[Non-fiction]
It was Santa Monica in summer, 1997. Jim Sheldon taught me to play scopa over a series of alcohol-fuelled evenings. The alcohol fuelled me – Jim drank coke.
He didn’t need to drink; teaching me this game was his high. His eyes sparkled over the cards. His voice assumed an authoritative, zesty tone, encouraging and challenging me at the same time.
I dug in deep, but I couldn’t beat him.
Continue reading “Jim Sheldon – No Dark No Light”
[Non-fiction]
On my screensaver, the random word of the day is ‘resuscitate’, and I’m thinking, ‘this goes with this goes with this goes with that… ’
It’s like a women’s clothing commercial.
I recall the image of the heavyset cop on his knees, trying to push life back into the limp body of Tyrone Lee Slemnik, who lay on his back on the grass verge down the road from our house.
Continue reading “Closer Than They Appear”
[Exegesis]
Writing style is primarily determined by how we perceive the truth, and secondly by what we do with it once we’ve registered it. The quest for truth, in other words, informs on almost every choice a writer can make. This, however, could be said of any writer, nonfiction or otherwise. Continue reading “In My Back Pocket”
[Non-fiction]
My son’s little fingers cradle the iPad to his chest. “Apad,” he says, looking up at me, “pickcha?” His wide eyes are imperatives. This really is something he doesn’t need, but kids are good at convincing you they do. He’s only one and a half, for god’s sake, and he’s already swinging off me with jungle vines of emotion. Continue reading “Tarzan”
[Non-fiction]
We’ve just left Garden Island. My wife Erica, Marlowe and I are standing on the foredeck of the Supercat Susie O’Neill, a modern Sydney Harbour ferry, working the route east from Circular Quay to Watson’s Bay. The deck thrums evenly, erasing the waves with the sheer power and bulk of the boat. My one-and-a-half year old son is crooked into my right arm, squinting into the sun and wind, blond hair plastered to one side of his face, which is scrunched into a disapproving contortion of his usually angelic disposition as he looks out over the massive steel gunwales of the ferry. He is trying to unlock the mysteries of the host of sparkles that seem to run parallel to us across the water. Continue reading “Immersion”
[Non-fiction]
I’m standing in the hifi section, wondering if I should buy this clock radio. My eyes flick from the price tag, back to the bullet point specs, back to the price tag again. I take in the sleek wooden exterior, the extra port for your iPod, the retro feel of it. Enticing.
I imagine the cost it would have taken to build, I try to gauge it. I mean, after all it’s not real wooden inlay is it? It’s a plastic veneer. Inside, the circuitry is brand spanking new, sheathed in plastic – sealed in amid Taiwanese air. The circuitry is old though, in another way.
But it’s digital. That must cost something… mustn’t it? How can it be so damn cheap? Continue reading “Meditations on a clock radio”
Whats On My Mind? 