Even when you cry, there is a rhythm You pause to take a breath. You bellow. Rumi says We have fallen into the place Where everything is music. I know this song: A quick crescendo, a steep drop into sleep. I rock you to the beating of your heart And wait.
Heraclitus said, around 2500 years ago, that ‘…man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.’ I love this quote. As the mother of a one year old, I’m learning a lot about play. It’s the thing that happens between eating and sleeping and escaping the house for walks. … More Serious play for writers (and anyone else)
I avoided Australian history at school, as much as I could. I found it boring. I liked learning about the Russian Revolution, about Classical Greece, about the manoeuvring of European states between the First and Second World Wars, about the Industrial Revolution. Big stuff. Stuff with capital letters. It didn’t seem that anything much had … More On telling the past
People joke about baby-brain. When you have a baby, according to the baby-brain theory, you become prone to forget things. Okay, so at points late in my pregnancy and soon after my son was born I may have had trouble remembering my own name. Justifiably, I think. Because at those times the world recedes to … More On forgetting
I love beginnings. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t. And I don’t just like to start something, I like to start it from scratch. It is a reality of our age that many of us start anew, often. We move jobs, we move houses, or cities, or countries. We start relationships and end them and … More On beginning
