Category Archives: domesticity

things associated with home and family

the heist

It’s Sunday morning and the sky is clear. The football season is over and the cricket hasn’t started. I have no deeds to do and no promises to keep. I mooch around the house for a bit. I consider getting … Continue reading

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haunts and haunting

The Chook and I have returned from our sojourn in the west. It was a good long drive, over 2000 kilometres in all. We headed off north through the city, up the central coast, taking a left up the Hunter … Continue reading

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sixteen kinds of hurt

When my Dad was mad he’d threaten me with sixteen kinds of hurt. There was the clip over the ear; the smack on the chops; the belt across my buttocks; the gut punch; the double fisted shirt grab; the single … Continue reading

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heaven knows

The day starts with Sex Machine. James Brown shouting his chorus to my sleeping children (Get up! get on up/Get up! get on up) and I feel Bootsy’s deep bass begin the snaking energy transfer from the cold airs to … Continue reading

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way out west

It was a long drive, ten hours or so, undertaken in the heat of mid-February. Vinyl seats in the P76, dog at my feet, the handmade yellow trailer behind. It was the beginning of our long migration, our time of … Continue reading

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stop making sense

Earlier this year, or perhaps late last year, a correspondent, one of my boon companions from my undergraduate years, asked me where Marx went wrong. It wasn’t that broad a question in the asking but over time and consideration it … Continue reading

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57 channels

Bodies have been central lately: their vulnerability, their fallibility, their messy awkwardness, their ichorous instability, their lack of durability, their strange capacity to harm their owner. I have been thinking a lot about this. But mostly I’ve been answering my … Continue reading

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Boo Radley’s house

Gentrification is old news, it’s been going on for a long time, but not in my neighbourhood, at least not until recently. I’m part of it, we got our place fixed up, and we’ve done the renovation thing. Nice kitchen, a cleanable … Continue reading

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not a fake moai

Shortly before Christmas I found myself at a rainy market, on a morning of cold showers and a harsh, gusting southerly. I braced myself with a bacon & egg roll and went wandering around. Somewhere there I saw a bunch … Continue reading

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not hungry anymore

It’s twenty years or thereabouts since I moved from the country to my Nanna’s fibro by the sea, ninety minutes by train from the city. I have been reflecting recently on how keen I was back then, how desperate to … Continue reading

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