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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 of seating i also gossiped with her publisher and a real estate agent, which is how i discovered my new second-favourite fact:

the nearest thing i've found to the great australian novel was written across the street from where i'm living right now, in a house which is now abandoned.

i'd spent much of the day staring into the blank air and thinking in that way where you get angry at things and stop working. this process sounds more self-indulgent than it actually is. i coiled myself up into a spring cause i finished a draft of the essay i've been writing about "the emergency intervention." i've now declared a week-long moratorium on thinking about "the emergency intervention," but no doubt it will be inescapable.

lil john was in town yesterday. i didn't see him and (once again!) missed the opportunity to heckle. alexis wright's publisher did an endearing impersonation of the pm trying to see over the heads of people taller than him. it looked a bit like a meercat.

the eclipse made me feel better. the intelligent things alexis wright said made me feel better too. there should be a service where you can get someone to come round every now and then and remind you why you're doing what you're doing. instead i am reduced to stickytaping encouraging things in the front of my exercise books. maybe i'm turning back into a teenager. what a terrifying thought.

my new favourite fact is linguistic. i've been reading about swaggies and found this excellent book of oral history ("The Swagmen: survivors of the great depression" by Allan M Nixon) with a glossary of swaggie slang in the back. and the olden days term for a swaggie who cadges off other swaggies is "quandong."

it's perfectly suited to the small menagerie of feral travellers who are still lingering around town. one of the excellent things about being technically homeless is not having a couch.

i say technically because i'm living in a very well-appointed granny flat for about three weeks. no my car isn't fixed yet. it's a lesson in patience and equanimity (i was going to say 'test' but i'm clearly failing). fortunately, i have a fictional life on the road to keep me going.