These are tiny half-stories, vignettes born of whimsy and a wayfaring-but-trapped mindset.
There's an old man I see on the trams, every couple of weeks or so, has the look of decay about him. Emaciated, with wisps of papery hair clinging to the back of his grey-skinned scalp, ears grown too large for his frame, and eyes sinking into their sockets. The flesh of his eye sockets […]
I never saw her face. I had my head bent over my book, reading away the tram ride home. I'd caught a glimpse of her boyfriend, lounging in the stairwell while he waited for the tram to pull up to their stop, but of her I saw only her back before turning back to my […]
Yesterday at the dayjob, sitting through a seminar on government programs to support innovation, and the presenter comes out with this: "In this job, I've learnt that everyone in Australia has either written a novel, or invented something." — and every head in the room swivelled my way, my dayjob colleagues laughing, the presenter following […]
As a public service announcement to all the blokes:1 asking a girl standing at the taxi rank "Where's home, though? I might be able to help you" is not (however much it might seem like it at the time) a particularly endearing way to earn said girl's trust. At best she's going to assume you're […]
The triptych window in my living room gives me a view of the sky, glancingly pinned to the earth at the bottom of the frame by an apartment block rooftop and the sparse canopy of a nearby gum tree. I forget, sometimes (because when I'm home it's mostly at night and the blind is invariably […]
The blackbirds fall silent as I step out the front door. There's three of them, one perched on the wall that hides the garbage bins, another on the low-hanging power lines, and the last is crouched inside his own fluffed feathers on the strangely purposeless arch that adorns the mouth of the driveway. They hold […]
"Excuse me, miss…" He's proffering something, a small pamphlet barely larger than a business card, so I take it. It's a reflex, nothing more; I don't look at what he's given me. It's in the same manner — a reflex, nothing more — that he adds, "You look like you've been miserable lately." This, I […]
First up, a brief announcement for the livejournal crowd: I've changed the settings in the crossposter, so now you should be able to leave a comment on the livejournal site, should you so desire. Previously I had it set so you could only comment on my website, mostly because that made my life a touch […]
Good writing day on Saturday, dreadful one yesterday. So it goes. (Here's hoping this afternoon's words are a little less stubborn.) I blame IKEA. I have not been inside an IKEA store since, well, I'm not sure I've ever been inside one. If I have, it was many, many years ago. And by that I […]
Today it rained, and Melbourne forgot to wake up. I ventured out into the darkness and the hissing rain, giving the trench coat it's first outing (even though it's not cold enough for a coat of any description yet), and found myself utterly alone. No cars, no pedestrians, just me and the rain and the […]