The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

No snow last Tuesday. Snow every day since... Mount Wellington as viewed from Ashfield Street, Sandy Bay. July 2011.

Two books this week, both excellent!

If Beale Street Could Talk is James Baldwin's fifth novel. I only know Baldwin through his reputation, and after finishing this one I am kicking myself that I’ve left it so long to read one of his books.

A love story set in Harlem in the early-1970s; the novel evocatively recreates a certain time, space and community. Exploring the complex interweaving of family, culture, race and justice, it strikes a lovely balance between sweet and sad; anger and forgiveness.

Despite the overwhelming injustice of the story, and the anger that this injustice generates, the novel is ultimately an optimistic one. It stresses the importance of the bond between those who suffer from oppression, especially between members of a family; a bond that otherwise would not be experienced if circumstances were brighter. As society disintegrates in a collective sense, smaller human unity will become more and more important.

I liked it an awful lot, so if it sounds like your bag, head down to the nearest library.

The second is Human Voices, by Penelope Fitzgerald. Drawn from her own work experience, the novel takes place in the halls of Broadcasting House (the BBC’s London headquarters) during the Second World War. This is a novel of details with the most scant arc of a plot. Stuff happens – sometimes quite dramatic things, sometimes quite ordinary things – but overall this is a narratives more about atmosphere and place, rather than any particular climax.

Like If Beale Street Could Talk, its strength is in creating an incredibly redolent portrait of a time and place that bears little resemblance to the here and now. Fitzgerald’s cast of characters is amazingly rich and diverse, give the length of the text.

This is a book well worth immersing yourself in for a few days.

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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