COMPLAINING

So I'm just having a whinge about how I hate flash...

I am having some troubles with my third piece. I had planned in my timetable to have it finished by yesterday and now it is today and it is STILL not finished even though I started it about a week ago, or maybe a little less. It's not that I don't know what to do, it's just that I'm doing sooo much frame by frame animation with this one and it just takes forever. I get one lines of text done and I feel I need a break, unfortunately the frame by frame stuff is just boring to do. The fun part I suppose is working with the fonts and even confusing myself thinking 'hmmm I wonder what that letter could be' which is cool, but also reminds me what a sad life I must have if I am so excited by wingdings and wingdings 2 and wingdings 3 oh and 'vacations' aren't they cute.

I have been planning to make some more 'sliders' for this blog of my pieces and how they have been coming along but usually I wait for the weekend so that I can be on a faster internet connection so that I can upload the pictures efficiently but it seems time is running a bit fine so I may have to do it today and just let it take a while or make sure the pictures are as small as possible (which may defeat the purpose).

My third piece uses the poem that I made at the start of the semester using the methods we were taught in class about taking a word and having lines streaming off it or however you describe it. One of my words was Broadwater and I liked the poem that I got out of it because I realised that not only did it sound kind of nice, it was very personal and came from real events instead of projecting my events into another character's life as one may usually do when writing prose or poetry, if that makes sense. I was able to get out feelings that I knew I had in me for quite some time but was unable to see how to fit them together in a text. But by putting them under the label of Broadwater I was able to realise that it was the location that bound them together more than anything, and shows that it also may be useful to consider writing poetry using things such as who what when where and why as key notes, for example my broadwater piece used 'where', but completely dismissed 'when' as each line happened at a different time, but all within the last couple of years i suppose. hmm so that is Alinta's poetry writing lesson for today... yes it was pretty lame... I also advise not to give this 'who what whatever' thing to poets just starting out, as it may turn out some horrendous work.

Just to procrastinate even more, I'd like to tease out the lines of this poem and the instances that go along with them...

I wish I had some letters I could scratch into a bench.

obviously this refers to people who scratch loved ones initials into things. I suppose it's a rather adolescent thing to do, and I see it on benches down at the broadwater, and think of how those people are probably not still together anyway because that is how optimistic I am about teenagers. Psychologically, it makes me think about how I never did things like that as a teenager and that I feel I missed out on a fun part of my life and perhaps now I'm trying to make up for my teenage years, and wishing I could do teenage things without people thinking I was immature.

The stranger tells me of how his baby died. Says she had a name like mine.

This happened a couple of years ago when an annoying young man, a couple of years older than me perhaps, came down to the broadwater and stared at me while I was swimming. He sat on the only stairs I could take to leave so that I had to step over him to get away. After about an hour os being looked at I decided I really had to leave, and as I was stepping over him he started to talk of course, and started to tell me how his daughter had an aboriginal name like mine, and that she had died as an infant. I saw him again a couple of hours later crossing the road and again I had to stop and talk. I'm glad I haven't seen him since.

Wonder what the fishermen know about the full moon.

I like to walk along the broadwater at night or just as the sun is going down and the moon is coming up. When the full moon is coming up over the broadwater it looks very beautiful, and there is often fishermen down there watching it as well.

I almost slipped taking photos of the burning boat.

At the start of the year there was a little boat that had been tied up at the broadwater and someone has set it on fire. I didn't actually see it on fire but I saw the aftermath. It looked really cool - a half sunked and burnt out thing sitting in the shallows so I got my camera and walked out on some of those slippery mossy big round things to get close enough to take some pictures of it and could have easily fallen on my arse into the water getting my camera wet.

Cars bright like neon flash past like signs.

Marine Parade, Labrador in general I suppose.

I look like I haven't been kissed in a long time.

A couple of years ago I sat parked in a car by the water and someone said something similar to this to me.

Stingrays ticklish under my hand.

My dad has told me that while kayaking in the broadwater you can reach out and play with the stingrays and that they are cute like dogs and like to play games and be stroked. Of course we have a different kind of respect for them since THAT THING happened....... lol

The stranger mumbles broken language.

One night going for a walk along the water there was a strange old man who was talking to people are he was very hard to understand, not sure if he was speaking english or not. Then he strode out across the road still talking to himself. He was with the fishermen I think.

I wish I had some letters I could scratch into a bench.
Flashy flash flash.
Broken language kiss.
A name like mine in a burning boat.
Scratch into a bench.
A long
long
time.

This is just shifting and rearrangement of the prior lines, quite obviously. Just to see what else could be come up with when moving it around. Like moving things around in speaksonia maybe? And a good way to sum up the poem, by reffering back and making the reader remember all the lines again. And 'a long long time' is important there on the end... not even sure why... but it really is.