A Blue Flash

 

          We drive along the esplanade winding along the cliff to a bar overlooking the sea. It’s a glorious day. We stand on the balcony and look down to a spot where a ship was wrecked — ‘The Star Of Greece’ — a long time ago. The restaurant on whose balcony we are standing is named after it. Seventeen passengers drowned. At low tide you can see remnants of it. We look out to the edge of the sea. If you stand here and look, she says, as the sun dips below the horizon you can sometimes see a blue flash. Then an eerie glow. I don’t know what it is. A ghost perhaps of one of the drowned.

Just then a cold breeze blew in from the south.

A New Way To Chill

 

          When I went down to the beach today, I was in for a big surprise. For there, out between the two jetties, a still black fin rose from the flat green sea. Do you know what it was? No, it wasn’t a shark. It was a seal, its left flipper lifted into the air. Do you know what it was doing? The Marine and Wildlife Dept told me it was — wait for it — “just chilling. Not all seals do it but this one does.” He was a well known ‘dude’ seal. Sometimes when I lie down on the beach, I raise my left arm and let it dangle in the air, connecting with my inner seal. There are many ways to chill. This is just one. How do you do it?

Mulling

 

          If people ask me what I’m doing, why I’m not on Facebook or posting on my blog I tell them it’s because I’m mulling. Mulling is what you do when you’re not working on a story or penning a poem. It’s what fishermen do from jetties, travelers when they look out train windows, people when they walk along the seashore collecting thoughts like kids collect shells. Its idle rumination, range free thoughts. But mostly it’s a prelude to creativity. You know when you’ve been mulling for a while, you’re onto something, that it’s all going to come together. You just have to trust, that’s all. You don’t even have to do that. It happens anyway. It’s like a train. It always pulls in at a station.

The New James Dean

 

          Last night I went to see a film but received instead a lesson in plotting. Not that I minded. The film I saw — ‘The Place Beyond The Pines — was well worth the price of admission although I only went to see Ryan Gosling. I look at him like some people look at rain. Mesmerized. The new James Dean. Except he has a wider range. James Dean never appeared in a comedy yet Ryan Gosling performed creditably in ‘Crazy Stupid Love’. Anyway what I wanted to say was what I learnt from it as a writer.

          To begin with I went along purely to see Ryan Gosling and once his role had finished — he appears in only the first of three parts —- I was prepared to walk out. But suddenly when Bradley Cooper’s role began the plot took a surprising twist. I had to see where it went. It never went quite where you expected: it kept you guessing and kept you on the edge of your seat. And, of course, there were ramifications. I knew it was a long film — two hours twenty — but was prepared to see out the second section but then as it ended and the third began, fifteen years later, ripples from the first section began impacting on the story line in not quite predictable ways. You were kept in a permanent state of instability, much like viewers of ‘Game of Thrones’. You couldn’t just walk away. You had to find out

how the teenage protagonists, the sons of Ryan Gosling’s and Bradley Cooper’s characters,  handled things.

          That, of course, is the lesson. To bring the reader in and keep him there by continual twists and turns in the plot.

The Girl Who Looked At Rain

 

          I remember a girl in year 10 who whenever it really poured would get up from her desk, stand at the window and stare. She wasn’t being disruptive or anything and she’d only do it when I wasn’t standing out the front teaching. She just liked looking at rain. Sometimes when the other kids were reading or pretending to I’d look at the rain too. It was sort of mesmerizing. When she was in year 11 and 12 and in other teachers’ classes and I was walking along the corridor I’d catch her doing the same thing, looking at the rain. Thankfully there was a drought that year when she was in her final year so she didn’t get distracted too often.

          What made me think of this was when I was at the pool a few hours ago. The rain hammered down. It was so dark outside it looked like night though it was only mid-afternoon. Me and the bloke in the lane alongside me just walked up and down staring at the rain. I was wondering wherever she was — I can’t remember her name — whether she was looking at the rain too.

          There are worse things to be mesmerized by.

A Very Scary Day

 

          It started off with an alarming early morning phone call. According to my friend on the other end of the line I was in considerable trouble. According to the email he received I was detained in Manila and urgently needed some funds to get me out of the pickle I was in.

You know what happens next. It was a Nigerian-type scam. Someone had hacked into my email account and was sending the same message to all my contacts. You may have received such an email. I can assure you I am not in Manila, never have been and am unlikely to do so anytime soon.

A few things gave it away for my Australian friends. The email used the phrase ‘cell phone’; Australians do not use that term; we use ‘mobile phones’. There were other language markers too but you’d have to be familiar with my writing style —- as many of you are — to spot them.

I have frozen my bank accounts and have done a lot of running around. All over a small mistake. I have learnt my lesson. It has been a very long day. Now I’m going to grab a few beers over dinner and curl up in front of the heater. Cheers.

Books We Read in High School

 

          I was talking to a friend today about the books we read in High School as part of the English Course, the ones that first popped into our heads. She remembered ‘Macbeth’,  I remembered ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. What books do you remember studying in High School?

The Barrel

          When you start talking about slippers you know you are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yet they are the first thing I slip on — hence perhaps their name — in the morning and the last thing I slip out of at night. My life is bookended by slippers. Just as every good boy deserves favor, so every good man deserves slippers. And yet they are seldom mentioned in literature.

          Apart from the glass slipper of Cinderella and the ruby red slippers of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz,  there is nothing. Such accoutrements are confined to children’s literature. It is time to rectify this.

          My next short story will feature slippers, a suede pair of pin-striped Crosby’s. I can’t wait to get started. But first I have to slip into the right mood. I have just returned from the shopping mall where I bought a new pair of slippers. Once I wear them in and they become as comfy as a cliché, I shall get started.

The Longest Six Years

 

          I read somewhere in a book — I suppose it could be true —- that the distance between twelve and eighteen is very far, maybe the longest six years we ever travel. I sometimes think about this. I would have thought the distance between one and seven would be pretty far too, but then you wouldn’t remember half of it.

          What do you think?

Books For Blokes

 

          Am I a bloke? According to the recommended reading list on the new bookmark from the library, ‘Books For Blokes’, I’m not. I’m not a fan of Wilbur Smith, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Jeffrey Archer, or the other ‘blokey’ authors mentioned. I’ve tried their books but find them wanting. I do like Bill Bryson, however, and he’s on the list. Does that redeem me? 

          Probably not. Not when my secret gets out. I also like to read women authors, though not ‘chick lit’, I hasten to add. You couldn’t be a bloke and claim you like that. I do love reading Annie Proulx, A S Byatt, Alice Munro and Tessa Hadley though, chiefly for their stories. Annie Proulx, it must be conceded, though a woman is a ‘blokey’ sort of author. Can women be blokes?

          And what about male authors who aren’t on the list? Stephen King comes to mind, Roddy Doyle, Steven Millhauser and , my favorite, Tobias Woolf. Aren’t they blokes? What’s the difference between ‘blokes’ and ‘men’?  Are there degrees of ‘blokiness.’? If so, where do you fit on the spectrum? Females are not exempt from answering this? They can always explore their ‘inner’ bloke.