Aerodynamics and life - Part 2 Coriolistic Anachronisms - A Vancouver Blog

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Apr 29
   Vintage! This is a random post. The year was 2007...

I don't see red

It’s the colour of blood. It’s the pride of Utah. It’s the nature of Betelgeuse. And it’s sorely missing from my daily life.

Vancouver is a kingdom of blues and greens - the changing blue of the ocean, the lush green of everpresent forests; the blues when it rains for too long, the greens that wanted peace.

Our municipal police colours reflect it. The Canucks abide it. The new West Coast theme at work proves it. Subdued colours, easy colours, passive colors. But where are the passion of reds, the warmth of oranges and the brilliance of yellows? Where is rebellion and what about fire?

I long for the orange glow of a sunset in Arches National Park, for lava flowing down the slopes of a raging volcano, for the red rocks of Canyonlands, for the pink hoodoos of Bryce at sunrise, for the infinite red rainbow of stone in Antelope Canyon, for the dark red wines of Napa Valley, for the blood-tainted soil of l’Estérel, for bright red tiles on the roofs of Provence...

I dream of a harsh and inhospitable Mars while standing on our lush and fluid Earth. What a contradiction! But never mind the grass; the rocks are always redder on the other side of the fence.

 

2007-04-29 22:29 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime:

5 Comments

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  • 1 - Brigit says:

    « Bonjour

    I don’t always understand your writing but this time you managed to put, with much talent, a whole universe of images and emotions in a nutshell and share them. Than you. No surprise your pictures are so good.

    B »

    Date of comment: 2007-04-30 01:10 •
  • 2 - Sigrid says:

    « I don’t always understand your writing either
    Just kidding. Remember a time when you wondered whether you could really write in English? Hum, geez, I wonder too! »

    Date of comment: 2007-04-30 04:57 •
  • 3 - Anonymous says:

    « I wholly agree with you and so,
    being in full accordance with myself,
    I imagine a raging volcano on our mountain
    and a devastating lava extinguishing those stuck-up St-Hilairois.
    What a sight from my window...
    ;-) »

    Date of comment: 2007-04-30 08:00 •
  • 4 - Vince says:

    « Brigit: LOL. I’m glad I managed to be understandable this once. And if you think my pictures are good, imagine un peu ce qu’elles seraient dans un univers plein de rouge! ;-)

    Sigrid: M’enfin? I still wonder if I can write in English. Blogging is one thing, a whole book with page numbers and chapters and commas and periods and notes and illustrations and paragraphs and a plot and a bloody publisher backing you up is another... And on top of that, blogging is selfish while real writing is kind of philanthropic (see next post.) :-)

    Anonymous: Well, beware of the St-Hilairois’ regenge (they are indeed stuck-up ;-) when they unleash an earthquake on Beloeil, epicenter at the Mail Montenach. I’m not sure y’all could survive without Tim Horton’s... ;-) »

    Date of comment: 2007-04-30 11:54 •
  • 5 - Brigit says:

    « Bonsoir

    Je ne sais pas pourquoi cette juxtaposition de deux univers m’a touchée. Peut-être parce que j’ai découvert récemment les romans de Toni Hillerman et que je venais justement de lire ses descriptions des levers ou couchers de soleil sur les Mesa du territoire Navajo. Lui aussi sait invoquer le rouge.

    Bryce, Arches, Moab... l’Esterel... Saint Raphael... Vancouver. paysages familiers. quelle chance de pouvoir y revenir d’un clignement de paupières, quand bien même ce n’est que par la pensée.

    je suis incapable d’imaginer un autre univers parce que je ne suis pas une artiste.

    Simplement, j’aime vos photos.

    B »

    Date of comment: 2007-05-03 15:49 •

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We now go back to current chronological entries:
Random Entry: Morning came, and went  
 Next: The Digital Art gallery revamped | Previous: "Les aventures d'un GO désorganisé" sur Google Book Search
Jan 31

Aerodynamics and life - Part 2

[Still rambling...]

Stalling was relatively straightforward. Things were even, ample warning was given and our senses weren’t really that bothered.

In comes the spin. Since in life things are rarely balanced, one wing is going to stall before the other. Angle of attack is probably high; we’re living slowly and climbing, pushing the envelope. Maybe we also try to change direction while fighting our way up. All of a sudden, one area of our life is going to spin out of control while the others are still generating lift, thus causing great imbalance in the Force and ultimately leading to the Dark Side. Chaos.

As previously mentioned, the wing that stops flying, falls. The other one, however, tends to keep a sound aerodynamic profile a little while longer and tries to keep the plane in the air. But the lift generated is massively concentrated on one side and suddenly the plane wants to rotate around its vertical axis as the flying wing attempts to fly around the falling one.

Our life plunges into a downward corkscrew motion, everything becomes blurry and our normal references are lost.

In the worse of cases, we might space out, or freeze; the spin will flatten itself, centrifugal force will gain strength and the controls will stop responding. All is lost now to all but the best.

In most cases, though, reducing power and applying opposite rudder will get us out of the spin, if we have kept our head cool and counted the turns despite the overwhelming dizziness.

The problem when we are spinning is that everything is happening too fast for us to keep up. There is no controlling a spin, nor sustaining it. You either count your turns and act before you reach a pre-established limit, or you’re playing with fire.

There is absolutely no time in a spin to do anything else but count and react. Everything else gets pushed back to a subconscious level. Your life – 1 – now depends – 2 – on your count – 3 - power to idle now – 4 – neutral stick & full opposite rudder – 5…

And then some of us have unstable spinning characteristics, and unstable lives. They will not recover from a spin without direct, aggressive and radical action on the controls, and if no action is taken, the spin will deteriorate.

Others are neutral. If they put themselves in a spin, they’ll tend to remain there, no more no less. Easy to induce, easy to stop. Lucky bastards.

And finally there are the ones who have naturally spin-resistant attitudes. No matter how hard they try or how careless they are, they can’t seem to stall that inside wing, and the plane recovers by itself or stalls straight ahead. Doubly lucky bastards.

So any way, the spin becomes a practice maneuver. Rehearsing is the key. We need to generate patterns, automatic responses and the proper reflexes so that spins can be avoided or least dealt with in a calm orderly manner.

One then achieves the power to voluntarily spin their life apparently out of control while knowing all along that they can enjoy the rush and still save the day.

It’s living on the edge. It’s making life extraordinary. Because for all we know, there might only be one. One life, that is.

[May the pilots forgive me if I’ve butchered the perfect spin recovery theory. It’s been many years since my last spin on a Beech Musketeer, but I have indeed kept practicing the stall/spin maneuver on my life, with arguably poor recovery success… I’ll get better.]

 

2006-01-31 22:42 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime:

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