from Martin Amis: you do something to the body, the body does something back.

and unrelated, the first-person piece in the paper from the woman glad she was getting older as her new invisibility meant she finally escaped the constant feeling of being compared with others. how sad is that?

the countries of Europe: like a family of squabbling siblings. whereas the US of A is like a family company. and a fundamentalist one at that.

short story thought: the couple trying to conceive on IVF. he has an affair. there's a child. she says the only way she'll stay with him is if he gets custody.


other thoughts: breaking eye contact a moment too soon (lying) and the size of the city, its live nature (yes, not new, but it strikes me again when I return from the country)

I shall melt, I shall flow
to the sea, to the sea
I shall melt, I shall melt
I was never meant to be.

I shall melt, I shall go
to the woods, to the trees
I shall melt, I shall go:
follow me, follow me.

I shall fly, I shall fly
with the bees
I shall fly, I shall fly
finally.

I shall melt, I will die, in my time
I shall melt, I will die: tell me when, when not why.

(well, it was 2 am....)

orality/literacy: if you took a child who was blind and rather than teaching them to read Braille, developed their oral skills - taught them to be an old-fashioned "singer of songs", to store it all in their minds.

apparently both the author of Mary Poppins (who was Australian, who knew?) and of the Harry Potter series started with that single character coming to them fully formed. which I already knew, I guess: that good stories come from good characters, which again is why the best animation comes from visually minded people, not "writers"

and maybe all the below, my renewed interest, is because I'm reading so many books?

a: "why do you call him Trout?'

b: "because he's got a shocking memory"

A small knot of concentration appeared between a's eyebrows.

a:"I thought that was goldfish?"

b: "exactly"

-------------------------

maybe it's because I've been off work for the past six months. the lack of work-writing may be allowing the urge to really write to build up. that and the ennui of nappy changing.

have started the time-wasting and nostalgic habit of digging through old material. wistful and disturbed over comments from past teachers about my "potential". surprised sometimes by the things I've written. but don't seem to know how to rewrite, to salvage, redraft, keep the good and lose the bad.

dream: a big old share house with pink and grey panels of metal in the back yard, pentagonal like the tiles in my parents' old bathroom. and chicken wire - shaped the same way?

hibiscus sunset - when the salmon pink flowers on the hibiscus hedge perfectly match the tones of the evening sky behind the house.

seeing an attractive man and hiding in the crowd, eyes down, like a doe escaping a lion. danger lies there.