July 5, 2019
I am waiting for the Word to crash upon creation, making ancient stars flare in skies this night. I am waiting for God to confess his […]
July 5, 2019
She took Hitler to bed. It was hard-going. It took her a month to read the 221 pages. It took him a month to burn 8000 […]
July 5, 2019
The mathematics of language has always enthralled me, the way it calculates. But the language of mathematics has always eluded me. Still there are those — […]
July 5, 2019
There are two beginnings to this tale but perhaps I should allow Marc Chagall and Isaac Bashevis Singer first words. Fabulists of phrase and image, surely […]
July 5, 2019
At eighteen, armed with a driver’s license, I found an entirely new way of indulging my old love of shortcuts. Traffic-light-evading routes, corner-cutting byways along the […]
July 5, 2019
I remember my older sister most when I roll up my socks or read 19th century novels. A remarkable student of both, Vivienne showed me how […]
July 5, 2019
‘I took Fieldmarshal for a walk yesterday,’ her friend said over coffee. ‘Turned my back for one second and he lifts a whole chicken from someone’s […]
July 5, 2019
When Moses tried to etch another edict onto those sapphire tablets, God objected: ‘Five on one side and six on the other? It will ruin the […]
July 5, 2019
There was a time when Time was brutally Australian — when we landed on this wide brown land and declared it began only then. Nothing of […]
July 5, 2019
Jews of my age called ourselves the second generation. Our parents, Holocaust survivors, were the first. It was as though 1945 became Year 1 for them. […]
July 5, 2019
‘Tomatoes! This climate is perfect for toma …’ The taxi driver halted mid-sentence as he sped up to overtake a petrol tanker. ‘Bloody Safeway trucks. Shit! […]
July 5, 2019
She wonders if it happens to others? Their eyes deadbolt onto a stranger’s face. And with a shudder of recognition they identify that stranger’s source: birthright, […]
July 5, 2019
Nothing is quite so energising as getting up from a day’s wordsmithery and heading for the kitchen. The brain’s active areas swap sides and now the […]
July 5, 2019
The dream: performing in front of applauding thousands. The reality: the ballet master placing her to the far left in the back row of every ensemble. […]
July 5, 2019
In the desert language of her people one word does for wind and spirit. Far from where she lives the word throws out potent lures of […]
July 5, 2019
Every so often, if I’m not careful with my feet, I find that I have clicked my heels together and landed somewhere completely other. Not Berlin, […]
July 5, 2019
Wild flowers barely contained in shifting sand, guarded by barbed sentries: the Tiger Pear, the Barbary Fig. Thorns against hardwood. No country for sword-rescuing princes trained […]
July 5, 2019
I can’t sleep. It’s the stars. Not those nebulous, negligible pin-holes of light dying in the city, but desert stars: fat diamonds, the silver-dark genius of […]
July 5, 2019
They trek north of the Alice towards Black Tank Bore. Trekkers behind her? She worries she’s delaying them. Ahead of her? She could lose sight of […]