This will hurt me...

  Night light. The road to Whyalla, South Australia. Listening to Music, Getting Horny The air is acerbic, bitter, abominable in its annoyance— but then, the music. It hums, a mellifluous aurora, diaphanous as gossamer, sliding into my ears with astonishing aplomb. I do not want to be here, beleaguered by the banalities of daily life—its atrocious hullabaloo, the appalling humdrum—but the sound, the sound is different. It is always different. The beat is a clandestine caress, as capricious as it is compelling. I feel it move through me, not delicately, no. It hits with a benevolent violence, awakening something deeply familiar. An ineffable ache stirs, somewhere between ribcage and hips, a strange, sublime longing that becomes suddenly unavoidable. It is this: the music touches, then taunts—now casual, now intense, now furious, moving like lithe fingers across skin. My thoughts blur, my body answers. A dreadful conundrum: to sit still or to feel everything. The melody does not care...

  Reflection of self. Back after a run. Geilston Bay, Tasmania. Ah, the Point to Pinnacle. The name alone conjures images of an epic quest, doesn't it? A half marathon that, quite literally, takes you up a mountain. It's not so much a race as a rite of passage for those of us who have a penchant for... well, let's call it "creative self-destruction." Let's dive into the logistical nightmares. First on the list: chafing. Yes, the age-old nemesis of all who dare to run further than their driveway. Picture it: a nether region, chafed to the consistency of sandpaper, rubbing mercilessly against sweat-soaked shorts. It's like grating a brick of Parmesan on a rusty cheese grater. An image to savour, I know. And then there's the sweat. Oh, the sweat. It pours from my cap like a relentless waterfall, blinding me with its saltiness. I start to feel like a tragic hero from a Greek myth—Sisyphus with a side of sodium. Each droplet is a sharp, stinging reminder th...

  Picture this: a broken-down wind turbine marooned in a semi-arid, cold South Australian desert, with rain slanting down like a cosmic joke. Once a symbol of innovation and progress, it's now a hulking testament to stalled dreams. And isn't that just the perfect metaphor for the Australian Dream? We were all promised a slice of the pie, a fair go, a home with a bit of a garden, maybe even a white picket fence if you were into that sort of thing. But now it feels like the dream's been yanked out from under us, leaving us all standing around like that useless wind turbine—broken, rusting, and utterly bewildered as the rain pours down. This disintegration isn't just about the fading hopes of home ownership or a cushy retirement. No, it runs deeper, right to the heart of what once bound us together. Class solidarity, the good old notion that we're all in this together, seems to have crumbled like a sandcastle in a storm. Maybe it's the endless grind of casualisatio...

  Dude on half a motorbike, Shag Bay. August 2021. The Humans   by Matt Haig Synthesizing 'clever' and 'funny' is a tough act in a novel. Too often, what is intended as humourous can land as smug or smarmy. Or, perhaps more often, tiresome and dull. Credit to Haig here, as I found  The Humans  both smug AND dull. The whole thing was just so obvious, laborious descended into a sickly sweet tweeness that was clearly intended to be sincere and wry. Perhaps it was my mood, as looking at other reviews here, I am clearly swimming against the current. Not for me. ⭐ 1/2

Evening clouds, Geilston Bay. August 2021. Everything Under   by Daisy Johnson Remix of the classic Oedipal myth? I found it alienating, abstruse and far too tiring to become absorbed in the story. Far too often I scratched my head wondering "Which character is this now? What timeline is this happening again?" only to sigh and keep going because the whole thing is too dreary and confusing to worry too much about it. For me, the mix of bleak social realism with a neo-classical retelling of a Greek myth just didn't work. The shifting timeline, fragmented storyline and preposterous plotline were more tiresome than energizing. There is a cold and 'deliberate' artifice that never gave me a sense that the author has just relaxed into the story. What we're left with is a self-conscious and turgid mess. ⭐ 1/2

Light on the hill, Macquarie Street, Hobart. August 2021. The Keeper of Lost Things   by Ruth Hogan This is not the book for me. I found it cloying, overly sentimental and filled with banal observations and predictable twists. Crikey, I'm bored just thinking back on it. If superficiality is your thing, and you won't bristle at the guileless, dated presentation of developmentally disabled characters and lazy anachronisms in the overused flashbacks, you might find this more bearable than I. ⭐ 1/2