Good writing should be delicious. Words should roll around the tongue like ice cream, with smooth bits and bits that are harder to digest. Sentences that go straight to your bloodstream and sentences you need to unpack syllable by syllable, mash them up with your tongue and swallow with a long slow slither into the […]
Category: Thinking
Things I’m thinking about
Where I Live
I live somewhere beautiful. It’s surrounded by water except where it’s surrounded by undeveloped bush. There are roads through the bush and coming home at night you often have to use high beam at nights. That was exciting when I first moved here. Blackwall Mountain is next to my house. It’s a long low flat-topped […]
Outside Myself
I know me. I’m intelligent. All my life my family have told me how intelligent I am and my mother has acted as if my only focus in life was what I was studying. I remember when I was 18 and just off my ‘P’ plates and I hit that doctor’s car in Dover Heights […]
Reality
I sometimes think reality is a consensus. We all agreed that we would regard what we saw around us as the truth. The consensus happened a long time ago, when people first began thinking and since then each of us is born into it. It changes slowly and the consensus has to hold, enough people […]
The Anger Loop
The anger loop creeps in when my mind isn’t otherwise occupied. It starts when I wake in the morning, especially if I haven’t slept well. My upper teeth and my lower teeth are engaged in battle. I stumble into the bathroom and obsess about the size of my nose. On the drive to the station, […]
The Ducks are Everywhere
The ducks are everywhere. They cluster around on the grass by the dirt path that isn’t a pavement, sitting or waddling around, occasionally quacking. They edge away when I approach. I want to tell them that I’m harmless and wish they would come up and say hello but they’re too wary for that. But they […]
The Sentence is the Tombstone
The sentence is the tombstone of the thought that inspired it. A thought flits around one’s brain, comes vaguely to awareness. Then a word attaches to it, perhaps a noun or verb. Perhaps an action will be involved or an observation on happenings or the perversity of happenings. As the thought firms more words attach, […]
Old Photos
My friend Amos found some old photos I must have left with him when I left Amsterdam. He found them in a box he’d taken from Amsterdam back to Israel and hadn’t opened in years. I remember I left the photos with him when I came to Australia because I planned to go back. The […]