DIY PickleBall Paddle

July 5, 2020March 28, 2023 ~ Dylan ~ 3 Comments

Here’s a quick how-to recipe for making your own pickleball paddle! Bear in mind that, as much as I strive to stay within regulations, homemade paddles are not permitted for “official” play. But we’re just building and playing for fun anyway.

Step 1: Cut out paddle

Using a scroll saw, I cut out the main paddle shape from a scrap piece of 3/8″ plywood. Officially speaking, it seems like just about any shape is allowed, as long as the combined length and width don’t exceed 24″, and the paddle length doesn’t exceed 17″.

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Step 2: Cut out the handle

I fashioned a handle from an old hockey stick I found in the garage. 6″ does the trick for my hand.

Step 3: Cut the handle notch

I cut a notch down the centre of the handle, where the paddle slips in. I used a hacksaw for the cut, then cleaned it up with a flat file.

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Step 4: Attach the handle

I used a bit of wood glue between the faces, and two small nails to make absolutely sure the paddle doesn’t go flying off. That would definitely not be regulation.

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Step 5: Add a hook for the wrist strap

Just a simple hobby-store hook, screwed into the butt end of the handle.

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Step 6: Snazzy coat of paint

Of course, before painting, sand down everything smooth. And bear in mind for whatever type of finishing you do, the maximum roughness is 40μm peak-to-valley. If, like me, you made this with plywood you’ll never get to regulation roughness. However, if, like me, you made this yourself you’re out of regulation already anyway.

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Step 7: Handle grip and… you’re done!

A couple of layers of hockey tape, a bit of string for the wrist strap, and you’re off to the court!

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Hammock Philosophy

May 28, 2020September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ 1 Comment

I was doing some thinking. Thought I’d jot down some thoughts here in an unstructured and largely unedited way, mostly just so that I wouldn’t forget them. Perhaps best to not put too much stock into anything.

Philosophy is best done from a hammock in the shade of an apple tree. Ideally with a cool beverage.

This one strikes me as a no-brainer. No explanation needed, no explanation offered.

Do it well, not fast.

The inspiration for this one, I think, comes from Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Since I read it about two years ago, I’ve been thinking often about the concept of Quality, and what that means for me. I think it’s always been something I’ve held in high regard, but I never really had a name or a concrete conception of it until reading ZAMM. It’s a notion of taking the time to work with something until it’s right; understanding and accepting when it’s not, and continuing to work with it.

I also read through a good chunk of Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science, and Personalities, edited by Jim Williams (a surprisingly entertaining read). A number of the engineers that wrote articles for that compilation referred to an ancient electrical engineering analysis technique known as the “what if?” method. Essentially, to analyze a circuit, the engineer would consider “what would happen at point a if I applied voltage x at point b” for all possible combinations of a, b, and x. They would answer the question for themselves theoretically before running the test, and any discrepancy, even due to measurement error, had to be thoroughly understood and explained before the circuit was considered completely analyzed. The description of such a process made EE sound like a beautiful and pure form of the scientific method. There were many tales of engineers that would skip the process would have their ICs out the door quicker, but inevitably end up with unexplainable failures. Understanding every little detail of the system, and having the patience to turn over every stone before moving on to the next field seems to me to represent scientific inquiry in its highest and purest form.

Before closing this section, I’d like to breathe a word of caution against perfectionism. Here, when I speak of Quality, and doing things well, I speak of taking the time to truly understand the thing you’re building or doing. Iteration on an idea or prototype is not just a necessary evil–it’s a good thing. It helps build the understanding. And the understanding is, I think, what we’re really here for. Cogito ergo sum, and all that jazz.

Time is relative anyway; don’t let it push you around.

I’ve been reading Your Brain is a Time Machine by Dean Buonomano. A great read so far, and has really got me thinking a lot about time. Coincidentally, I’ve also been reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, which also offers a number of mind-bending considerations. One note that struck me from Buonomano’s book, was a quote from the Roman poet Plautus, from the 2nd century BCE:

The gods confound man who first found out / How to distinguish hours! Confound him too / Who in this place set up a sun-dial, / To cut and hack my days so wretchedly / Into small pieces! When I was a boy, / My belly was my sun-dial–one more sure, / Truer, and more exact than any of them. / This dial told me when twas proper time / To go do dinner, when I ought to eat; / But, now-a-days, why even when I have, / I can’t fall to, unless the sun gives leave. / The town’s so full of these confounded dials…

If poets were lamenting the oppressive control of the clock and meeting schedules back in the 2nd century BCE, what hope do we have now that we can measure and break down our days with an accuracy of 10e-18 seconds? Well, as it turns out, when you can measure time that accurately you realize it’s actually relative. Even objective, scientific time depends on you–where you are relative to other massive objects and how fast you’re going. So don’t let it push you around.

You only control You. Only you control you.

The first half of this one I heard iterated many times from my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Manson. I recently read it echoed through Stoic philosophy, which I can only assume is where Mr. Manson got it from. I came across the Stoics in a particularly good read: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine. Don’t let the title throw you off; it’s not actually cheesy. Essentially the crux of this one (for me at least) is that if you’re setting goals for yourself that are based on other people, you’re in for disappointment. While in the hammock this afternoon I realized that an implicit goal I had been working toward, and that had been giving me a lot of stress, was that I wanted to do meaningful work, and be respected for the contributions I make. Trouble is, how do you measure “meaningfulness” in your work, especially before it’s had a chance to do anything in the world? And how do you control whether other people respect your work? Bad goals. Much better would be just to focus on doing work of high Quality. Do that right, and meaningfulness and respect are sure to follow.

The second half of this one came to me as I was writing down the first half. I haven’t thought it all the way through just yet, but it seems like there might be something to it.

Let it come with time.

You don’t have to have all the answers right away. Jot it down, come back to it later. Or let someone else come back to it. The answers won’t all come even within your lifetime, so don’t worry about having them all right now.

One thing that struck me while reading A Brief History of Time was that it appeared that Einstein didn’t really grasp the full implications of his general theory of relativity when he published it. Only when other people read it did they make connections with other areas of physics, and realize the full implications. If Einstein doesn’t know it all, who does?

A thing born quickly dies quickly.

I was thinking about what the meaning of life might be.

My thoughts wandered back to the Musee Mechanique that I visited in San Francisco almost exactly a year ago. There you’ll find loads of wonderful antique arcade machines, music boxes, player pianos, etc. In a few places around the museum, tacked up with scotch tape, were inkjet signs on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, reading:

PLEASE BE CAREFUL. SOME OF THESE MACHINES ARE OLDER THAN YOU WILL EVER BE.

Something about the message hit me in just the right place. That means the machines are also older than their creators ever got to be. At the same time that I was in San Francisco, Alex was touring Japan. She had told me about some sacred floorboards that had been stained with the blood of samurai who had committed seppuku around 700 years ago.

This all lead me to thinking about how the actions you take in your life have effects and leave artifacts that last far longer than you do. So a thought that I’ve been rolling around but haven’t fully committed to is the idea that the meaning of life is to do meaningful work. A bit of a tautology here, and the idea hinges on a precarious definition of “meaningful”. But throughout our lives we spend our energy doing things. Bringing order out of the entropy. Entropy works to undo whatever we’ve done, and largely succeeds–except at unravelling the things that other people have found meaningful. Do a thing really well, and people will work to maintain it despite the natural destructive forces of the world. Have an idea that’s really good, and other people will work with it and riff off it.

In order to do a thing well, you have to take your time. In order for the thing to live longer than a short while, it has to be made well. So, in summary, a thing born quickly will die quickly also.

Pleasure has merit also. Its danger, like anything else, comes in arriving at it too quickly.

Having not found a satisfying answer for the meaning of life, I decided to consider the flipside of the coin to see if there might be anything useful over there. Maybe there’s no point in doing meaningful work. Any advances you make that aren’t disintegrated into entropy will be buried under still more thirst for development. If your life’s meaning is tied up in helping other people, you have to at some point wonder what’s the point of their lives? To help everyone else, or you? So the point of humanity is to help humanity? Maybe. But perhaps dissatisfying. What if the point of life is just to enjoy it?

If we take that to an extreme, and imagine a person living solely for their own hedonistic pleasures, we quickly conjure up a caricature of someone lying to, stealing from, and abusing other people, while maximizing the frequency with which they participate in drug abuse and sex. Quickly we can imagine this person living a short an unsatisfying life full of hatred and fear.

But what if we didn’t take it quite so extreme? What if a person maximized their long-term satisfaction and happiness, rather than a short-term hedonistic pleasure? How would a person do that? Cultivate meaningful relationships, work hard at things they’re passionate about, plan for the future, and take time in each moment to soak up all of the pleasure that it might contain. This seems not only not dangerous, but beneficial.

My takeaway here is to plan and be responsible for long-term pleasures and satisfaction. In the meantime, take some time to enjoy whatever comes your way. Spend some time in your hammock. It’s nice.

Turtles live an awfully long time.

That they do. Jonathan was born in 1832.

Splatter Painting

April 29, 2019September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been working hard at loosening up recently, and let me tell you: there’s nothing quite so therapeutic as taking a piece of cardboard out behind the barn and giving it a good swift beating—with a paintbrush, of course. Barn Splatter.jpg

I’m starting to play around with ideas about the tension between chaos and order, and between raw and curated beauty; things that have been on my mind since I wrote The Silence Here. I think there’s a lot more gold to be mined here, and I’ve had a lot of fun already.

Untitled (Acrylic on cardboard)

Chester (Watercolour on paper)

I was surprised to find that a loose, dripping, splattering technique also worked quite well in watercolour, a medium which I always enjoyed because of the amount of control it affords. I was amazed to find how beautifully it works when you relinquish some of that control, and let the paint just do what it wants. This photo doesn’t quite do it justice, but there are some really interesting things happening with the colours, especially around Chester’s eyebrows.

In short, I suspect I’ll be playing around with my newfound techniques more; there’s a lot more fun to be had here.

Automatic Levelling of A Prosthetic Wrist

March 28, 2019September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been saving this one up for a while… and it’s finally finished! An automatically levelling wrist to help reduce movement compensation in people who use prostheses:

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There are a lot of details about how this device works and what effect it actually has on compensatory movements in my M.Sc. thesis that I don’t have the space to include here. For those of you not looking to casually browse a 105-page technical document, I’ll give you the quick run-down:

Motivation

Anyone who doesn’t have a fully-functioning wrist is forced to use the rest of their body to compensate for the lack of movement there. For people who’ve suffered from an upper-limb amputation, this constant compensation can lead to strain injuries in the back, shoulder and neck.

Commercially available prosthetic wrists don’t have enough degrees of freedom (and are generally quite difficult to control), making it nearly impossible to lift something to a high shelf while keeping it level. Allowing the prosthesis to take care of some of the control burden and keep the hand level on its own might be able to get rid of some of these compensatory movements.

How the Levelling Works

The secret ingredient is the addition of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) in the base of the hand. This sensor can tell which direction gravity is pointing, and gets the angles φ and θ. The control computer then uses two separate control loops: one that keeps the rotation angle φ =180°, and another that keeps θ to whatever angle the user sets.

Does It Help Reduce Compensation?

We did a study with 12 able-bodied people wearing a simulated prosthesis in a motion-capture environment, testing on two well-documented clinically-relevant tasks. One had a significant vertical component to it, while the other had motions mostly in the horizontal plane.

The brief summary is that we found that an automatically levelling wrist may reduce compensatory movements in shoulder flexion for vertically-oriented tasks, but doesn’t provide a statistically significant benefit on horizontally oriented tasks. Through performance metrics and user satisfaction surveys, we also determined that the reliability of an automatically levelling wrist is a major design criterion to consider for future research in this area.

To A Finished Thesis!v2

Robot from Household Trash

February 27, 2019September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ 1 Comment

A few months ago, the New Trail magazine contacted me with an interesting request: They wanted me to design and build a robot out of household trash. At the time, I was right in the middle of writing my thesis, so of course, I jumped at the opportunity for something else to work on.

In order to be able to call the thing a robot, I figured it needed to take in some information about its environment, and change its behaviour based on that input. Making this thing out of household trash and salvaged components meant that I would have to keep it simple… but as with most of my projects, my ideas tend to run away with themselves.

This little guy has bump sensors on either side made from popsicle sticks and carefully placed tin-foil electrical contacts that allow it to switch directions and run the other way whenever it runs into something. The tin-can body turns around based on the same input, using the mechanical linkage to spin a central pencil axis.

The New Trail has issued a challenge to anyone who wants to try building one of their own, and they’ve put together a nice assembly manual for the project as well. If you do end up attempting a build, I will make one suggestion: have lots of glue on hand. The article isn’t joking when it says I used a lot of glue.

Photo and video courtesy of New Trail Magazine.

Guitar Refinishing

October 10, 2018September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ Leave a comment

About four or five years ago, I bought an old electric guitar mostly because it was really cheap and I didn’t have an electric one yet. However, the previous owner had coated it in gaudy, sparkly stickers which refused to come off without leaving gobs of glue behind, and the receiver for the whammy bar was cracked badly enough that it couldn’t be used at all. It was fun to play around with for a while, but never really got much use because it was in such a state of disrepair. Then a few weeks ago I picked it up again, tried to tune it, and broke a string. Like a hardened drug addict, this guitar had to hit rock bottom before it was going to admit it had some problems.

At first I thought I’d just replace the broken string. Then I figured why not change the set? Keep things consistent. Then I thought hey, while these strings are off I should probably get rid of all this glue residue. To do that properly I had to take off the knobs and covers. Once those were off, it only made sense that I fix the whammy bar receiver while I was inside… before I knew it, I had a full-blown restoration project.

The sticky residue was the first hurdle to overcome, but a little bit of nail polish remover and some elbow-grease did the trick nicely.

Once the glue was off, I couldn’t ignore the fact that this clean white body was a canvas waiting to be painted with something more expressive… and so the project grew yet again.

I wanted the design to be mainly black to match the already black head, and I also wanted it to be somehow related to music without being trite or over-done. What I eventually settled on is a symbol of music bringing colour and variety to an otherwise rigid and mundane world. I first painted the rainbow motif across the centre using acrylic paint, then masked off the grid using green painter’s tape cut to approximately 1/8″ thickness. After masking, I painted the entire guitar black. Finally, I sprayed on a droplet rainbow using the acrylics mixed with water by flicking the tip of my paintbrush. Once I took off the mask, I sprayed the whole thing with many layers of clear glaze topcoat.

The whammy bar receiver was originally cast iron, and very brittle. I fashioned a new one from an old piece of angle-iron and a welded-on nut, then spray-painted the whole thing to help prevent rusting.

Once everything was put back together I took her out for a spin and was quite pleased with the results! Riffing with this guitar felt like putting a new spirit into old bones—and within a short time, I think I was able to do the same thing for one of my old poems. The Startled Eye of Passer-By is a poem I wrote back in 2014 (around the same time I bought this guitar, coincidentally), which may be coming to life again soon as a song: one refinishing project brought on by another.

The Day I Almost Died

September 20, 2018September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ Leave a comment

The following story I wrote and performed for Edmonton’s Story Slam. It’s a wonderful organization and a great event; for anyone interested in telling or listening to stories, I recommend you check them out: www.edmontonstoryslam.com

The story I’m going to tell you is from back when I was four, living on a cattle farm just west of Morinville. Now, when you’re four years old, you perceive the world a little bit differently than the adults around you do. The way my parents tell the story is simply this: my dad took me and my older sister out on the skidoo one day to check the cows, and when we drove over a bump, she and I fell off the back (no injuries sustained). While dad circled back to pick us up again, one of the cows might have looked in our direction.

But that’s not the way I remember it.

What I’ll tell you now is my recollection of the story, exactly as my four-year-old self would have wrote in my journal—if, of course, I had been able to write at the time.

Dylan’s log: January 15, 1998.

I almost died today.

Outside was a treacherous cold, but the bright blue sky shone with a dazzling light that made the snow blanketing the ground difficult to look at for long. Mom bundled us tightly in our neon snowsuits that had been hand-me-downs since the ’80s, and we toddled outside in boots two sizes too big. Dad was already out in the driveway amid a thick blue cloud of smoke, trying to convince the rusty old snowmobile to start. With just a few more tugs on the frayed pull-cord, a rattle and a bang, we were off! We putzed across the yard at an easy five miles an hour toward the field, and I hollered in excitement, “Faster, faster!” Dad chuckled to himself as he patted the hood of the skidoo with a heavy mittened hand, saying, “I dunno if these squirrels can handle much more than this.” I never knew that’s how skidoos worked, but I guess it makes sense. The squirrels underneath the hood chattered noisily to themselves as they ran in their hamster wheels, and as we crossed into the field Dad bellowed loudly, “Cumbos, cumbos, cumbos!” I’m told that translated, cumbos literally means, “Come, boss!” and is the call used by old cowboys to draw the lead cow nearer. Wherever the boss cow goes, the rest of the herd is sure to follow.

We were just coming up alongside the herd when Laura and I were bucked off the back of the skidoo with violent suddenness and landed in a pillowy snowdrift. I looked around at first in dazed confusion, then immediately noticed that the skidoo was continuing to plug along away into the distance. Dad was completely unaware that we had fallen off. Laura sat bolt upright in the snow, eyes wide with fear as she pointed over my shoulder. “Look Dylan! Run!” she wailed, and took off toward the fence. I turned to look behind me and saw the deep, black eyes of the boss cow glowering in my direction, steam rising from her nose as her hoof pawed the ground. I scrambled to my feet and turned to the fence. The vast field stretched out before me endlessly; the safety of the other side must have been ten miles away. Laura was already halfway there. I ran as fast as my short legs would carry me, but the snow was very deep and filled my boots with every step as I sank as deep as my knees. My toque kept sliding down over my eyes, clouding my vision with darkness and my mind with fear. I didn’t dare look back, but I could hear the thunder of a thousand hooves as the rest of the herd joined in the boss cow’s mad charge. “Run, Dylan, Run!!” Laura called, both of her arms waving me in from the other side of the fence. I tripped on one of my laces and tumbled face-first into the snow. I scrambled to my feet again, but this time disoriented—which way was the fence? I couldn’t see through the snow caked over my eyes.

The hot, rank breath of the boss cow filled the air around me, and the ground trembled with the closeness of her hooves. I frantically wiped the snow away from my eyes and squinted in the brightness of the sun. The fence was too far. Boss cow was too close. I would never make it! I stumbled backwards and fell again, this time unable to pick myself up like a turtle on its shell. Then, over the crest of the hill, the rusty old skidoo came screaming out of a cloud of smoke. The squirrels howled with effort like they’d never howled before as they raced toward me at fifty—no—a hundred miles an hour. And above the thundering hooves, above the screeching engine, soaring on the wind like the battle-cry of Tarzan among the apes, came the call: “Cumbos, cumbos, cumbos!” Dad zoomed past the boss cow, spraying snow up into her face as he whisked me up in one strong arm without even stopping. We pulled up beside the fence, and Laura crawled back under to join us on the skidoo. “Hey, are you crying?” She asked. I was not. It was just the snow melting.

The Silence Here

August 3, 2018September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ 1 Comment

A true story.

The silence here is filled with sound.

The river itself passes slowly, noiselessly, but the air above and all around it is rich with Nature’s busyness.

Two bees dance in spirals through the air around me as they jockey for position, each chasing the other in turn. Their mutual buzz grows and shrinks, zips left and right and all around (pauses a moment while they plod along my paddle’s edge), and whizzes about my feet before floating away on a zephyr.

The river is banked on one side by steep cliffs of sand and clay, varying between fifteen and twenty feet above the water. Tall blades of grass gather at the top of the precipice, spectators at the edge of my solitary parade. These are the leaves that Whitman loved, rustling to one another in the hushed tones of the breeze as they watch me float past. A sandpiper hops along beside the water, scratching and pecking at pebbles and sand.

The sky is a clear azure expanse, open and full of possibility. Trees and hills hem it in at the edges in a wide verdant belt, saving my fragile mortal mind from collapsing at the beauty of the whole.

I am completely taken in. My heart aches simultaneously with the blessing of being in this place, and the despair of the impermanence of my experience. My mind drifts to thoughts of entropy, contemplations of the death and chaos that is such an inescapable part of living and order. Everything tends to chaos. Buildings once firm crumble and fall; lives once full of love and meaning come to end; Nature herself is ever-changing and will, in the end, cease to exist as disorder envelops the world. But could beauty exist without this chaos?

When I fall in love with a painting, it is because I know my eyes cannot rest on it forever that it is able to change and affect me. I gaze on a stunning vista or a lovely face, and seek to change myself, to better myself to have more of this beauty in my life. Were it not for the knowledge of beauty’s fragile nature, I would have no reason to change; no reason to feel touched.

Music’s charm is in the height of impermanence; sound is but travelling waves of energy that by necessity of physics must exist only in one moment and not in the next. We can only enjoy music while it plays, and once it is over enjoy only its memory.

My boat bumps against the side of the cliff and drifts leisurely outward into the stronger current. Today, the river is my guide; its direction is both gentle and strong, and I am content to follow its journey. My paddle is dry in the sun. I have the power to choose my own course and direction—even oppose the flow of the water, and ordinarily I would. But today the river will choose for me, and I will do my best to learn from it.

Ahead, a clump of trees and brush stubbornly holds fast amid the powerful water, having fallen there victim of the river’s fury as it swelled in the spring. The stream babbles and bubbles noisily as it flows over and under and around the logs and twigs, swirling in eddies and churning tempestuously. The river, like time (tempus, you say: the root of tempestuousness), refuses to stop or slow for any earthly obstacle. As I gradually float nearer, it seems I’m headed for the fray. I lower my hands to my paddle, but do not lift it. My boat circles slowly sideways, then backward as it turns in the eddies upstream of the brush.

I’m taken aback by the wonderful view I hadn’t gazed on before: upstream, beyond the cliff face, the land rolls upward in gently sloping hills, clothed in trees and greenery. Mighty poplars stand firmly at the side of a low forest, acquiescing to be swayed only ever so slightly by the fresh westward wind. They solemnly guard the forest behind them from the wide expanse to the left: a brightly blooming field of lemony yellow canola which extends as far as I can see in the other direction before falling from view behind the jutting cliff edge. Beyond the forest lay a soft rolling meadow freckled with grazing Herefords as content to live in this place as I am to gaze upon it.

The logs and brush pass harmlessly by my side, the current of my guiding river having nudged me out of the reach of the tangled snarl.

I consider how often I’ve worried throughout the course of my life, anxiously trying to affect things beyond my control. Many nights I’ve been unable to sleep, my mind racing with one particular concern or another. How many beautiful things have I missed in all my furious paddling?

The sun blazes high overhead, and I can feel its rays bathing my skin in a soothing warmth. Upstream on the water a skiff of ripples dances ethereally, and my grass spectators on the cliff bend gracefully in a wave moving swiftly downstream toward me. All at once I am caught in a warm gust, the straw of my hat rustling and creaking as the brim catches the breeze. It dies down as suddenly as it had started, and the river continues to guide me along around the bend.

A while later I come across a small cove where the current slows and actually turns back on itself before joining again with the main river body. Most of the river rushes past, intent on continuing its circuitous eastward journey, but those parts near the cove are content to take a short rest.

I myself have floated up alongside the cove, and my guide gently pushes me in. My boat lazily turns as I begin my slow upstream journey to the top of the cove. Eventually, I come to a dead stop. The water laps at the side of my kayak, patiently waiting for some small change in the current that might start me moving again. I wait patiently also.

In the middle of the river, where the current is the strongest, the remains of a once-proud tree protrudes from the water like a spear. It is bent low just above the water’s surface, humbled by the river’s endless might. The scars in the wood tell much about its former glory. It is wide at its base, and very long; this tree would have towered among many others. Knots along its length exist as remnants of many powerful branches which would have been clothed with innumerable leaves, rich and green each summer, and glorious in gold and yellow each autumn. Squirrels and birds would have enjoyed many generations in this tree; it would have been the pillar and foundation of their existence: immutable and everlasting.

Its bark and branches are now completely stripped, and its underside is worn completely smooth by the water’s erosion. Its topside, by contrast, is jagged and rough; myriad splinters and shards of wood stab this way and that, evidence of having survived the forceful and dangerous ice floes of the spring thaw. This tree has been allowed to rest near its place of former glory only by virtue of its willingness to be humbled: to part with its leaves and branches and to bow along the water. It has accepted its inevitable aging and death with grace, and remains beautiful.

I turn my gaze back to my peaceful cove, and upward to the cliff face which here hangs out over the water. Roots and twigs dangle from the edge, thirstily reaching to the water below. The sun reflects off the water’s surface onto this overhang, projecting fantastic dancing shapes of light onto the sandy clay.

A tiny bank swallow pokes its head out from a hole in the cliff, checking left, right, up and down before fluttering skyward with a frantic beating of its wings. What a wonderful home you have here, little swallow, I muse. What a wonderful home I have here too.

A small eddy bubbles up beside me from somewhere below, and I am shifted ever so slightly to the side. The current catches me again, and I am gone. I am somewhat reluctant to leave, yet grateful for the impermanence of my stay—that I was blessed to have left while everything was still beautiful.

A short while later I have reached the end of my journey, and I know I must return to the hustle and hurry of the city. Again I am reluctant to have to go; again I am grateful for the impermanence of my stay. It seems to me now that the inevitability of time’s progression and the necessity for change are not so much at odds with beauty and happiness, but are perhaps their essence.

I thank the river for its guidance—both physical and otherwise, and begin the long journey back home.

Music Recording

July 16, 2018September 13, 2020 ~ Dylan ~ Leave a comment

Another item crossed off the bucket list: record an album.

Over the last month and a half or so, I’ve been working to make recordings of all of the songs I’ve written so far so that people can get a sense of what the songs are supposed to sound like even when I’m not around. I had no idea what the recording process entailed going into the project, and it seemed like it might be an intimidating venture… I mean, shouldn’t you be a professional before recording your music? Apparently, you don’t have to be.
I worked with Copper Cabbage Studios here in Edmonton, and the process was not only painless but actually genuinely enjoyable! Paige was absolutely fantastic to work with: always patient and willing to provide guidance where I was naïve, and a barrel of laughs to boot.
You can listen to any of the tracks over on my Music page, and if you’d like .mp3 copies of any of the songs please contact me and I’d be happy to share!