Travel 2019

[corvi]

This is zhelana's December year end summary meme; the next day should be December 09 → talk about art this year, but I am hoping to finish one more piece, so I am jumping ahead to December 23 → travel you did this year

I only went to the mainland once this year (for a con in Vancouver), and the US zero times, which was nice in its way, but perhaps there could be a little more travel next year.

I did, however, take the ferry from Salt Spring Island to work on the Big Island nearly every weekday, which is a lot of time spent in the companionable presence of sea and sky.

The early morning ferry crossing is a long drawn out moment of quiet, over the sunrise sea, winding between the beacons where the sleepy cormorants stretch their wings. Sometimes there are seals or orcas, sometimes the ferry dock is purple with happy starfish. Sometimes crows ride the ferry from Salt Spring to the Big Island. (I don't think I've ever seen one go the other way). People do yoga.juli and I practice jo katas.

I keep a visual journal, where I record the colour of the sea approximately each day. January 2019 is at the top to December 2019 at the bottom.

Looks like the sea tended to purple-grey in late winter and early spring, blue in spring and summer, green in autumn, and grey-green in early winter. Very approximately.

I also write down a couple words (usually vaguely pretentious) about the sea's mood each day. Here's a "word cloud" made from those words by wordclouds.com. The more often I used a word in a daily sea-description, the large a font it appears in. "Crumpled beneath hazy sky like restless stone" stands out and is almost a sentence; I apparently used those words in various combinations a lot this year (last year was "Restless glass").


Here's the colour of the sky each day, which seems to have stronger short term tendencies and weaker seasonal ones, which is something of a surprise:

And here's what colour the crows were:


Crows commuting to the Big Island with me. One leaned into the wind and taunted seagulls for most of the trip; the other contemplated the philosophical implications of a garbage truck that was on the ferry:

EDIT: Posted the rest of my visual journal in the comments.
EDIT 2: Forget the above, I made a separate post for the whole visual journal.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

Heh. I should summarise the well-over-hundred airplane flights that made up my year's commute to work.

I shall wave at you from 11,000 feet tomorrow morning, as we turn to enter the Vancouver glide path.

[corvi]

I would be interested to read that, especially if you tossed in some anecdotes.

[jkatkina]

I bet it was assessing whether or not it could salvage anything cool out of that garbage truck.

I envy the ferry as your transit. I love the ferries amongst the islands.

[corvi]

I really like that I can work on art or read while riding the ferry. It's time that cannot possibly be claimed by chores. If you ever get the overwhelming urge to ride some ferries, you should come visit me. :)

[jkatkina]

well hell, salt spring is a hop skip and a jump away from Galiano, isn't it? We end up out there every now and then; I'll ping you next time we do and maybe we can catch coffee.

[maribou]

I love your visual journals and was hoping I'd get to see this year's soon. And here they are. Happy new year, o favorite crow.

[corvi]

Happy new year, Speaker to the Vanilla Pines! :) (I think sometimes about the walk we took together and how SSI looks a bit like Colorado despite not being mountainous: it is rocky and licheny here, with less water than the mainland. A glacier stole all our soil a long time ago.)

I am delighted you said this, because now I have an excuse to spam you with all the rest of my visual journal! BWA HA HA. <3

[corvi]

deleted, wrong place in thread

[maribou]

<3 <3 <3

Visual Journal: The Moon

[corvi]

Here's the visual journal for the moon. Check out the lunar eclipse January 20! I really enjoyed doing this one, but missing days broke the pattern pretty badly. I think I'd like to do it again, but I am thinking about switching platforms for the visual journal so it's easier to set up a reminder if I've missed the previous day.



Here's the word cloud for my daily descriptions of the moon:



I think I made a lot of complaints that the full moon was keeping me awake; we don't have curtains on the bedroom. :)

Visual Journal: the Forest

[corvi]

This was a new visual journal this year, and over the course of the year, I rolled my eyes at it a lot and wondered what I was thinking when I decided to do it. The two main trees making up the forest here, Douglas Fir and Arbutus, both keep their leaves all year. The vast majority of the time, I was just looking out the window and picking another identical shade of green.

But there are actually several seasonal events that are quite visible and make me happy. The new green growth appears in early spring. The arbutus drop their previous year's leaves in July (after their new leaves have come in) and that's an orangey-yellow band, followed a bit later by an orange reddish band when their bark peels. The Bigleaf Maples, which are few but voluminous, drop their leaves in October, which is a paler yellow band. Hm! I am glad I rendered this to post it to you - it looks a lot better than I expected! I think I will do this one again too.



Wordcloud seems to consist primarily of nouns: mushrooms, moss, arbutus, wind, rain. Very concrete descriptions.

Visual Journal: Subjective Stuff

[corvi]

Here is the colour I selected to describe my feelings each day. Over, a pretty good year, and I was happy (greenish) most of the time, though grey shades represent feeling tired, and I appear to have been tired a lot. Nobody I knew died this year, except the ducks (white band early in the year) who were eaten by a mink. :(



This one is the colour of the "magic rock", an alexandrite set in a pendant juli gave me, matching one she wears. This one was kind of a bust. Alexandrite changes colour in response to UV, and pretty much by definition, if I am filling out my visual journal, I am indoors. So it was the non-UV colour (purple) almost all the time, unless I happened to have noticed it being green earlier and remembered when entering the journal. Might not do this one again next year.



This last one is the answer for "what colour is the light" which was sort of about the feel of the day? More yellow and warm in summer, dark and foggy in winter. It's maybe an exagerated version of the sky colours? This one felt like nonsense while I was doing it, but it actually looks pretty interesting. Might do it again, not sure. Hmmm.

<3

[corvi]

Thank you! I was on the fence about looking at them, and you inspired me to render and examine them all, even the ones, like the forest journal, that I was sure were going to be useless. Thank you for encouraging me to take them seriously this year.

Re: <3

[maribou]

So delighted that you did.