Wandering the internet

Every so often (more and more frequently these days, if I'm honest), I get entranced by the internet. I'll visit somewhere familiar, follow a suggested link with curiosity, become fascinated by where I end up, wander further, next thing I know I'm slightly bewildered, trying to absorb ten sites at once, marveling at the myriad of things I've found.

via Katogi Mari Illustration

Add to this that I only just discovered Flickr. Not that I wasn't aware of it before, of course I was, however I put off delving into it as I'm not (yet) terribly interested in posting my own photos up there. I'd visit it when referred to it by other sites, but I wouldn't stay for long. I'm yet to determine the most efficient way to sift through the phenomenal number of photos on display, but I am, in a haphazard fashion, starting to look around it more.

via Flickr

There's so much inspiring stuff out there.

Saturated

This is the time of day when my neighbourhood turns golden.

Sweetness

My room smells like caramel and the sun is warming my feet.

Starting to glimpse...

The sun is starting to break through the clouds...

Demolition

The house across the street from me was demolished. It was quite fascinating to watch. They started taking it down from the inside, knocking down the interior and exterior walls, then pulling down the roof, making the house implode gradually over several days. Once the house was in pieces, they brought in heavy machinery to organise the debris and load it into a truck.



I was mesmerised. The excavator seemed to have a life of its own, moving like a lumbering, thoughtful, surprisingly dexterous and occasionally clumsy monster. It carefully, and with great attention to detail, arranged the house's remains into piles of wood, metal, organic and brick, much like how some people like to keep the different types of food on their plate separate.



It froze in embarrassment when it accidentally knocked down part of the neighbour's wall. It growled quietly to itself as it went about its work, and dozed in the sun at lunchtime. Distressingly for me, it pulled up the tree next to the house, which I loved to watch from my window as starlings, sparrows and other small birds flitted through it in the afternoons. Now there's just a large expanse of dirt, extending the backyard of the dreadlocked man who lives on the other side of it. I don't think he minds though, as he now has much more room to practice his firetwirling in the middle of the night. So at least I still have something pretty to look at.

Another Sunset

I've always been fascinated by the sky. When I was first given a camera to call my own, I would take photos of sunsets and cloud formations that I thought were pretty, for fear of never seeing something like that again. Of course, since the sky is ever changing, there were times when I would take fifteen photos in the space of five minutes, because that cloud moved slightly or the sky turned a shade pinker or there's a bird there now or a myriad of other reasons. And this was before the advent of digital cameras. I used a lot of film. I have a very large pile of cloud photographs in my drawer that are begging to be transformed into something brilliant but I've no idea what that could be yet.

I'm still cursed with this affliction. My symptoms are even worse now, as I have a digital camera these days, so there's no limit to how many photos I can take.

Slightly Lacklustre...

Didn't achieve very much today, unless you count discovering a bruise on my ankle whose origins are a complete mystery.

Visitor

When I first moved out of home, my new house had a large backyard with a shed. This backyard was a favourite haunt for many of the neighbourhood cats, a discovery I made soon after moving in which delighted me to no end. One cat in particular would lounge on the shed roof pretty much every day, as it was a prime position for soaking up the sun.



He was incredibly friendly, and rather talkative. I took to greeting him whenever I saw him. He was also very enthusiastic when it came to posing for photos.



That cat is one of the things I miss the most about that house.

Another attraction for the neighbourhood cats was the old couch that was in the backyard when I first moved in. Prolonged exposure to the elements turned that couch into something quite disgusting and liable to take on a life of its own, so it was eventually sent off to the dump. After that, our feline patronage declined and I suspect they were protesting the couch's removal.

Nostalgic

For the last two years I've been meaning to gather some things from my parents' house. Two days ago I finally got around to it.


This rainbow of 72 coloured pencils was one of my prized possessions as a kid. I assumed that I'd brought them with me when I left home, until last week, when it was suddenly essential for me to do some colouring and I discovered that they were nowhere to be found.


I miss having animals around. I'd love to have a pet dog, but the way my life is at the moment, that wouldn't be fair on the dog. I'd love to have a cat, but I'm allergic. A mouse is too small to cuddle. So last year I decided that getting a rabbit would be a brilliant idea (and, since then, my friends haven't heard the end of it). For lack of a real rabbit at the moment, I retrieved Monica, one of my favourite childhood toys.


I haven't touched my violin for over ten years. I've always loved it as an instrument, but unfortunately I resented the part where I had to practice and be assessed on my playing. I've been meaning to start playing again for a long time. Now that I actually have my violin, that should be easier to accomplish.

The interesting thing is, for quite a while I considered myself to have grown out of these things. So it wasn't supposed to matter that I'd left them behind. I haven't missed them, but now that I have them again, I feel a bit more like myself. They were such an integral part of my growing up. Their presence is comforting.

Bedroom Love.

I've realised that I adore my bedroom. It was love at first sight. It's not due to the built-in wardrobes, nor the pictures I have plastered all over the walls, nor the fact that it's so spacious, though these are definitely all factors.

It's due to the vast expanse of window which allows me a grand view of the sky and buildings in the distance. I can see rain roll in, clouds dance across the sky, the lights of the city twinkle in the distance, the colour stain of sunsets, birds sweep past (and they seem terribly fond of my roof)... That and the fact that I can see the backyard of the neighbours across the street, and they have a tendency to firetwirl in the middle of the night as I sit at my desk.




And that's not to mention the view of the sunset from the balcony...




Seriously. That's what I see from my balcony in the evening. Pretty happy about that.