“Mummy, if 10 x 10 equaled 50, would our paper planes fly straight?” I know the rain was heavy because the bedraggled underpass (with plinking echoes and the green glitter of smashed bottles) smells mysteriously of mint. I lift my nose and my voice to the early snare of Ravel’s Bolero adding other instruments as … Continue reading My Daughter’s Question
when you're here i want to dance with you hold you in my arms feel the rush of you, your whispers in my hair. your breath carrying secrets of the far-off ocean, your embrace ticklish my clothes disheveled, my nostrils flared. i can hear you now whispering jokes in the dark you don't play favourites … Continue reading The Easterly
A variety of things happened this week, none of which I can disclose here in any detail. But it's all left me feeling ruffled and uneasy. By the time I finished breakfast this morning, I felt slightly unwell. Just the kind of unwell you might feel if you were very nervous. But I have nothing … Continue reading Like an exam without a question…
Seventeen years ago a roar engulfed the singing pines - countless breaths exhaling the needle sting of smoke. They stood in shredded funeral garb flinging glowing ember flowers onto us below. They witnessed our syncopated falling and the operatic scream of twisting steel, the cymbal crash of exploding windows. We knelt prostrate before the fire … Continue reading The House at No. 3
mixed feelings. i get them a lot. like headaches or an itchy ear. mixed feelings are a cloud and i know that cloud is a popular word these days, especially in IT, but I don't like it. cloud is a weather word. it's two shades of a rain drop. it's grey in there. for example, … Continue reading Two Shades of a Raindrop
In the interests of good writing books imbue profundity and poetic meaning into the actions, words & lives of their characters. ** Even memoirs achieve this tidiness - this well-structured architectural masterpiece, this neat polygon life, this feeling of control. ** But I tell myself don't be intimidated because in writing things down we find … Continue reading The Luxury of Excerpts
Four glittering Cartier watch faces, keeping the time in executive spaces, handed by Holgate to high-flying wanglers who did a good deal and wrangled the bankers. $20,000 of wrist-wrapping bling to ensure these fine workers continue their thing. She came from big business where bonuses are blousy, not in the service where gifts mark you … Continue reading PM Quietly Goes Postal on CEO
This idea of a gas lead recovery... put your money on a drill bit and watch it sink spinning into the dark earth beneath the dark sea. It augers well. We're spiraling, Australia, into this gassy pit... Back in black, just as they promised.
The political slogans with blue borders on the road side read "Lower Taxes, Better Services". That's like saying "Throw out your brush & grow your hair!" or "Cheaper Shoes, Smaller Sizes" or "More roosters, less crowing." It SOUNDS enticing but when you think about it... Anyway, I say to them "More egg cartons, less apples." … Continue reading Girt by Campaigning
There's a man at our local shops who orbits erratically around his hat singing in a husky mutter, hunched over his tight, protruding belly his words foreign and incomprehensible. In their orthopedic sandals and thick white socks, his feet - like his eyes - barely leave the ground. Some days he seems bereft, his hoarse … Continue reading The Busker
Our daughter was swooped by a magpie when riding her bike. Although she was not hurt it scared her and brought about many questions about why magpies don't like bike helmets to which I don't know the answers. It's natural, this indignation we feel when nature dares to impinge on our comfort. How dare the … Continue reading Maggie Musings
lazy i call myself lazy she says i get it from her i protest "but you're conscientious!" she says "that's just busyness". busy yes it's easy to be busy cooking, cleaning, blogging, walking puppy busyness falls onto you as readily as procrastination procrastination he says "why don't you stop volunteering at the school? then you … Continue reading lazy
those little gerygones they just know without apprenticeship or diploma how to stay alive they find their own food meet a mate build a house raise a family accept risks and their own tiny place in the food chain ** I guess we must've been like that once but we specialised finding our roles in … Continue reading staying alive
When i was at uni my car was old, a little manual 5 speed Mazda in various fades of blue. If i wanted to overtake i had to plan well ahead and be on the slower car's tail exactly as the overtaking lane veered out to the right ** If the overtaking lane was on … Continue reading On Driving
Some people become famous through being extraordinary. Some people become extraordinary through being famous. We ordinary folk are like the grass in the lawn sort of invisible because of the flowers and yet essential to the overall feel of the garden. We are maintained through mass techniques (eg lawnmowers & sprinklers) where as the flowers … Continue reading Purple Flowers are The Future
In the lush green foliage of the avocado tree a pair of gerygones are building a nest. Their cascading notes are light and clear as they busily flit and hover and pause their little yellow breasts like tiny flags of hope. ** I silently wish them every success against the very valid appetites of the … Continue reading A Planet in the Avocado Tree
i wish i could think like a ladder neat rungs heading up; an obvious and steady progression ** instead i think like a merry-go-round spinning ideas and blurry background thoughts get left behind rapidly as ships' bubbles ** popping in the endless blue
COVID has spread the annual spring flower festival like seeds across the city. Tulips on street corners guarded by raggedy scarecrows, pansies posing brightly at busy intersections or window boxes brought to rainbow life outside public buildings. There are no rides this year or crafty stalls or fragrant food trucks ** And yet the joy … Continue reading Floriade
(inspired by James Rebanks' interview with Richard Fidler) I picture an old man - a farmer - perhaps a little bent perhaps with eyes so faded the blue itself is a memory. He is like a river-mouth the collected silt of decades' knowledge about the earth and seasons' ebb and flow deposited in his brain. … Continue reading A Herdwick Shepherd
sitting at lunch i say 'he's as dodgy as a ship made of cheese graters' and i won't unsay it he really does treat people badly a stunning example of money-made power i can say that because i'm a nobody (yes, being a nobody has a few valuable privileges) but if a State Premier said … Continue reading Palmer
Mask up and sell a face. The opposition can't knock it off like they do by roadsides... so many horizontal pollies sleeping faces in their red borders. Cover your nose with the unmasked face of your favourite candidate. Let them catch your sneezes and the aerosol threats of all around you. Truly useful highly caring … Continue reading I will protect you…
The minister says "I am a Trump supporter. So are most of my congregation so we are not politically inclined to wear masks." My brain does a manoeuvre not dissimilar to a cockatoo i watched yesterday wobbling on a telephone wire, flipping upside down and swinging by one claw with its head undulating amusingly from … Continue reading Who is going to help?
the phone rings it's a survey i actually don't mind a survey i guess it's sadly validating but the problem is you can only answer in the way the survey lets you and some surveys are two party preferred which is like multiple choice but skewed. sure, survey person, the Greens haven't hit the lead … Continue reading who gets to be a star?
In an effort to let me sit and also keep the puppy happy I pick him up and feed him the Liberal Party propaganda flyer which has been sitting ignored in the letterbox for two weeks. (When you have to step between puppy poos and then stick your hand between wire teeth to get your … Continue reading Puppy preferencing
These days if you pick out misspelling on a school report (or on a menu or in the paper) or are snide about apostrophes (any bloody where) you are a pedant, old-school, snarky, a fuss-pot, boring. My argument is this: Language has rules for a reason. They create a code for understanding. Changes can be … Continue reading Vote #1. Pedantry.
I ask "Is there anything you want for Fathers' Day?" He turns "If you could please just remove Scott Morrison from power. I would appreciate that." I look out on the driveway where some detritus from the fencing is still in evidence - a small pile of pruned book-leaf pine boughs. I say "Well at … Continue reading Fathers’ Day Gift
you know... that tiny town with the giant concrete elephant in the bakery garden. it's in the mountain country between the moonscape and the escarpment. hell yeah. it's built for poets with a retired general store and that old pub with the arched stable entrance where you can almost hear the jingle of century-old traces. … Continue reading Nimmitabel
after a week of 4:15am door scratching and sad little whines it's not the dog i feel sorry for my eye lids have magnets sewn in to click in with my metallic cheek bones today i lost my watch with the flat battery so couldn't get it repaired. Later I found it on … Continue reading the fun of puppies
To get there you must first cross the moon cratered and stony with odd relief in skeletal trees or the white gleam of a disused lime quarry. The clouds are exotic with so much space in which to express themselves and the lighting is dramatically sideways. And then suddenly it's greener and softer … Continue reading My Heart’s Country
Is it a coincidence that thug and glug rhyme? A planet apparently under the thumb of thugs Will glug and glug under the rise of its own oceans the way this thug of a virus drowns us in our own lungs.
Out of the Cave 