I truly do not wish to go soft in my old age. I don't want to give up on great literature and start reading crap. Let me go down with my sinking ship if need be, but let me be true to myself. I don't really ask much more of life.

I had a sick feeling on takeoff today. The crew was late and we had a substitute crew show us on board. It somehow seemed to augur badly. Then the captain warned us that we had "weather" in Brisbane to contend with. I just was sure that this flight was going to be my last. A little rattle convinced me that the panel by my door was going to come off and fly into space, sucking me out with it. Then it took forever to get above these high clouds. We got through a layer of cloud and then there was just so much more of it, far above us. I thought we would fly below the clouds but we just kept climbing and tracking, climbing and tracking. I didn't think there would even be time to serve refreshments, I mean it isn't that long of a flight from Brisbane to Sydney. Do we have the wind in our tail in that direction? Can't remember. Anyway, the plane didn't fall apart, we got through all the cloud and into clear blue sky without a midair. The landing was one of the silkiest ever. When downtown Sydney came into view, a leggo skyline below us, everything seemed normal again. It seemed dull and bland and familiar and unchanging, unlike Brisbane which has had, if not a revolution, at least a good turn of the wheel. And more is coming. New thrusting buildings appear on the horizon with every visit. The GOMA, which opened a couple of weeks ago, is just the most monumental artspace you could wish for in a city the size of Brisbane. Biggest in Australia, in terms of dedicated Contemporary galleries. Even the bookstore is a standout. Now I know what they mean when the media goes on about Sydney having "lost its edge". The edge has moved north to Brisbane and South East Queensland, possibly south to Melbourne. However, I'd probably be bored shiteless again if I had to live there all over. It always seems great there for the first week or two........

Life continues, it just goes on and on in the face of the most horrific things you can't imagine it just keeps flowing and pushing on.

There once was a time when we elected politicians to keep us above the rabble. Now the politicians are the rabble.

Well you know I had a really nice thought circulating through the old brain this afternoon, something quite profound that I was going to chuck up onto the blog and what do you know? Gone. That'll teach me for not writing stuff down when it comes.

Just be a good passive consumer, take what they shove down your throat and everything will be alright. Don't think about anything political for gawd's sake. Remember all the advertising is truth. There are no contradictions. No contradictions and nothing to be ironic about, no cause for cynicism of any kind. And you are free. You can say whatever you like.

It's the war on fun in Sydney. Went out this morning to my favourite, the Colombian pub, stopped in there just after breakfast at about nine in the morning and what do you know? CLOSED until eleven. So I mosey off to Kings Cross, I sit down at Roy's on Victoria street. I ask them if I can have a beer. NO BEER til midday. Wha... so I have a carrot and apple juice instead and move on. Finally I get to the Empire pub, about the last place I'd usually volunteer to sit in at any time of day or night, the joint of last resort. I order a schooner of Blonde. The tap starts running dry halfway through the pour. So I ask for a bottle of Crown instead. Nothing could possibly go wrong now. The barwench cracks it open successfully, and even gives me the not quite full schooner of Blonde on the house. Small compensation I suppose, considering all that had gone before...then I get in a taxi and head back to Glebe and piss my pants on the way.

Well where do we begin.....I'm home and it's Saturday. Well that's not much of a start. All my life the most I've been able to do is get started. But every story is just a beginning. Like Sheherezade spinning her fables, they all are just at the beginning always, at least until they get to the middle and the end. Like Sheherezade I need an audience, a present audience. The problem with trying to write novels is that the audience is not present, but if you can create the illusion of an audience in your mind that might help.

Nothing much happens in Sydney, really. People go to work, they go home to their dull suburban lives, they go out and get drunk on friday night. Things are pretty predictable. There isn't much of anything to inspire anyone to produce great fiction. There isn't enough desperation in the firmament for that, at least not now, not yet. That's the surface view. But we know that what goes on under the surface is a lot more interesting. What we don't see is far more interesting than what we see. What's left out of a story is always more eye-opening than what is actually there on the page. Of course there is intrigue, and complexity and mystery. You just wouldn't know about it to look at the overwhelming superficiality, the corporate monotony, a steady diet of oppression that the oppressed gratefully devour.

Another sleepless night, another day.

What exactly is it that drives people to give everything worthwhile away just to make a bit more money?

These old men who keep holding on to power. One day we'll have to prize their dead fingers from the levers.

Life is a conveyer belt. We jump on for a while, then we jump off.