm late-autumn day in New Orleans. I was killing time before my flight home and it was just one of those moments that was perfect. It struck me that I have those often, and my heart sank as I realized that it was likely that in a few weeks time that memory would be lost with most of it’s predecessors. Ironically, that melancholy thought stuck with me, and gave me an anchor to that sunny morning. I only mention this as I was just sitting out in the cool dark of my front porch at 11:30 at night listening to it rain. It was another of those times where, for once, everything about me was still. I could smell the irises, mingling with the smells of the rain and earth. The clouds spread out featurelessly, reflecting the city lights. I thought back to this afternoon’s lunch at The Point up on the hill and how I looked down over the city and realized again how small downtown really is. I noticed the grass could use cutting again already and that I ought to make sure the violets get watered more often, because they look so good against the rocks. It struck me as odd that the trees have leafed out so quickly, and yet it doesn’t seem as surreal as it feels it should after so long looking at them bare. Maybe because this is the way it’s supposed to be. Stan the cat ran up to me as he does whenever he discovers I’m outside. He hadn’t bothered to stay out of the rain. He never does. He never worries how uncomfortable it is to have a cat sharing his damp, shedding coat as he insistently crawls across your lap. And it struck me that maybe this is something I’m missing. Maybe I’m only to the point where I can enjoy the rain.
So a couple months ago I had this idea of putting together a video using the Haysi Fantayzee song “Shiny Shiny” with video from Joss Whedon‘s “Firefly“. It was one of those ideas that seem to grab me like a chew toy and shake-shake-shake. Often I get away with just pushing them to the background long enough that they go away, but I actually started in on this one as I had the tools (for once) to do it a little more than half-assed. Actually, the titles are somewhat half-assed, but as anyone who has had the misfortune to be around me lately knows that about 40 hours into this project I was wondering what I was doing and longing to ditch it for the next shiny thing.
ah, I’ve been saying “shiny” a lot these days, sorry…
My apologies go out to Debbie, who’s seen and heard this almost as many times as me, and a thanks to everyone (including Debbie) who’s been patient with my constant need for feedback as to if I was being too literal, or character-centric or whatever. It actually was quite fun to do, and I wonder what would have happened if I’d have stuck with a film major. On the maddening side, it was one of those things I could have refined over and over again until the end of time, but I finally told myself that I hadda finish it and just let it be what it is.
I did end up thinking back a lot while I was doing this to my video editing class I took at the “U” from Kent Maxwell. Maybe I did actually learn something in all the years I’ve been on campus after all. But I’m not sure how useful it was, outside of entertaining/punishing me for the last few weeks.
“Three is very good, a very good number. Resilient. Almost impervious!”
“Five is good too, but so common and worn.”
He took a sip of the iced tea, a Morse ring of condensation left on the table in drips and dashes.
“Eight is nice… the whole Fibonacci series is very nice. Not like those powers of two, so soulless and bulky.” slowly shaking his head and gesturing to the skyscrapers on either side of the tiny garden, “like these.”
“Compound interest.”
“Going places…”
The quiet settled again and the birds overtook the traffic.
“Not to say that two isn’t a good number. He had humble beginnings. Fibonacci, you know.”
“11 is good.”
“Primes are good…”
“but lonely.”
While wandering around my web neighborhoods this morning, I ran across a list on io9.com about 10 ways of looking at firefly. I think the X things about <whatever> is kind of a weak premise to begin with and there seemingly no limits to which this device is used on the web. To me it seems a little bit of a slap-dash (to borrow an apt description from my boss) way of throwing together an article with as little effort as is possible, but I must admit that at times I do get sucked into them. After all, who doesn’t want to compare their own ideas with someone who is going to lay down a delineated list? In most cases the list seems to be the limit of the consideration given to the topics and no further attempt is made at analysis. Cracked seems to be one of the better exceptions to this rule as their webiste seem to subsist on these lists, only with more depth. (I got sucked into the memes that went viral before the internet list as I was verifying the url)
The Io9 article seems to be a prime example of what I dislike about list articles, it’s brief and superficial and doesn’t do justice to a great show. I do have to confess, at times I spend an inordinate amount of cycles contemplating Firefly, but I’m not what I’d consider a “Browncoat”. I’ve found myself immersed in a learning project lately that is decidedly Firefly-centric and has caused me a lot of contemplation about the nature of the short-lived series.
To say Firefly lacks depth isn’t accounting for the fact that it didn’t even get the first season completely aired before it was cancelled. I think Joss’ following Fox project “Dollhouse” is a good example of how a more complex second season could have followed had Firefly been given the chance. Both the first seasons of Firefly and Dollhouse were just laying groundwork for the character arcs that were on the way. Unfortunately Dollhouse also just started to get good before they got the axe and had to wrap things up in a hurry.
What is moral?
This topic alone could be split into its own top 10 list. We have several comparisons of moral inequalities from the most grandiose as “when is it moral for governments to impose their will upon those that do not want it” in the case of the civil war where the Alliance of the core planets defeated the outlying Independents who wanted to live a life free of big government interference. Scaled down we are also given example after example of the petty fiefdoms and oppressive oligarchy’s that take root where the arm of the Alliance fails to dominate.
Corporate morality seems to also be present in the form of the ubiquitous Blue Sun Corporation, whose logos adorn billboards, t-shirts and labels throughout the series. We are led to believe that Blue Sun had something to do with River’s physical and psychological transformation as she reacts negatively to the Blue Sun logo in a pair of instances in violent fashion. From this we can infer that there would have been more of an arc of storyline on the morality of the corporate influence on an individual’s freedom.
On an interpersonal level we have examples of how morality guides the greater arcs of the individual characters. Mal sees himself as a sort of Robin Hood, but in the end many of his exploits benefit not the poor, or even his crew, but the criminal middle-men who hire him to do their dirty work. Yet, scraping by as they do, he often jumps to fulfill missions where the profit to himself is scant, if nonexistent through some ideal of what is right. Simon gave up a lucrative and prestigious career as a surgeon for the love of his sister, but what he sees as his duty to family supersedes any personal considerations. The mercenary, Jayne, sees everything through the filter of personal profit and openly refuses to act in anything but a selfish manner, even to the detriment to those around him. Inara makes her living as a high-class licensed prostitute that most of society accepts amorally if not semi-religiously. Mal continuously reduces her status to “whoring” and at one point in the series Inara accuses Mal of hurting his own prospects for criminal activity by staying away from profitable locations to keep her from plying her trade. Yet Mal tries to keep Inara’s reputation clean by separating her involvement from the rest of the crew’s illicit activities
The pastoral isn’t always idyllic and the technological isn’t always liberating
We have the tendency to look at the past through a nostalgic filter of a simpler time when men could live free, often without giving much consideration to the hardships of lives lived without the benefits of technology we experience. Also, we frequently don’t see the chains with which we are bound by the technological wonders that do provide our lives with such ease. As the crew of Serenity moves between worlds we are offered glimpses of both the technologically brimming core planets where everything is monitored, analyzed and policed, and the backwater fringe worlds in dire need of basic medicines and necessities. We see slavers and bureaucrats, criminal kingpins and secret agents and are confronted with the fact that no society on either end of the technological extreme is without its drawbacks.
Firefly offered a unique blend of Science Fiction and Westerns, two genres that offer freedom from the constraints of normality to evaluate our existence. Sci-fi traditionally inspects what it means to be human, and westerns give the freedom to evaluate the components of a society and how individuals relate to the structure our communities provide. Together with morality as a fulcrum, the Firefly universe provided a complex scale to measure our own expectations of the world we live in while being entertained by a rich, imaginative environment with the freedom to explore nearly limitless sociological combinations.
