Surfing | Static Image

It’s weird being back in real-life for just under a week now, after traipsing up the West Coast from LA up to San Francisco and Seattle, then back down to Malibu to attend my sister’s graduation. I shot purely on film and didn’t even have a digital camera with me, so it will be a while before I start to slowly get my films processed — but hopefully it will be like wine and age into maturity, best to be shared around.

Below are a few of my photos photos from the last batch of film I got back. I was super flattered when Reatha at Film Soup decided to feature these shots as part of her “Scanning of the Week”, you can check out her post here.

All taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 at Hard to Find Bookstore in Onehunga:

It’s funny how these photos captured a golden afternoon in all its glory and nothing else. We’d gone to one of our favourite places, I’d tripped on a book going up the stairs (that place is brimming with books to the point of dangerousness), which led me to almost falling down the stairs, I couldn’t find the book I’d hoped to find, and then was struck with a strange curiosity and moral dilemma when I found a handful of old photos tucked into a book. That sentence is a rambling mouthful to read, but so was that day. It all screeched to a halt when my car remote ran out of battery and I couldn’t deactivate my immoboliser to start the car and didn’t want to ruin his birthday dinner plans. What a mess. And yet the photos show none of this but merely the fleeting split seconds that I had decided to click the shutter, or left it on a timer to put myself in a photograph. I think that’s what I enjoy most about the photos that I take. I’d like to think that they’re very honest and documentary-styled, since I don’t “set-up photoshoots” and stuff — yet I hope they’re kind of fleeting and in media res, maybe making it a little dreamy, that you feel like they might be lying.

Ironically, since I’ve arrived back from America, my little yellow car has finally had its last legs with me, and I feel like my adolescence has really died along with it. All the music that was blast, the excited, cramped, drunken passengers, the driveways and carparks and drive-thrus that car has seen me taxi people in. It’s yet another thing sentiment I just have to put down and let go.

I’m also really struggling with living in the moment right now — I’m looking backwards, at easier days, at happier times, or looking forwards, looking forward to things in the future. There’s a roast dinner to celebrate a friend’s engagement on Thursday evening, or the potential of a job offer, also that day. There’s a comedy act I agreed to go to on Friday, there’s my two hockey games, and maybe getting some music recorded or something, and hopefully cramming in one last surf before my wetsuit becomes too useless for the winter. There’s the further stuff, the promise of the summer holidays, whether I’m working or not, I won’t have to study for a couple of months. I might actually spend all my summer wages on a trip back to my favourite city. Or do something else. Regardless, I keep looking away from the right now and avoiding being in my head. I know that’s how people cope with stress and pain and difficulty (and apparently how Generation Y just likes to live on their smartphones, period), but I know I need to be more present, especially if I want to get my academic shit together. I honestly feel like I would be a straight straight A student if I was getting paid to study, rather than accruing debt to do so. But I’m sure everyone else feels the same. So it’s back to playing catch up on law readings and trying to compose so I can finish my LAST EVER music paper and get one degree finished. Here I go again with the looking-forward-too-much thing. To be honest I’m actually fucking terrified of finishing my music degree.

I mustn’t be the the only person who feels like it is much easier to continue something, that it is to start it in the first place. A couple of months ago, I was on a really good health and fitness streak — it was towards the end of the hockey season, and I was also doing really well at the gym. And then I stopped.

Blah. I have a tonne of “excuses” which I see as fairly legitimate reasons, but the bottom line is — I stopped. I don’t actually regret it, because those extra hours of not exercising meant either much-needed sleep or charts being fixed or practise or reading the backlog of law cases I had accumulated, etc. but it still sucks. I wished that I had simply been more motivated or less lazy or managed my time better, but I don’t actually regret it at all.

The point is, now I have to start all over again. Yesterday I went to the gym for the first time in a long time, and I had to bust my arse to do the same routine that I was just about to upgrade from, seven or so weeks ago. I wondered how on earth I had done more reps with heavier weights, and my declining fitness really showed at 11-a-side summer hockey on Monday night. I had to play two positions (neither of which I usually play) simultaneously towards the end of the game when we were a player down, and I just felt like walking instead. I have hockey again tonight and have agreed to meet a friend at the gym right afterwards — the prospect of which frightens me immensely. Gulp.

Recently, howtobea20something posted about a “Self-Improvement Summer”, and a lot of what I want to do overlaps with his list, so I guess what I’m embarking on is some kind of self-improvement mumbo jumbo as well… and it starts with continuing this little streak of exercise that I’ve started. Starting was the absolute worst part, now I’ve just got to keep it going. Which also relates to me struggling with learning to surf. Apparently I’m not really struggling and I only suck as much as someone who’s only attempted it once. But I hate being bad at things, so I feel like a total failure so far. The boyfriend’s board had to get repaired this past weekend and I was moving house, but we’re going again on Sunday and sometime next week I’ll get a proper lesson along with a friend or two.

For the record, I’m not one of those mindless souls at the gym who just does a shitty, half-arsed routine and goes home. Nor am I trying to kid myself that I can change my body type and want to shed 15kg. I mostly just enjoy the feeling of being fit and able to do and lift things with relative ease.