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In: Book Reviews, Freedom, Reading, Uncategorized

CREDIT: Brian Harris (Alamy) Freakily, reading Tim Winton’s Dirt Music is like reading about myself. Looking back, it’s not difficult to find a time when I was a little lost, a little trapped, a little aimless and a lot unsure. This is what Winton does so well. He’s the master of the awkward, the displaced and the stuck, so while Dirt Music is an Australian story, it’s a universal one too.  If you like your characters neat and clean and sure of themselves, he’s not your guy. The characters in this novel are imperfect beings held in place by their pasts and weighed down by guiltRead More →

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In: Freedom, Love, Telling it True

I approach it gingerly as though I’m not looking, but I am.  I always look.  I have been looking at this place my entire life. I pull into the driveway and park beside a mini-skip.  It is bashed in on one side where I imagine someone has backed into it.  I hate the skip.  It reminds me we are selling our family home, my sister and I.  We are being practical, grownups, now our are parents are gone.  It is up to us to be wise.  You see, if we sell we will be more financially secure.  If we don’t, we will need to spendRead More →

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In: Freedom, Reading

Being quick to judge a book might feel like intelligence, but maybe its not.  Perhaps it is a means for us to shimmy out of a difficult text and move on to something more effortless.  If we think of this exercising of our reading skills as we think of our muscles, it may be we are giving in when the possibility of gain is just ahead. And what is the price of our impatience?  That we never get anywhere worth going; that we perpetually fall short or turn to the next thing which also barely holds our attention long enough before we move to something even lessRead More →

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In: Freedom, Reading

Reading is following a knotted rope into a dark cave. We go into it on faith and emerge carrying with us something we didn’t have before. The particle might be small, a mere speck, but it is there, this new thing and already it has combined with others to form constellations. It’s a remarkable thing that we do, when we read…every bit as remarkable as that which the writer has managed. In fact, without the reader, the writer manages little, mere squiggles. We don’t always remember what we mean to accomplish when we set out to read and the magnitude of the feat once we haveRead More →

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In: Freedom, On the Road

We, Australians, are a bunch of tall-tale tellers. Our country lacks water, so its not  entirely our fault. Our humour is drier, arid even. When we recount with a perfectly straight face that time we caught a giant barramundi out of a row boat, which was then taken by a crocodile and then by a great white shark etc., we find travellers, particularly Americans, will be booking flights to some place else before we even get to the red-back spider we overlooked when packing the fishing equipment. We just know if we drill you with an intense and serious gaze, you will believe we regularly wrestle crocodiles (a past-time of theRead More →

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In: Creativity, Freedom, Love, Reading

We carry our cynicism on our backs as snails do in defense against certain inevitabilites, death not the smallest amongst them.  It’s best not to be shocked. Let’s not, in our naivety, be taken by surprise. Let’s put it out there, warts and all, before life slaps us squarely in the face. Our cynicism opens doors for us in social circles and we lean against lamp posts and on dinner tables with a terrible nonchalance that may, if we are lucky, look like wisdom or street smarts, at the very least. We’ve broken down traditions which were worn out echoes of less understanding days and there are moreRead More →

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In: Freedom, Human Nature

My daughter is studying sociology and once in a while she sends me something she thinks I might be interested in.   The design of the Panopticon was one of  her recent offerings and I find the concept so diabolical I cannot help but share it with you. At times a popular concept in prison architecture, the panopticon allows for a central tower with 360 degree visual access to all inmates.  The presence of a powerful light (but reflective or tinted glass would also do the trick) emanates from the watchtower.   Blinded by this light, it would be impossible for the inmates to tell whether there was someone watching them.Read More →

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In: Freedom

Freedom’s just freedom right?  Well no actually.  Joe Gelonesi, presenter of ABC Radio National’s Philosopher’s Zone, spoke recently with political philosopher, Philip Pettit, and it appears the meaning of freedom has shifted over time and depending on your outlook this may not be a good thing. According to Pettit, Professor of Philosophy at ANU and author of Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World, freedom is not what it once was back in the day….and we are talking right back in the day of Republican Rome.  Since the rise of liberalism, freedom has come to represent an attitude of non-interference.  If a person can navigateRead More →