Please excuse my listings, I'm just organising my own mind out a bit.
Key:
Currently Reading
Required For School
Currently Owned
Currently Borrowed
Wanted
Read

Fashion Babylon by Imogen Edward-Jones & Anonymous
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Carrie by Steven King
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
The Children's Bach by Helen Garner
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carre
The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea by Mark Haddon
The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon
Welcome to Tangier by Morris Lurie
Surrender by Sonya Harnett
Australian Short Stories #64 by Various
Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx
Penguin Modern Poets 10 - The Mersey Sound by Adrian Henri, Roger McGough & Brian Patten
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Everything You Need by A.L. Kennedy
That Old Ace in the Hole by E. Annie Proulx
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Yes I was reading it for the third time but I'm counting it.)

I've had too much diet coke to drink so I'm awake when I'd normally be asleep (I tend to go to bed early for my mental and physical well-being). So, what to do with my awake twitchy time? I'm sorting through my writings folder because I want to polish/complete the old stuff being stored in that folder. Get things up to submission standard so I can consider sending them out... or at least have the sense of self-satisfaction that comes from having a large body of completely finished work.

I'm noticing that I have quite a lot of pieces with family themes, interesting but maybe not unexpected. Two short poems, both autobiographical. Written for my mum and dad, respectively.

Mothering
During a lull in the evening
the writer is discussing her apprehension
of starting life
at university.

Her mother lays aside
her literary dissection to offer
praise. You are
already a writer.

I Write Trees
The father will draw
the girl's attention
to the ruddiness of fleshy infant
leaves, like a wound,
on the Syzygium.
To an insected leaf he will
drag her eyes and she must
scent the leaves crushed in his soil
stained hand.
Again he presents
her with the texture
of a seed-pod, or the thrill
of the first petite
flower growing
beside feet.
She takes it in. She writes,
landscapes. And
trees. She writes the
detail her father gave her.
My father brought loveliness,
she writes trees.

Please crit and comment as you see fit. I'd like to be done with them... maybe work on an anthology of poetry and prose around the family theme?

I'm going to read some more of Fashion Babylon (Imogen Edwards-Jones & Anonymous) and try to sleep.

A few things have been happening lately:
- I've started a new semester of Uni and am feeling quite positive about my subjects. (Narrative in Creative Industries, Creative Writing: The Short Story, Ozlit and Writing for Film and TV).
- I'm finally back to reading a lot - two novels in the past week and a half. Both were for Ozlit.
- I enjoy talking to my mother on the phone. This is because we see each other so infrequently; it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
- Dylan failed his first semester of Exercise Science and is going back to Gladstone to pursue an electrical fitting apprenticeship.

I guess the last point is the one that is affecting me the most. Settling into my new home has been a fairly painless operation because I had him with me. I've gotten very used to having him around so much. It was bad enough when we were three hours apart last year. Gladstone is a long way away.

Yesterday I finished reading Sushi Central by Alasdair Duncan. It was quite good. In some places I really liked it, in others not quite so much. I met the author briefly at a reading, he's a masters student at my uni. Last week I read 1988 by Andrew McGahan. I really liked it and I recommend you all go out and find it and devour it.
It's the Bicentennial year and for Gordon - failed writer and bottleshop boy - it seems his life is going nowhere. It's time to escape. From his overcrowded house, from Brisbane, from Expo 88, from everything. He stumbles into Wayne who has connections in Darwin and the promise of work. So the two of them head north toward swamps and crocodiles, in search of inspiration, and of their rightful place in the culture of Australia.

I have to get to work on my twenty-five minute script for Writing for Film and TV so this is where I'll leave you.

numerical. x.