Do I do requests?  Singers do, as do other entertainers.  Am I an entertainer?  I hope so.

One of my fans (yes, I have at least one) suggested I write ‘from the café’.  Okay, here goes.

I sit at a long table (two squares) facing the door, to catch the customers as they come in.  One just came in and nearly left again when he saw me.  Maybe he thought he was in the wrong place.  He looked at me again, at the books on the table, at my notebook and pen, at my poster (which explains who I am and why I’m here) and then went to a corner table as far from me as possible.  I’m the Ogre in Residence. (more…)

I can’t see much through the curtain of heavy rain outside the kitchen window.  The rain has the scene look as if it has been given a PhotoShop blur filter: the black and white magpies feasting on drenched insects and worms now look dark grey and light grey.

The wind comes in gusts and shakes water out of the trees.

There’s a squabble between the magpies and a pair of minas.  Is it over food or territory?  The smaller birds prevail and the magpies fly out of view.  What makes the minas so feisty?  They are able to spook the cat and steal his food from the back veranda. (more…)

Humans seem to be driven by the need for an explanation for everything.  This makes us curious about how things work and also leads us to pat answers.  Sometimes any explanation appears to satisfy some people.

I’ve written elsewhere (as have others) that it is useless to have answers to the wrong questions.  It’s worse than useless, because if the answers seem satisfactory, we stop asking. (more…)

I am who I say I am because I say so.  I am a writer because I declare it.  I was a lawyer; I was a social worker; I was a therapist; I was a CEO; all because I said so.

It’s easy to have what we do and who we are be the result of chance, mishap, happenstance or fate.  If we take that path, we believe we have no control over our lives.  If we allow any of these to be the excuse for our current identity or work (or lack of either) then we are denying that we actually made a choice, or a string of choices.  To allow what happens, to dictate what we do and who we are, we make a choice to allow it.

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I write for the sheer joy of writing.
Should I struggle to analyse that?
Some love the fish when they’re biting.
Some love the ball and the bat.
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Why do I write?

Why do you read?

Presumably I have something to say and you want to know what that is.  But I don’t write specifically for you and may not even know who you are; and if I do know you and write specifically for you, guessing what you want to read, am I writing for you alone?

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