Exercise: Old Photo

The last required exercise of the week ended up being short.  We had to take an old photo, preferably not a profile picture, and describe what is going on it, what we see, etc.  Here is mine.

The picture of the World Seido Organization preparing for a demonstration at the Cherry Blossom Festival in 2009 is dear to me.  My sparring partner of 10 years sits behind the glass wall yet still out of sight with me and the younger students.  We were watching over them while the black belts, clearly visible are outside talking in a circle about the demonstration.  Or at least that is what I think they are doing.  Their white uniforms with black belts are quite noticeable in the center of the picture.  The stage, behind them is only a foot or so higher, just high enough to make us visible to the crowd sitting in folding chairs on the cement outside the glass windows.

Exercise: Touch, Feel, Taste. Use your senses.

In this exercise we were asked to go back to the place we observed or to our favorite place and describe it using all of our senses.  Here is my attempt at it.  You may notice it lacks taste, I didn’t want to taste the empty lot.  I am not sure how hygenic it is.

The field as I described it visually has not changed.  The colors are still brown, green, and shades in between.  Sounds over power most senses in this part of town.  Martin Luther King Jr. Way is busy, the noise of cars during the day is loud.  The only noise that overpowers that of the cars is the sound of the Light Rail passing by.  As it crosses the main side street the it blows a dysfunctional horn.  At night without the sound of the traffic or light rail you can hear people yelling or the sounds of wildlife.

Smell is indiscernible from the nearby area.  You can smell the gas from cars that go by.  The city smells overwhelm any of those produced by the plants.  I feel through my shoes the unevenness of the ground.  Piles of dirt, slopes, and other obstructions change how I feel the ground.

Exercise: The Lot Across the Street

Update

I am sorry to those who tried to get to my website recently.  It has been down without my knowledge.  I contacted Dreamhost who promptly fixed it and fixed the other errors caused by it.

The Exercise

Today’s exercise was to go somewhere and describe the scene.  Preferably using as few words as possible for each description.  Here it is:

The lot across from my apartment doesn’t change often.  The only thing that changes is the people who go in it.  On weekends kids play in the short, burnt grass while on the weekdays adults cut through it to get home quicker.  You can’t see it, at least you can’t read it from my window but at the intersection of the two busy streets it meets there is a for sale sign and an advertisement for the UPS store a couple of blocks down.  The lot has been for sale since I have lived here, even though that is not long.

It is not quite clear what this lot used to be, it could have been many things.  The fact that it is more or less level with grass and plants indicates it could have been a park.  Uncompleted paved roads and paths lead into the lot.  At the end of two such paths are piles of wood chips and mulch.  Seveal tall light posts that don’t light up at night imply that it was once a park of some kind.  A third possibility is that it was a parking lot, a sign on one of the light posts indicates that if you park without authorization you will be towed.  This theory is unlikely, the uneven terrain (despite how slight it is), the plants, the grass, and the fact that the paved areas are not all big enough to hold cars, all work against this idea.

A log, prepared like a phone poll but not as long as one lays alone in the lot.  A smaller version of it lays also by itself on the other side of the park.  Miniature versions of them staked in the ground on the edges of the park hold a thin cord to discourage people from entering.

Timeline

This exercise was to create a one year timeline of one year of my life.  This one might get added to.

January
February
March
April
May
-First apartment
June
July
-Transferred to Asset Protection
August
-Quit Best Buy
September
-Second year at P-Safe
-Works second move in day
October
-Met D’Arcy for the first time
November
December
-Turned 21