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Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

Hen and Ez do their best impersonations of sharks. With flotation devices.

I would leap too/ Into the light,/ If I had the chance.

Cracks in the road. Wellington Road, Lindisfarne. April 2012. This poem by James Wright really is one of my all-time favourites. I've waxed lyrical about this poem to quite a few people over the years, and more than a handful struggle to believe that the image of a frog destroyed by a car could ever be interpreted romantically. I assert that it is! [SPOILER ALERT] This is a poem about risk . Sometimes, just sometimes, the risk is worth it. Small Frogs Killed On The Highway , James Wright Still, I would leap too Into the light, If I had the chance. It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field On the other side of the road. They crouch there, too, faltering in terror And take strange wing. Many Of the dead never moved, but many Of the dead are alive forever in the split second Auto headlights more sudden Than their drivers know. The drivers burrow backward into dank pools Where nothing begets Nothing. Across the road, tadpoles are dancing On the quarter...

It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.

Ezra and friend re-enact the sinking of the Lusitania .

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Even dead trees carry life. The Hastings Caves State Reserve, Southern Tasmania. April 2012. Three quite different books finished this week, an eclectic mix very much more accident than design on my behalf. The first is the latest from one of my favourite contemporary writers, This Is Life by Dan Rhodes. A complicated and convoluted novel that interweaves the story of a young art student, a (seemingly) abandoned baby, a women so beautiful that all of her ex-boyfriends (and their mothers) tend to kill themselves or stalk her, the upstanding proprietor of Paris’ last genuine cinéma érotique (who has a particular fondness for sophisticated ‘girl-on-girl’ films and a lesbian daughter), a pair of Japanese tourists and their hapless translator, the world’s most acerbic art critic and perhaps the novel's finest creation, the mysterious performance artist Le Machine whose global smash-hit production Life has returned to his home town of Paris. Rhodes's novels have always ten...

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

The Emperor surveys his dominions...

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

Down low atop the overpass. East Derwent Highway, Lindisfarne. May 2012. Theme Thursday and I still haven't posted? Damn! NEIGHBOURS. Gay bars? NEIGHBOURS! Hay cars? NEIGHBOURS!! Toppled Tsars? NEIGHBOURS!!! Hekmatyar's? Gulbuddin Hekmatyar??? For crying out loud, NEIGHBOURS!!! I don't know why I am, just that some days I am.

Finally I'm becoming stupider no more.

Now please stand as Ezra readies himself for his next trick. Yes, he will now EAT his way through this entire pile of car tyres!