Georgiezine

  I have no idea where I found this picture or who photographer is, but I love how it's Helena BC in residence at her parents' home: phone randomly placed, pile of books, wallpaper matches curtains, use of four poster bed as a wardrobe etc. I've pasted it in the teams team I formed, for pending clothes swap I have organised. By 'organised' I asked around to see if anyone else wanted a clothes swap, floated a date, recruited people.  Is that 'organisation'?  Have been reading The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash, narrated by the son of a late night TV host, recently returned from Peace Corps to life on the Upper West Side, his younger brother on the tennis circuit, the preppie bohemian next generation culture: everyone on staff at Winter Park is a 'child of'. My friend dated a girl who was vying for selection in an event that I'm going to call lying down horizontal in a small space, but it has a fancy name. I feel bad I didn't start fostering a p...

I was watching Little Women, the Greta Gerwig version with Laura Dern and a cool girl that plays Amy, production captured the organic texture of houses and textured colours. This version is not linear, and I was multi-tasking by taking to family photos with the scissors, not to excise people, but resize photos taken by a rellie pointing camera blindly, collecting from store with high hopes, only to discover they're no Max Dupain. 

 Alison-Lizzie Porter. Graphic novel about a fictional artist who moves from Dorset to London in the late 1970s and eventually has a career retrospective. Green Dot-Madeline Gray. Fictional novel set in Sydney about a twenty something who succumbs to an office job and dating a married man. Whilst this sounds so so, it has a spectacular ending, in which she realises she's been looking all along at one small spot... well crafted, has hidden mysteries etc.  Romantic Comedy-Curtis Sittenfield. Admittedly I read this a few months ago but I just gave it to my friend Gab, and said it was about a comedy writer who meets a hot musician when he performs on the TV show that she writes for and they get together. (Plus there's a pandemic). Sometimes you just like to read a book that makes you happy, right! Some biography of Elizabeth Harrower-this also turned out to be an intriguing overview of Australian female writers across the 1930s to 1970s and a nice match to the Dangerously Modern a...

When my youngest was very young, eldest thought his brother was Grandad reincarnated (same day of earth arrival separated by 96 years). As it happens, Grandad died on my nephew's birthday, which we celebrate each year, this year ate at to a pub that is okay but nothing special, compared to gaslight tavern, circa November 2004, as enthusiastically described to Guy.  Nephew agreed people who barrack for the Crows are like flat earthers-that's what was cool about GI Jazz: Melbournite's admiring my Tigers scarf.  SIL came by to pick up youngest who offered to help with chores if I didn't make him leave and told her he'd made himself baked beans and a chip butty, like a before character on a heart attack advertisement.  Meanwhile eldest has been unhappy ever since he headlined with his band, and now I feel like a bad parent for sending him to a Car clew camp. Right now, he's chatting on the phone about something being 'bad', his friend is asking 'how bad...

My son about his school choir: A group sings together and the sound is like from heaven.  I've been listening to Barbed Wire Kisses by Jesus and Mary Chain.  Re-read Rules of Attraction and laughed my head off. I'm glad I finished writing before I dipped back into these books, too much influence. Nature Strip by Leonie Stevens, you get a sense of her era (early '80s) as well as the time of publication (early '90s). I read it at 18, recalled the raw feelings of physical contact. Rules of Attraction is set in the insular world of a college campus where not much happens besides promiscuity; I like the film which avoids being 'retro'. Lauren, food services girl (from Warpaint) and guy that plays Paul, are great, he reminds of my aesthete friend who smoked whilst criss-crossing arms.  The book I'm reading but may not finish, The Inland Sea, has a character that is writing a thesis on Patrick White, and about dead marine creatures (solastalgia) which res...

Took my kid waterside to sit in a sunbeam then made volcanoes from cartons, watercolors, frozen water. Before I fell asleep, I was comfort reading Seagreen , and was woken, at 3am, from a dream that I was reading the blog of another campus acquaintance, called "Melbourne vs Hobart", the diary of a reformed hipster that converted to a Labor vote after fathering five kids. (Note: all fictional, sub-conscious conflating him with Nick Cave's Red Hand Files .). The fictional version was likeable because he wrote grammatically correct blogs about domestic life with his baby mother. I'd read that!  A blog by ex-goths would be funny, if earnest, but not sure what comes first: finding the person interesting enough to read their blog, or in reading their blog, finding them interesting. As always, it's about managing relationships without throwing shade, sensitivities differ. Lim thought my diary & Sim's photos belong together, which was sweet. ...

Made a parenting faux pas: ordered in "Unlikely" a graphic novel by Jeffrey Brown, who switches between adult memoirs and Star Wars inspired kid novels. Kid coughed politely and said, "I don't think this is for me", THEN I noticed the back cover: "A memoir about losing my virginity". (Think a guy that's studying physics and grew up going to church, and meets a goth called Alison when he's 22).  Youngest doesn't want to go to school in the morning. Coughed and spoke in a croaky voice as convincingly as Ferris Beuller, ("I have germs and I don't want anyone to get them"), later admitting he'd tricked me. When his dentist admired him for having a cool name, he explained "I am cool", and said he wanted to be a dentist when he grew up, until he discovered he'd have to go to school every day, now plans to do NOTHING when he grows up, says I should get myself a job teaching people to "be calm". I wonde...