“She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her.”

Suburban sights. Geilston Bay, December 2020.

Enjoyed is probably not the appropriate word for how I felt reading a tale of the lives of two extraordinarily damaged people. While I have no doubt that most “normal” people are flawed and impaired through the various mechanisms of society, culture and family, Connell and Marianne are significantly fucked up.

The tale is one of how two fucked up, emotionally stunted teenagers negotiate their lives through to young adulthood. It is hard-going at times but doesn’t shirk from the messy realities of the damage wrought by the structures supposed to raise, nurture and support young people.

The book consists in large part of chronological snippets of incidents, dialogue and internal monologues. I see that many have found Marianne an improbable and unlikeable character, but I found her tendency towards self-harming behaviour a reasonable response to the trauma of her childhood.

Connell struck me as the more fanciful. Give his inability to communicate and express his fears and hopes, I struggled to see how others reacted to him as realistic. Sure, a lot is going on in terms of inner turmoil and reflection, but the bloke barely utters more than a dozen words in a sitting. How he has managed to impress his genius upon others was a little beyond me.

Still, the story's arc rang true, and the odious types that moved into their worldview once they hit university were not unfamiliar or implausible. The endless self-defeating choices (and non-choices) of our two central characters struck me as likely as not, given the circumstances.

There is no shortage of frustrations and annoyances with our two central characters. Their decision-making and their inability to communicate in ways that advance their lives and loves in safe and sustainable ways are maddening. Still, I enjoyed the long and meandering journey to something approaching happiness and self-actualisation.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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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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