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In: Human Nature

Aron Visuals on Unsplash Each New Year brings a flurry of activity as people make resolutions, purchase diaries, and press their personal reset buttons. What weird monkeys we are. What makes December 31/January 1 the day for this, and what’s more, what makes January, January? It’s arbitrary. Academic. I get seasons, natural ones. I get that the earth revolves around the sun roughly in the span of what we’ve decided is a year. I get Julius Caesar exporting his personal planner along with his legions to bring his domains into line. I even understand Pope Gregory XIII’s need to add a leap year, so thingsRead More →

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In: Happiness, Human Nature, Love, Uncategorized

CREDIT: David Gyung From the 2013 movie, Her: Well, basically I have intuition. I mean, the DNA of who I am is based on the millions of personalities of all the programmers who wrote me. But what makes me me is my ability to grow through my experiences. So, basically, in every moment I’m evolving, just like you.’ — Samantha This is a chatbot professing sentience in the 2013 movie, Her, in which a lonely man in the near future falls in love with an AI of his own creation. The ‘near future’ they spoke of back then is now yesterday (around 2017 at a guess when Replika released social chatbots) andRead More →

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In: Human Nature, Telling it True

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash We are getting closer to a shutdown in Australia. It’s a strange feeling. I can feel the stress of it in the tips of my fingers and there’s a buzzing on the crown of my head most of the time now, but there’s also a sense of unreality. It’s feels like a movie, one of those disaster films from the 1990’s or 2000’s. You know the ones where the ship is sinking or the volcano is spewing molten lava or when climate change has brought on the next ice age (this one does worry me more than theRead More →

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In: Human Nature, The Making of Numb, Writing
Bradkay Photographics

These were the instructions from the photographer also a Brad (Delaney), who was shooting my author headshots. He said this whenever I became self-conscious, which was rather a lot. “What actor do you like?” he had asked me early on. I’d said Brad Pitt because I’d recently seen his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes and he’s not just pleasing to look at, he’s a funny guy. I like funny guys. My partner is a funny guy.  Anyway, as I’m not comfortable with having my photo taken, BD was attempting to relax me, to give me something else to think about other than how weirdRead More →

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In: Book Reviews, Human Nature, Reading

We know we are destructive creatures, but to this I now add ridiculous and delusional. It’s how we go on, isn’t it, in the face of our inevitable end. It makes it possible for us as readers to enter a graveyard and cavort with the dead and pity them their unfinished business. This is the scene set by George Saunders in his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. We are easily drawn into his tale of these malformed spirits, who despite all they witness, cling to the lives which have long-since left them. This is a netherworld where coffins become ’sick-boxes’ and the life they onceRead More →

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In: Human Nature, Reading, Uncategorized

There are special books, so strong in time and place, they transport us into the past. We walk with the characters through cities and landscapes. We smell the bakery on the corner or the mud of the riverbank. We hear the voices around us and we are immersed. We can begin to feel like Gump, a part of important moments in history.  It’s strange to think we really can live for a time in the past. It’s extraordinary to know that as long as there are people to tell these stories, those times cannot fade away. All readers need to do is pick up theirRead More →

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In: Human Nature, Reading, Uncategorized

They sit to the side almost, left out in the sorting of literature, where poetry goes with poetry and novels with novels. The short story, the tale, while highly recognisable and democratic in the spoken form, is treated with uncertainty once it is written down. It is neither this nor that. It’s not verse. It’s prose, but it doesn’t take the reader as far. We don’t learn all there is to know about a character. We don’t watch a world gradually unfold. Not often anyway. Writer, John Cheever, says it this way: “A collection of short stories appears like a lemon in the current fictionRead More →

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In: Creativity, Human Nature

Just to say the word is boring. We draw it out to borrrredomm and it falls like a rock down a well into nothingness. Other animals know it. I have dogs who have chewed the legs off tables when they have missed their walks. Boredom is a black hole. Think about it too much and we might bring it on and be sucked in. When life is interesting, it ceases to exist, but when the wind changes it creeps back and we are mind-numbingly, bone-crushingly at its mercy. There is simple or situational boredom. It’s the stuff of long school days in hot classrooms, withRead More →

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In: Human Nature, On the Road

I have come to an abrupt halt while my internal organs are still in motion. It is in this small window before the adjustment occurs, this lag in the time it takes to jump from one comfort zone to another, where I rediscover something surprising.  I say rediscover because I think I’ve known it before.  Returning home after a trip is strange.  Everything is known and yet unfamiliar. Why is it that I can look at old things with new eyes?  I see my street, my front paddock, my house, the contents of its rooms as a someone else might do before familiarity floods back.Read More →

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In: Creativity, Human Nature, Writing

It’s one thing having a great idea.  It’s another to capture it in a way which will resonate with you hours, days, weeks or even years later.  It’s what’s needed though for sometimes it takes that long for an idea to find its way into a story.  In fact, I contend that those writerly notes, which still inspire us to make something of them years later are the best of the best.  That is note-taking done well. The writerly note is not just about what happens or who it happens to, even though it may contain plot points and quick character sketches.  It may beRead More →