walking and falling

ATTENTION FEED READERS

2010-04-15T16:30:00.002+09:30

the new feed is at http://www.jenjen.com.au/blog/feedthe blog is still here:http://www.jenjen.com.au/blog/thanks!

for various reasons

2010-03-26T02:15:00.003+09:30

i have been offline quite a lot. the main reason is that i just finished a book (the Piece of Cake is done) and haven't wanted to think in prose at all. the ohter main reason is that i am currently undertaking a very stretching residency in potsdam with a choreographer and a dancer or two, working on who knows what, filed under 'explain later'. will be back on planet blog in a couple of weeks -

extinction

2010-02-20T07:42:00.007+09:30

I’m blogging from sunny hobart where I’m writer-in-residence at the lovely kelly st cottage above salamanca place. Here until the 3rd march and putting the finishing touches, dare i say the piped icing and cachous, on the Piece of Cake. Really can’t wait to get it off my desk. Seriously. I have just about had it. It’s great to be out of context for this end stretch, because it throws the voice

paint swatch poetry

2010-01-31T22:47:00.002+09:30

for a while i have been making these little poems out of paint swatches... mostly for fun. some of them have made good postcards.

paint swatch poetry

2010-01-31T22:47:00.000+09:30

for a while i have been making these little poems out of paint swatches... mainly just to fool around and

teetering on the play-saw

2010-01-18T19:30:00.004+09:30

happy new year, gentle reader. i am feeling excited about 2010 and more than a little daunted. There is a lot on the agenda. In February i'm going to Hobart for a two-week residency. In March I'll be in Berlin collaborating with choreographer and good friend, noha ramadan. and later in the year there will be more international travel (which i'm not sure i can talk about here yet). I'm glad i

goolwa or bust

2009-12-14T09:30:00.003+09:30

The Australian Poetry Centre has a callout up for proposals for the Salt on the Tongue festival in Goolwa in April 2010. I heard great things about their 2008 festival in Castlemaine, so i'm definitely programming myself in for this one (watch this space to see what i'll be up to). Get your ideas in ASAP!Lurking philanthropists, take note: there's also a polite request for donations. the 2009

bis ans Ende

2009-12-09T13:14:00.004+09:30

i've been overdosing on cop15 updates and explanations between watching the director's cut of Until the End of the World and getting up now and then to go out to the fence of the house i am staying in to watch the neighbours go out to their front fences to see if there's going to be a storm or not. there is a forty percent chance of rain today and a fifty percent chance of extinction. the man

overland wants you!

2009-12-01T13:05:00.005+09:30

Overland has a lovely clean new website to celebrate the fact that you are going to subscribe to Overland in the inauguralGo on, subscribe to overland. At only fifty bucks a year (39 if you're a student or a pensioner), why not give a christmas subscription to your favourite lefty intellectual relatives while you're at it?Not only is Overland very clever for stealing the subscriberthon concept

sigh

2009-11-29T10:45:00.000+09:30

astrobluffing

2009-11-27T09:26:00.002+09:30

today's cainerscope:"If we do not do what we are supposed to do, we feel apologetic and embarrassed. We avoid the people who expect us to have performed a particular task. And we awkwardly change the subject when asked how we are getting along with our project. Or we bluff like crazy and give a glorious description of how effective we are being in our imagination. We rarely say, 'I have not done

koalas, encouragements

2009-11-19T12:11:00.008+09:30

Just returned from Melbourne to 42 degrees and broken air conditioning. I was visiting for the opening of Arlene Textaqueen's new show, Naked Landscapes of Victoria, which is open til the 12th December and includes this portrait of me:"The Giant Koala" (JenJen), Dadswells Bridge (2009)Originally uploaded by arlene textaqueenit's already sold - you have to be quick to pick up a Textanude these

summer cleaning

2009-11-06T11:59:00.003+09:30

as you can see i've been spring-cleaning jenjen.com.au - must be another novel-avoidance strategy. while those around me are cleaning their houses and getting their cars fixed, your (technically) homeless blogger is tidying her sidebars of e-clutter and accumulated e-dust. please let me know if you find any dead links or design flaws as i haven't had a chance to test it on another monitor/

blog battle

2009-11-04T14:30:00.002+09:30

oooh, the man poets are having a blog battle aka online popularity contest. thanks guys! the internet was getting mature for a minute there. the deal is whoever gets the most comments from the most sources over the next three weeks wins - and the loser has to stop blogging forever. go check their work out and leave a comment on your favourite poet's blog. and you must buy nathan's fabulous book

on releasing it into the wild

2009-10-30T15:37:00.002+09:30

Avoiding the Piece of Cake today because it's so very nearly finished that I'm starting to get a little afraid of it. I'm really excited about this new book and keen to let it go. I'm also questioning it a lot now that it's getting too late to change things. That's bringing up all these issues about when to release my work into the wild. I tend to hang onto things until the very last minute,

EWF reader: Critical Gratitude

2009-10-28T07:43:00.002+09:30

I just got my Emerging Writers Festival reader in the mail. hooray for writerly advice and emergentsia in-jokes! i'm reposting my piece from the reader below, with permission. Critical Gratitude"If you promote yourself, you will have no success."- Lao TzuYour dream has come true. Your debut novel is in the shops, you've been invited to a few festivals to promote it, and it all feels… weird. Full

buzz

2009-10-14T08:48:00.005+09:30

The world has gone mad.* Can you believe Obama got the Peace Prize while escalating the war in Afghanistan? 20,000 extra troops since he took office. Listening to DN! I heard that they almost gave the 1938 prize to Hitler. if the pre-emptive strike really works, think what they could have prevented. In an effort to participate in this whimsical turn of events I have decided that it was really the

postcards ahoy

2009-10-01T09:00:00.000+09:30

so my friend, collaborator, secular relative and all-round postcard wunderkind beth sometimes has a book out! From Sometimes Love Beth: An adventure in postcardsFrom her new home in Central Australia, on the eve of 2008, postcard author Beth Sometimes embarked on a daring challenge: to write a postcard to somebody, everybody, anybody and anything every day for the next year.Collected in this

aretharre season

2009-09-23T12:46:00.002+09:30

It's aretharre season, when the northwest wind comes howling down and mucks around in our heads. it just started last week, and the island on which I live is perched at the north end of town. it is rapidly turning into a dustbowl, so I am turning into a refugee and heading south for holidays. just for a week. meanwhile sydney seems to be catching our dust storms - whoever's in charge of the wind

virtual cake

2009-09-17T11:22:00.002+09:30

today marks five years since my first blog post! (and no, there is no indignity to which i will not subject my long-suffering laptop.)i am going to make some observations about online media, even though it seems that these sorts of observations constitute fifty percent of online media content right now. one thing which has been bugging me is the way 'democratisation' is thrown around (with a z in

depressing

2009-09-11T10:21:00.004+09:30

in the murder capital of australia, it's still safe to be a racist:NATIONAL, September 10, 2009: An Alice Springs resident has responded to the alleged bashing death of an Aboriginal man by five young white men by selling “Alice Springs White Power” t-shirts and caps from his car.And it's all happening outside the Alice Springs Town Council offices, with local police and council officials

politics/poetics

2009-08-28T15:56:00.002+09:30

the UN's special rapporteur has declared the Intervention discriminatory, as expected. Maleficent Brough weighed in to dismiss human rights as "some nicety," which reminds us why he lost his seat in the last election and had to go away. get real indeed. the idea that human rights get in the way of access to health care is pretty stupid, given that access to health care is itself a human right (

apocalypts

2009-08-18T12:46:00.002+09:30

two great pieces of news. one: my brother has a book out. it's a good year for my family and publishing! he was always the clever one, and an unrelenting winner of logical arguments. well done bro.two: i have been shortlisted in this year's blake prize for poetry! that's the religious one that goes with the art prize. very exciting, even for a cynical pagan/atheist like myself. granted, the poem

dancing lessons

2009-08-07T09:57:00.003+09:30

john hughes died. indulge your nostalgia!i watched this film every day after school for a year (1991 i think). this is why i dance the way i dance, mostly. vale mr hughes, king of the genre.

the continuing adventures of the Piece of Cake

2009-08-02T14:53:00.003+09:30

i mentioned a while ago that i was going to try calling the Difficult Second Novel the Piece of Cake to see if it made it any easier to write, and well, it hasn't, but it does make other people giggle. on friday i finally knocked out the "third" draft (the count, as any writer will tell you, is pretty arbitrary) to make room for some more freelance work before i go to tasmania to work on the "

no bad news

2009-07-15T11:44:00.008+09:30

i just wrote to garrett and crean and rudd about the productivity commission's report into the book industry, begging them to reject the recommendation to scrap parallel import restrictions. for what it's worth. i doubt i have one squillionth as much lobbying power as Dymocks but i had to throw my two cents in, since the commission evidently ignored all the other submissions by everyone except

no bad news

2009-07-15T11:44:00.000+09:30

well, i just wrote to garrett and crean and rudd on the para

pullback

2009-07-01T10:56:00.003+09:30

what makes the green grass grow'Soldiers, what makes the green grass grow?''Blood, blood, blood, Drill Sergeant!' - popular US Army training chant before deployment to Iraqcut grass, cut thesentiment. but bug-eyed faces poke glaring from between upended earthdolls left buried by the kids that used to live here but have since left buriedas some television ad for trouble elsewherepoor kids hummed

turning to white

2009-06-22T11:03:00.004+09:30

back. in. alice.how many posts have i started like that? i keep leaving this town and coming back to it in various states of delight and deflation. after the rollercoaster of festivals where i waved around copies of The Diamond Anchor and smiled hopefully at potential readers, it's time to strap myself back into whatever reality i have left and see if it will still fly.saturday was monster truck

emergers

2009-06-08T09:39:00.003+09:30

It has taken me a week to blog about it, but the Emerging Writers Festival was great, again. For those who haven't been, it's like a small regional festival, as it focuses on "professional development." most of those attending are emerging or aspiring writers and/or small press publishers, and so the conversations tend to be industrial - how to work better, how to get paid, etc. getting paid

rules of engagement

2009-05-26T14:35:00.000+09:30

there have been a lot of surreal moments in the last few weeks, but i think being on stage at the sydney writers festival took the large, pink and green pony-shaped gingerbread biscuit*. such an odd world. i am terribly grateful to be allowed to visit it, but i'm also glad i don't belong to it, cause there's no way in hell i would want to live there (even if the views are spectacular). no offence

2009-05-25T07:33:00.000+09:30

told ya.

old.sydney

2009-05-09T11:59:00.004+09:30

i'm spending a quiet day in sydney before i head up to Varuna for a two-week residency, then back to sydney for the SWF. the hustle and bustle is nicely complemented by a beautiful sunny day (which i am foolishly wasting in a bad coffee franchise with wireless) and the fact that i'm escaping tomorrow to hide and write and hopefully be a little more offline than usual. it will be too cold in

Eye of the Storm

2009-05-05T10:01:00.004+09:30

more on the festival later, but here's me with the wonderful jennifer byrne, who was kind enough to formally launch The Diamond Anchor yesterday afternoon. photo by bob gosford - more on his blog, the northern myth.

Happy International Day of the Book.

2009-04-23T19:08:00.004+09:30

Dulcie Deamer, c. 1920s / by Leighton StudiosAs it is also World Copyright Day, I should point out that that beautiful photo comes from the State Library of NSW, via Flickr's Commons.It reminds me of that delicious book full of pictures of women reading which my mother has. my favourite photograph of said mother has her reading the eye of the storm (look at that awful cover), which is also the

cloud appreciation

2009-04-16T10:16:00.003+09:30

it's overcast today and forecast rain. any weather is pretty exciting in alice, so i'm not sorry for writing about it. as a paid-up member of the cloud appreciation society, it is my responsibility to note and celebrate the overcast. it makes me want to sit under a blanket with tea and knitting. nanacore! i am, however, concerned that the rain will interfere with the theatrical premiere of samson

no prizes for thirty-second place

2009-04-07T22:43:00.004+09:30

weird feeling

2009-03-29T16:02:00.004+09:30

as a novelist i should be able to do better than that, but those are the words that popped into my head when i walked into a bookshop today and saw the diamond anchor on the shelf. she was leaning on the new-aus-lit display rack all by herself like a dorky girl at a party. of course i am overjoyed, but i also feel this risktaking weirdness. i could have been shoplifting in there.a mate texted

gag reflex

2009-03-19T15:06:00.002+09:30

I wanted to write a normal blog post about work, life, and being back in Alice so journos and reviewers reading this can ask me nice questions about my forthcoming novel, but I am too pissed off at the proposed internet censorship legislation right now, so excuse me while I have a little rant.So why the hell should we trust the good Christian men who got all hot and bothered over Bill Henson's

Whaledreamers

2009-02-23T08:53:00.001+09:30

cross-posted at overlandI had the misfortune of seeing Whaledreamers on Friday, part of the Sydney Travelling Film Festival that made its way through Alice Springs. We are a hardened audience for the sort of vacuous worship that filmmaker Kim Kindersley profuses for the Mirning people. In the whitefellas-talking-about-blackfellas stakes, we are territorial and deeply wary, but always up for a

on benevolence

2009-02-10T11:05:00.004+09:30

it has been good to swim in the ocean almost daily since i've been in sydney but it can leave your body with a sensation of being buffeted around for hours afterwards, and that seems to be my default state at the moment: at the mercy of some greater system. but we all are, all the time.for the last few days i've been experiencing the general horror at the victorian fires and my heart goes out to

babies

2009-01-12T21:56:00.004+09:30

ohhhhhh back in sydney and surviving on caffeine and the beach. coming down from travel. visiting friends and family. people keep having babies - i am not against this. but i am tired and eager for a room of my own in which to write. this back porch that catches the edge of the rain will do for now.The Diamond Anchor was in a plastic bubble wrap envelope on a bedside table in my parents guest

dar en avion

2008-12-23T08:48:00.002+09:30

that's slang for when someone's mind wanders off while you're talking to them, which happens a lot when you talk to me. i left it somewhere... along with my old unilingual self and the three pairs of sunglasses i have lost in the last week. it's just that everything in DF is so marvellously distracting, snake-weilding tarot card readers, virgen bling, stupid arguments over change, clowns,

century of the random

2008-12-07T04:02:00.007+09:30

release the balloons, this is my 100th blog post. that doesn't seem like a lot in four years. evidently i do not waste enough time on the internet.no more! today i trawled through my search strings for the things you were looking for when you found jenjen.com.au. i did a similar thing last year. increasingly, you are actually looking for me, which is either good or creepy. lots of you are looking

guatemalingerer

2008-11-30T09:16:00.010+09:30

guatemala is very pretty - all these tropical rivers, hot springs and waterfalls make me miss the top end of the NT. this is exactly the kind of attitude you don't want to be sporting when you're a long way from home, but i can't help it. i am so looking forward to going back to australia in just over three weeks.i'm only in guatemala for a few more days, and have pushed myself into a ball right

alert now orange

2008-11-05T09:19:00.005+09:30

from the far end of the yucatan i hitched to mexico city. which was a stupidly long way. i was confused and unsure about where i wanted to spend the dia de los muertos festival thing and addicted to motion. and it was a sweet ride. the truckie that picked me up just as i was about to give up for the day drove me about sixteen hours and was great to talk to. we ate dinner in a roadside stop

alice in revolutionary land

2008-10-28T00:51:00.000+09:30

yesterday morning i woke up back in mexico in a damp beach hut in tulum, and wandered down to the shore to admire the dawn light over the water, when three heavily armed soldiers wandered past along the sand, patrolling i guess for narcotraficantes or escaping cubans. This is not the reality i was hoping to return to after Cuba. I am beginning to feel eerily watched, but still totally bemused,

worker´s paradise

2008-09-30T23:37:00.000+09:30

i just gave myself visions of billy bragg singing to the tune of gangsters paradise... i think i am having karaoke withdrawals.well, cuba ain't heaven, but it makes mexico look like surfers paradise. actually cancun already looks like the gold coast. if you're anything like me and prefer the aesthetic of industrial collapse, you will enjoy old habana. it's my 4th day here. i spent the first two

idiocracy

2008-09-16T05:10:00.005+09:30

right, where was i? guanajuanto... stuck around that town for a few days. it reminded me that i had promised myself i would read don quijote this year. they've declared it cervantestown for no apparent reason. i guess they like statues. then i hitched to san miguel de allende and hung out for a bit. another nice town, full of americans though. real estate going through the poorly constructed

¡me pone en un libro!

2008-08-26T04:35:00.002+09:30

Writing from Guanajuato, Guanajuato, a medieval style city roughly in the middle of this very non-medieval country. This morning I visited the museo de los momias and saw a bunch of dead folks in glass cases. it was pretty cool. i'm having fun indulging my morbid curiosity.To backtrack un poco, from Baja i took another ferry across to los mochis. my last night was spent on the beach where i

caminando y cayendo

2008-08-13T08:50:00.002+09:30

so here i am in mexico, walking and walking and eating plenty of iceblocks. i´d really rather not be on the internet, but i keep getting these fiddly lil jobs to do. as a result this is gonna be short.arivaca was interesting. i will write about it in more detail for newmatilda, so i won´t extrapolate here, but on a selfish level it was great to spend a week in the desert hiking. there were

utah is like heaven:

2008-07-28T05:05:00.008+09:30

utah is like heavenit's real pretty but you can't get a full-strength beer anywhere. so sundance was amazing, and hard to explain. someone there described it as a tree funeral, so that will do for now. it was fun to construct things in camp and be in a collaborative community space (am i over my activist burnout?). i also talked stories with elders, made new family, learned a couple of songs in a

ichthy feet

2008-07-06T19:00:00.000+09:30

hawaiithefucknot was, as predicted, strange. i spent most of the week sleeping on a quiet beach on the north shore of oahu, polishing off the copy edit of my book with the assistance of some awful coffee, and reading the delightful 'gould's book of fish' between bouts of mock-snorkeling (holding my breath, wearing goggles). there were some excellent fish. i saw a sea snake. hardly anyone bothered

hitting the high notes

2008-06-11T15:52:00.002+09:30

The lists have been drawn up, the worldly goods stashed or relinquished, the packing visualised, the return ticket seriously contemplated if still not purchased, the farewells and !buen viajes! by and large celebrated, and my daily twelve-second panic attacks about traveling have dissipated into a high sustained tone of near-breathless excitement. This must be the high note I'm leaving on.Which

wordstorm

2008-05-29T13:02:00.004+09:30

just a quick one to say wordstorm was fantacular, i'm still high on work, and all is well... thanks to the tropics for putting on such a spectacular temporary autonomous zonesuperwomenOriginally uploaded by jen_twicewordstormOriginally uploaded by jen_twice

2008-05-27T12:48:00.000+09:30

darwin was awesome. met good people, had the inspiring conversations you're supposed to have at these things, sang flame trees at karaoke.

Listen To That

2008-05-12T17:19:00.002+09:30

The most surprising thing about the editing process is that it is fun. And Fun, as Mr Geisel's cat tells us, is Good. The least surprising is that I am extraordinarily distracted by everything that is not editing, including this blog. I've been on fire since I wrote the Long Important Poem About Shipwrecks* seventeen days ago. Am simultaneously working on at least three other things and feeling

why i have to write about water

2008-04-28T18:14:00.004+09:30

i try not to use this blog as a noticeboard for my own purposes, but i've been thinking a lot about the creative impulse and i have decided that everything is metaphor and metaphor is everything.this essay on language by john hughes (published in island) triggered something in my already quite manic brain."Analogy is a much richer mode of apprehension than explanation, and truer, I think, to our

a...z

2008-04-22T09:12:00.007+09:30

my ninety-nine-year-old grandfather passed away yesterday. he went politely, as was his style. the last thing he said to me was "take good care of the British language now, won't you." guess i'll give it a good Aussie try.i recently finished the alphabetical reading challenge which has incidentally provided me with almost four months' record of my reading habits. considering the restrictions -

pitches & pictures

2008-04-09T12:31:00.005+09:30

i did mean in that last post to write something about this frontier of image management i seem to be on and how having an (admittedly insignificant) public profile opens you up to all kinds of weirdness. the comments over at NM are often useful, informed remarks, but i do wish more folks would play the ball and not the man. instead i have just stopped worrying about it. as i enter the editorial

best comment ever

2008-04-01T12:11:00.002+09:30

'We all know who the Pope is, and, in most cases, we even know what his views are. I wonder how many could answer the question "who on earth is Jennifer Mills"?'all i know is i'm in queensland. it's sunny, i have been staying on the gold coast which is a laugh a minute (don't laugh) and having meetings with my editor, which is not as hilarious but much more exciting. i will post proper update

lala

2008-03-05T11:55:00.003+09:30

the sun is finally shining on old sydney town and my compounded mardi gras weekend hangovers, and i'm a ten second walk from the beach, so i'm not gonna spend long on this here post. preparing to head off tomorrow, down to the old clean-beach haunts of the illawarra first, then home via melbourne (and the giant koala, for reasons i will explain later). i'm fairly sure i am never going to do

new starts - old wounds - steep hills

2008-02-14T11:07:00.001+09:30

Sorry (word of the week) if it's been a bit quiet around here but I've come a long way since my last post. Driven about 4000km, for a start. In the last two weeks I've signed a book contract, stayed at the Hilton and on the street, and started catching up with loved ones I seem perversely determined to live a long way away from.Living a long way from Sydney is so non-perverse on so many other

the good news is

2008-01-22T16:37:00.000+09:30

as some readers may have guessed (and most folks in my phone book have been told), i have been offered a contract with UQP for the publication of my novel, The Diamond Anchor.I'm thrilled to bits. Over the stage where I can't stop punching the air, but still distractingly excited. The relevant bits of paper have to be looked over, but the formal offer has been made and accepted. It feels right to

post-famination

2008-01-11T12:22:00.000+09:30

for reasons i can't quite bring myself to announce, yesterday i opened a 12-year-old bottle of single malt i'd been saving for a particular occasion. i will be less annoyingly cryptic after i've got my good news in writing. let's just say i'm feeling quite pleased with myself, if a little frayed around the edges today.2008 is going to be a heads-down, hands-dirty kind of year, i can feel it. i

mark your horizons

2007-12-22T10:30:00.000+09:30

today is the summer solstice. time to stand in the place you watch your sunsets and mark where the ol' ball falls, cause he's swinging back north tomorrow. i've had my eye on that horizon for a while - it's still looking good. hitching the great ocean road on no sleep in antarctic drizzle was interesting. it took a day and a half of so many short hops i lost count. my favourite ride was probably

comealongway

2007-12-04T14:21:00.000+09:30

2250 km or thereabouts last week - as though i'm trying to make up for sitting still by running faster. three solid days of hitching with a couple of days' stop in coober pedy on the way, to have a look around. went blacklighting for worthless opal and poked around in dugouts. drank beer in the opal inn where a 64yo man with no teeth asked, 'how much are you?''i'm free,' i answered. somehow we

it's getting silly

2007-11-22T12:24:00.000+09:30

yesterday i had one of those "if you told me a few years ago i'd be doing this, i wouldn't have believed you" moments when i went on ABC local radio to talk about my astrological guide to the 2007 election. i suppose it's good to have several ludicrous career options handy... and i did manage to slip in a couple of comments about the nuclear waste dump the current mob are planning to put on my

WordChoices

2007-11-09T16:30:00.001+09:30

i just wanted to personally thank the Weekend Australian for this magnificent headline: thanks rupert a delightful thing to read while your savings are dwindling away and your mind buried in the darker recesses of your next book, if i may say so. if only i had a smidgin of industrial power i'd be on strike too. the answer was the usual one - that it's some kind of weird pathology. writers

WordChoices

2007-11-06T11:14:00.000+09:30

i wanted to personally thank the Weekend Australian for this magnificent headline:the question is of course 'why do they bother,' not 'what's wrong with our culture,' and the answer to the former seems to be the usual one - that it's essentially a pathology. cheers, rupert.meanwhile, the writer's strike carries on in LA and elsewhere in the States. Over here there seems to be no equivalent,

neural renovations

2007-10-28T09:38:00.001+09:30

you may notice i've knocked up a few bits of iron around here and shot the sidebar out with a .22. it's amazing what you can achieve while not working on your second book. let me know if there are any legibility issues (esp if you use a PC).excitement of the week: oliver sacks has a new book out called Musicophilia. among other neurological quirks like the guy who was hit by lightning and

neural renovations

2007-10-28T09:38:00.000+09:30

you may notice i've knocked up a few bits of iron around here and shot the sidebar out with a .22. it's amazing what you can achieve while not working on your second book. let me know if there are any legibility issues (esp if you use a PC).excitement of the week: <"http://www.oliversacks.com">oliver sacks has a new book out called <"http://www.oliversacks.com/musicophilia.htm">Musicophilia.

dustbowl blues

2007-10-22T12:40:00.000+09:30

it's windy today - the dry northwest wind that is featured in the song 'my island home'. the wind that, according to Veronica Dobson's fantastic new book, makes people sick with a sort of restless inertia. it certainly kicks up a lot of dust and fills my head with Woodie Guthrie. Veronica once told me that fig trees are used to tell stories (as seen on the cover of her book), the leaves planted

top ten

2007-10-14T15:14:00.000+09:30

the joy of networked knowledge.i've been reading my own stats again, just to see where on earth you people come from, and cause i like to procrastinate. i'm particularly fond of the bit where it tells you what people were searching for when they stumbled across your site by accident. so i decided to have a sort of award ceremony for the best ones. the rule was that they had to be things i hadn't

fear of the dark

2007-09-28T11:22:00.000+09:30

i'm going to iron maiden! i thumbs me nose and sticks me tongue out at those who are not. yoho!speaking of pretending to be hard (but really being a bit of a dag), i got a new flaming skull tattoo. it's the gift i gave myself to celebrate giving up smoking. i had to wait three months since i quit, essentially because i thought i wasn't doing a very good job of it. i'm starting to trust myself not

back in black

2007-09-18T12:41:00.000+09:30

i got caulfield back from the mechanic a week and a half ago. the mechanic being a delightful old dude with a tiny bug-eyed dog who told me i 'look pretty good for almost thirty' (i can now look forward to a lifetime of such qualifiers). the new gearbox is a wonder of functionality. have been singing AC/DC and making a nuisance of myself on the roads, now that i get to go fast and - wait for it -

ein luftballoon

2007-08-29T10:45:00.000+09:30

how good was that?i spent the intervals between watching the eclipse listening to the fantastic Alexis Wright, who's on her Miles Franklin victory lap. she stuttered through a reading from Carpentaria and said some useful and intelligent things to a small crowd of fans and friends. then this band played a song they wrote about one of her characters. that must be a nice feeling. due to an accident

clean of dirt and hope

2007-08-13T16:37:00.001+09:30

I'm sitting in my soon-to-be-ex-loungeroom, having trouble looking at anything because i know i'll have to pack it. Back in Alice, but landed in something of a hole.I left Darwin somewhat reluctantly. I was having a lot of fun with my old friends and their other friends and generally enjoying a simple existence revolving around food, drink, nightcliff pool, and hilarity. Perhaps there was a

clean of dirt and hope

2007-08-13T16:20:00.000+09:30

"Nice Car"

2007-07-26T16:32:00.000+09:30

Almost every conversation i've had in the last three weeks has begun with the above words. I'm starting to feel like a poor shadow. perhaps i'm merely the personal assistant of my beloved EH. I suspected something like this would happen when i bought her. i prefer positions of relative anonymity from which to watch people, so i'm glad she takes the limelight - i'm just trying to stay out of its

waltzing

2007-07-17T12:46:00.000+09:30

just a quick one from kakadu, i'm in the library here in the tourist-and-miner-servicing town of Jabiru, where there is a very suspicious lake. i played in the sprinklers for a minute on my way here and then had a nasty thought about ranger uranium mine, which is quite literally just over the road. sickness country. it's in the story of the lightning man who made this place, and all the

alice in rantland

2007-06-22T12:10:00.000+09:30

It's great to be back in the desert, where the sun never stops shining, and everything is peaceful except for that massive mushroom cloud over there which bears an uncanny resemblance to John Howard's grinning skull.In its latest feat of pre-election scapegoating, the government has pulled out a massive (I am tempted to use the word 'dastardly') plan for controlling Indigenous communities via

flaky bandit*

2007-06-01T10:14:00.000+09:30

melbourne is cold, windy, and wet, like a reluctant soviet gymnast demonstrating its abilities for the benefit of the foreign delegate. i have been recovering from the emerging writers festival, largely by hiding in brunswick and making obscene jokes about the concept of emerging. the fest was good, but exhausting. it's hard to go from shed-in-the-desert to urbane sophistication in sixty seconds,

point scoring

2007-05-14T12:29:00.000+09:30

I’m in the library attempting to finalise a grant application, which is a foolish waste of time if you ask me, but I committed to doing it quite by accident after turning up at a non-existent consultation session which ended in a long phone call and several headaches. The maths is the hard part. Who the hell decided that a poem is worth 0.4 short stories? Anyway I suspect it is one of those

appetite for destruction

2007-04-29T19:16:00.000+09:30

i had this strange, half-waking nightmare that i was playing the fiddle for a violent game of musical chairs in which i was also a rather frantic participant. two reasons: 1. i am busy.2. my pickles are giving me nightmares.1. is not as bad as it sounds, because aside from binge-working at my shitkicker welfare job (which i intend to quit very soon), i've been spending days talking about poetry

icons

2007-04-16T17:58:00.000+09:30

i went to look at the rock. i walked around it. it sure is a big fucken rock.it was just like when i saw stonehenge for the first time and couldn't stop thinking about spinal tap. only this time, my brain kept referring to all those memories of the bankrupt leyland brothers' world in NSW, which i believe is still there. the theme park has been closed for years, and now there's just a servo and

school's out

2007-04-05T12:47:00.000+09:30

i found a life preserver the other day. i've been taking pictures of shopping trolleys, just for my own amusement, and stopped to capture one that was neatly lined up with an equally galv-tastic lightpost outside k-mart. on close inspection i realised that the innocent-looking plastic bag in its basket was neatly stuffed with yellow plastic rescue.when they were first designing shopping trolleys

salt lake callout!

2007-03-14T17:59:00.001+09:30

lake eyre is supposed to start filling in a couple of weeks, and i really want to get down there. anyone up for it? easter might be a good time...you may have noticed i've been trying to leave alice for weeks. i realised i was just having anniversary angst. hard to believe it's been a whole year. things which i didn't think would ever happen are starting to happen for the second time. things like

the you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride blues

2007-03-01T18:25:00.000+09:30

like a carnival ride, writing a book is crazy-fun, but when it stops it leaves you very dizzy (and possibly ill, depending on how much fairy floss you ate on the way). i finished another rewrite a week ago, but i'm still in semi-hiding. i'm restless to be a vagrant again, but oddly agoraphobic. impatient, and also without purpose. this is the first time since it began that i have felt my saturn

affirmations and lifestyle tips

2007-02-04T19:00:00.000+09:30

satan, aka the adelaide advertiser, came through with the goods. i won a whole $300 worth of books. for some reason, the idea of $300 doesn’t seem all that exciting (having a semi-consistent day job has obviously changed me), but the idea of $300 worth of books keeps me awake at night. i have to order them on the internet. i am sneaking into the shops here to feel the weight of texts and read

satan is a cheapskate

2007-01-24T10:59:00.000+09:30

i sold my soul to the devil. no, i'm not talking about the google-blogger switch. a short story of mine was published in a murdoch tabloid two weeks ago, alongside stories about Gulpilil's drunkenness and noble drought-surviving farmers and so forth. my soul went remarkably quietly. i received in exchange a $30 book voucher which i may only use in adelaide. hopefully i will eventually learn to

i believe in bugs

2007-01-08T21:44:00.000+09:30

last night i was sitting at my desk trying to finish a story when i was startled by the sound of eight small legs landing on pianola wallpaper. a large wolf spider had decided to pop out of my wall and crawl into the room to see what it could see. i kindly captured the creature, took its picture, released it into the wild shed, sat back down, found my place, and was startled by the sound of eight

tiddalik

2006-12-23T21:58:00.000+09:30

yesterday morning the sun hovered still for a moment over the tropic of capricorn. solstice time is the real new year, the point at which life teeters and changes direction. i lost my balance briefly on the edge of the ecliptic, regained it, watched a sunrise that turned the sky to molten butter, and thought about how best to reboot myself. the weather knows about these things. it gave us a

my hometown

2006-12-05T20:37:00.000+09:30

i'm back on my porch listening to springsteen after two hectic weeks in sydney. sydney didn't feel like home, but it still feels as if it should. i guess hometowns never quite sit right again once you've left them. outsider status again. but it was good to see people i love, and the ocean.on a quiet sunny day i caught the train to stanwell park and rode my bike across the sea cliff bridge and

seasons change.

2006-11-11T13:15:00.000+09:30

as it's the first 40-degree day, we've turned on the aircon in the house, but i'm sitting in my 40-degree shed, cause of how i'm an idiot. besides, the shed acts as an aerial: i can steal the neighbour's wireless from here. summer has arrived. the alice expat community is variously dispersing and/or telling newbies how hot it gets with irritating 'you ain't seen nothin yet' smugness. the lizards

the miracle of bird

2006-10-29T19:08:00.000+09:30

the wagtail children have grown and flown. here is a good example of why i am a writer and not a maker of nature documentaries:you can download the high-res, non-tubed version here.

checking the holden

2006-10-05T10:00:00.000+09:30

checking the holden Originally uploaded by aggyk. grand final, half time: mmm, yes, that sure is an engine. holden caulfield attracts a lot of admiration. i find it strange having a vehicle, let alone one which makes strangers stop you on the street. one fella humbugged me at the petrol station. "nice car, give us a lift up the road." nice try mate.here i am talking about my car like a

hugo vs satan

2006-09-23T12:02:00.000+09:30

great news!you don't have to sell out to write a bestseller. all you need is an endorsement from a renegade south american president. now, where did i leave that venezuelan phone book?

beholden*

2006-09-07T16:09:00.000+09:30

after ten years and who knows how many kilometres of hitch-hiking:EH, '64, LPG, VK 202, plastic skull details on the doorlocks.i advise the Territory government to erect 'danger: beware of jen' signs asap. (especially as i plan to steal the one that says 'take it easy')this does not mean that i'm going to stop hitching. it also does not mean that i have my licence. it does mean i have a lot of

Shock: pluto demoted!

2006-08-29T19:00:00.000+09:30

Pluto got demoted last week. What effect does this have on astrology? Well, it depends. If you’re healthy enough to be sceptical of labels, then the names self-appointed experts give to those big balls of rock zooming around up there don’t really matter. If you’re even healthier, and sceptical of astrology, then you’ll have realised that us starpeople are working off a system from two thousand

walking and falling

ATTENTION FEED READERS

for various reasons

extinction

paint swatch poetry

paint swatch poetry

teetering on the play-saw

goolwa or bust

bis ans Ende

overland wants you!

*sigh*

astrobluffing

koalas, encouragements

summer cleaning

blog battle

on releasing it into the wild

EWF reader: Critical Gratitude

buzz

postcards ahoy

aretharre season

virtual cake

depressing

politics/poetics

apocalypts

dancing lessons

the continuing adventures of the Piece of Cake

no bad news

no bad news

pullback

turning to white

emergers

rules of engagement

old.sydney

Eye of the Storm

Happy International Day of the Book.

cloud appreciation

no prizes for thirty-second place

weird feeling

gag reflex

Whaledreamers

on benevolence

babies

dar en avion

century of the random

guatemalingerer

alert now orange

alice in revolutionary land

worker´s paradise

idiocracy

¡me pone en un libro!

caminando y cayendo

utah is like heaven:

ichthy feet

hitting the high notes

wordstorm

Listen To That

why i have to write about water

a...z

pitches & pictures

best comment ever

lala

new starts - old wounds - steep hills

the good news is

post-famination

mark your horizons

comealongway

it's getting silly

WordChoices

WordChoices

neural renovations

neural renovations

dustbowl blues

top ten

fear of the dark

back in black

ein luftballoon

clean of dirt and hope

clean of dirt and hope

"Nice Car"

waltzing

sigh