Tuesday, December 27, 2005



How old is my heart, how old, how old is my heart,
and did I ever go forth with song when the morn was new?
I seem to have trod on many ways: I seem to have left
I know not how many homes; and to leave each
was still to leave a portion of mine own heart,
of my old heart whose life I had spent to make that home
and all I had was regret, and a memory.
So I sit and muse in this wayside habour and wait
till I hear the gathering cry of the ancient winds and again
I must up and out and leave the embers of the hearth
to crumble silently into white ash and dust,
and see the road stretch bare and pale before me: again
my garment and my house shall be the enveloping winds
and my heart be fill'd wholly with their old pitiless cry.
-Christopher Brennan

Bondi Muse waves5
Tamarama Breeze waves4

Internet book sales are a threat, but also an opportunity. "People look up the books on the net and come into our shop and order it. People just love to come in and feel and smell the books: The things that happen to writers are either a stumbling block or a stepping stone. Turning over a new leaf

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Not Wrong Just Different: My Soul just returned unto Sydney
You Know You're From Sydney When...

You make over $100,000 AU and still can't afford a house. You never bother looking at the train timetable because you know the drivers have never seen it. You are genuinely surprised when you meet someone who was actually born in Sydney (but then, they are Swiss/Thai/Brazilian).


Man is the only animal with the unique ability to generate surplus. As Russell put it in The Impulse to Power: Between man and other animals... One of the chief emotional differences is that some human desires, unlike those of animals, are essentially boundless and incapable of complete satisfaction... The activities of animals, with few exceptions, are inspired by the primary needs of survival and reproduction, and do not exceed what these needs make imperative. With men, the matter is different
What a bunch of malarkey [A place where leaves crackle after dark and the faint sound of a banjo draws up your pucker strings Unwonderful People are Strange; When I first met Cold River (I gave him this nickname because he has a bert lahr/ned beatty skittishness) When a movie was discussed, he would holler, "the book was better." Yep, one of those... Cold River was a labeler. To him, everything had a term ; One needs to be higher on the ladder of evolution to develop the ability and the desire to dissemble, be ambitious (sometimes inordinately), over-reach (Icarus may be the archetype but he isn’t the only one), accumulate power and wealth, create Fabergé eggs and heavenly music, write, paint, sculpture, strive for self-recognition to the point of mortal combat (Hegel’s First Man), even seek immortality. The coloniser was the serpent who came and got them banished from Eden ]
• · The Reasons for Us Being HereSex sells, and with the write stuff, wins awards ; The Rogue likes to observe creative space which seems to fall into an area between rational thought and total immersion, a sort of lucid interactive place Kaboom!
• · · Psychologists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Open University found that professional artists and poets have about twice as many sexual partners as other people... The great objective is to establish an exotic mood :-P Creative people have more sex ; This is what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be The Secret Agent; Topless sandals - also called "down unders"
• · · · Frank Gardiner was just a common thief. Ben Hall's career changed the nature of bushranging. He was the first to bail up a bank. The first to burn a storekeeper's ledgers (so debts of customers were wiped out). The first to burn a squatter's farm. He was the first to bail up two towns - Bathurst and Canowindra, where he held his famous party which Ned Kelly copied at Glenrowan the day he died. "They were the actions of a man trying to upset a system which had upset him. Ben wasn't a revolutionary. He was a criminal. But he wanted to change the balance of power in the area where he lived Hall lived up to his proud boast to police three years before: You'll never take me alive Getting away with Antipodean murder; The Cold River: Getting away with Californian murder
• · · · · Radio National books in Ramona ; All life is a competition. Hitting the line on the tennis court. Getting promoted in the office. Edging for position at the bus stop. Beating your daughter to the bathroom door!! L’Espresso magazine ; The cage shook: nothing is taboo in advertising
• · · · · · Songfacts is a searchable database of song information compiled by radio professionals, music enthusiasts, and visitors to this web site Songfacts ; Chronic shortage of donors puts IVF clinics in jeopardy