The internet is like having a giant bilge pipe mounted above the armchair in your lounge room with all kinds of garbage gushing out of it. There is hardly a moment to take stock and discriminate amongst the torrent of what’s raining down upon you.
Continue reading
1.
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
1.
I finished reading In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and now it’s over, there is a peculiar Proust-shaped hole in my life.
Continue reading
1.
The last twelve to eighteen months have taught me that if you put something on the internet, everybody will see it. People rarely comment on-line, but I seem to get all kinds of bizarre responses when I see them in public, ranging from facial expressions that look like they’ve swallowed a bullfrog (and are struggling to keep it down) to, ‘What’s with all the leather gear?’ Or even, ‘Are you a Satanist?’ Continue reading
First published in Island Magazine, Issue 136.
There are two things I am driven to do: write and fight. Continue reading
Gotta love a man with an eye-patch.
J: I guess that’s what War and Peace is about. It’s about what happens when people are forced to cope with the force of history as it’s bearing down on them, which I guess is the way Tolstoy would have looked at it.
R: I’m so glad you liked War and Peace. I knew you would. When you were reading Anna Karenina, you were telling me ‘There couldn’t possibly be a better novel’. And then, there was. Continue reading
One of the most interesting aspects of reading is that sometimes you might read something and, regardless of whether you enjoy it or not, it begins to creep into your thinking. You start to see it everywhere; kind of like when you’re walking the streets in a strange country and you feel as if you keep catching glimpses of people you know. Continue reading
Theme Park at its Darkest 