There I was, 12-years-old, in all my fluoro-helmeted, knee-padded glory, pacing along the top of the biggest vert ramp in the country, as far as I knew. As far as it mattered.
The other local skate rats were laughing and taunting; I wasn’t much of a skater, and certainly had never proven myself to be any chop in a half-pipe. Why did I suddenly think I could drop into a 12-foot vert ramp?
But then I took one step forward, locked the tail of my board on to the coping with my back foot, stepped forward with my front, and dropped in.
I fell completely free of the curve of the ramp and hit the flat shoulder and head first.
My board, surely in its final death throws after such a drop, came to rest a couple of metres away, and once the wheels stopped spinning, sounding the familiar hiss of abec-7 bearings, silence fell.
Briefly.
After a few seconds the horde of skate rats burst into laughter once more, having momentarily lapsed into silence as I fell down the face of my destiny.
I was on my feet and laughing with them soon after, oblivious to the fact I had essentially just thrown myself from a second story balcony on to hard ground head first, desperate to live up to a mantra I have held close to my heart since those days at Sunshine Beach skatepark; pain is temporary, glory is eternal.
I’m sure the glory from that well-padded, ill-advised dive into the open arms of vert ramp still exists in some mildly gaseous aura around me at all times, but I’ve never been sure quite how to utilise it.

In January of this year I was again pacing at the top of a vert ramp of sorts, albeit more metaphorical than physical.
I was in a comfortable job with little stress and, accordingly, very little excitement.
I pushed my board over the edge and locked it into the coping with my back foot, lining up a job outside of journalism and, importantly, a lifestyle outside of that job.
I leant forward with my front foot and dropped, quitting my reporter job and moving my life to the WA coast in search of good times and inspiration.
I think I may still be in freefall; not yet having hit head-first or stuck the landing.
I have put a lot more thought into technique and balance this time around, but that’s no guarantee I’ll get away with only temporary pain or intact glory.

I was still at it four years later, that bodes well for this metaphor, right?

I just found this email I sent out to my extended family about a month before moving to WA two years ago. I wrote it before I knew I would be moving, or that I even had a reason to move there. I know I was in a pretty bad place mentally at the time, so it was interesting to see the change in perspective. Also, considering my previous post here was about rambling incoherently and Splendour in the Grass, it seems fitting that I was doing the exact same thing two years ago. The email’s subject was Don’t let my surroundings influence your opinion of me.

I’ve often heard that Starbucks restaurants in LA are crowded with young creatives hooked on to the life support of their wireless devices, waxing lyrical the merit of their new manuscripts, the ones that will make them.
The town dictates the territory traversed by the young patrons before they end up in Starbucks, or in my case, McDonalds, looking for a feed and some solitary socialising.
I’m sitting in the corner of this old Scottish franchise while some auto-tuned monstrosity invades every pore; I’m covered in salt from a hard morning tucking into glassy barrels at Sunshine Beach and I think that if I was able to get such good waves each day I’d probably be a lot more relaxed about this here existence.
I’ve taken this year as it has come, and expected at each bend something more than what has occurred.
But I guess what has come is a realisation, or at least a reality of something I already knew, that life isn’t simply going to happen. Or at least something similar just slightly less trite and cliched. But while I’ve still got a job, as Dad said, keeping the wolf from the door – and an extended family with whom I can share these experiences, from the mighty to the mundane, I should have little to complain about.
I guess that if I just do find myself with some time and some good feelings after a morning in the ocean, I should use this time as best I can.
On Wednesday I booked flights to Perth for the whole of December, to see Will graduate and become registered under the AVA, and also to hopefully scout out some of my own options.
Fight or flight.
In the mean time here are some rad photos my mate Flip took last weekend at Woodford’s Splendour in the Grass music festival. And here’s hoping that if I do come across as a pretentious young wank looking over proud of himself in a public place, that at least I might sometime soon have something real to tout.
Cheers!
Sandy. xo

A loosely metaphorical fence I can hide my blog’s shortcomings behind, briefly.

I understand it’s a basic concept as far as hosting a blog goes, but I’m not the first to blindly decide on a medium before a topic/target audience.
But I do know that this particular vacuum of incoherent rambling, the internet, thrives on just that. And publishing these ill thought out posts is better than a silent and empty field. Also it gives me scope to really stretch dubious metaphors to breaking point (like fencing wire!).
June marks my final month in WA. So I guess I am crossing that fence as I come to it (that was the last one, I promise.)
I have been here since September 9, 2011.
I will be loading up my Forester and crossing this wide brownish-green land, many of it’s borders (0r fences! I’m a liar), and winding my way home across the better part of the eponymous month in The Decemberists’ song July July. Months, am I right!?
It will be a bittersweet departure, devoid of symphony and arrogant englishmen. But I will be back eventually; if only to use a sadly neglected scuba diving voucher.
If you’d like to add to the advice I’ve already received about things to see, people to do etc. as I make the coming-of-age journey which Hollywood will surely commission a biopic of starring Emile Hirsch in the near future, let me know.
Also, if anybody can tell me any more about the Koonalda Homestead, a ghost town 80 kilometres off the highway just past the WA/SA border, and whether or not the bloke who told me about it will simply be waiting there to kill me a la Wolf Creek, let me know that, too.

Artist’s impression of my entire July. That field needs a fence.

‘Nothing Found’ was sprawled across this page when I set it up, as nothing was yet published under the $99 banner that is now alexanderpowell.net.
It seemed like an apt title for a website from which most readers will find nothing of relevance or use.

For me though, and perhaps you; if your requirements and my skills align, this will be a place where my life, both professional and playful, will be digitised for our perusal.

Soon I will begin uploading some of my published writing and photographs, I just need to figure out how best to arrange them alongside more personal posts.

I was hoping I would be able to work a joke or two into this introduction. Oh well.

Here’s me wearing my professional face in a cherry orchard.