August, 2010

Marriage is like a fortress besieged. Those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out. — French proverb . Alright, this post goes on for a bit. Don’t say I didn’t say. Or come back soon, when we’ll be movie-mulching about Inception and The Hedgehog. (The image [...]

Claytons: “the drink you have when you’re not having a drink.” A Keating: the speech you write when you’re not doing the writing. ‘A remit, as an instruction, as guidance’ – PJ Keating’s sentiments Paul Keating makes plain his feelings about authorship in an instantly-famous article (Fairfax): … my former speechwriter, Don Watson, who not [...]

Magically, human action (voters voting) has intersected with intangible reality (a cynical campaign) to manifest in statistical justice — the hung parliament expresses pretty exactly the public’s disenchantment with same-old politics. On the night Julia Gillard couldn’t see the flames for the smoke, advising that ‘the people have spoken and it’s going to take a [...]

I rang the Parliament House shop this morning to see if I could get a couple of Julia tea towels for pressies. (Cos you never know…) Passing through, last year, I picked up the towel du jour featuring Kevin: Not cheap –$30, though it is linen. The artist (it’s signed Rodriquez) has a gift for [...]

I dug up this image from my post ‘On politics: Abbott‘ of last December. Come Saturday Tony Abbott will be on, or brought to his knees. He may get to swap his oppositional habit for glamorous prime ministerial regalia. I was having an espresso at a cafe this morning. (Actually, at the second cafe, into [...]

Going past the local shrine this morning I noticed their new, topical poster. The Presbies have a perfectly judicious and disinterested sense of how Church fits into State. . It made me think of all those “I fish and I vote,” “I drive and I vote,” people and all the cheap shots one could take: [...]

Life, the poet Joseph Brodsky proposed, is not about life. It’s about the meaning of life. (I’ve always like that, something about its circularity, its ouroborosity.) Or, as the writer Russell Hoban put it, there’s a moment under the moment. And John Donne: “No man is an island … Each is a piece of the [...]

Awaiting on the return side of a holiday is the immersion in the in-tray — which is a relief of sorts, no need, no way to think about anything else for a while. But apart from catching up with work I’ve been thinking about food (proof, see the last post). We were in Sri Lanka, [...]

Well, of course, with the election roundng the bend into the final straight and with the world as always shaping up like a pear, this kind of subject is close to being a nonentitial* irrelevance. And yet, the kind of world we want to live is exactly one which can afford the luxury of such [...]