Tag: Creative Non-Fiction

Journal

Pints

The text message hits after ten PM, but I answer it ’cause I’m still awake and ’cause that’s what I do. It says, pub?, and I’m all, hell yes, but instead I text back about putting on clothes, ’cause I’m in bed, in my pajamas, just futzing around on the internet, and the possibility of hitting the pub at this hour seems more attractive than continuing to write emails I don’t feel like writing anymore. The pub isn’t really a pub at this hour of the evening. They’ve shut down the public bar, the outside areas. Reduced the venue down to the gambling lounge full of pokies, open ’til late for the folks who can’t stay away, but we ignore the rows of brightly coloured machines and make our beeline for the bar, ordering pints and taking them outside so you can smoke and I can sit there, watching the empty car-park that’s only really empty when we show up

Journal

Window

There’s this window in my office that looks out over the breezeway, and every day I come in and stare at it and wonder how hard it’d be to break the big panes of glass with an office chair tossed from the vicinity of my desk. I know how this sounds, ’cause I mentioned it once at an office meeting, and people have already given me the look even if they’ve come to understand what’s really behind the impulse. I mean, I don’t want to throw a chair ’cause I’m feeling violent or because I particularly want to engage in a little wholesale destruction, or because I go to work and find myself in a state of uncontrolled rage. I just want to do it ’cause the window is there, and I don’t know for sure if I could break it, and I’d like to know, maybe. To do it for science, as it where, and know what breaking the

Journal

Winter

All my friends keep moving to Melbourne and I do not. I find this kinda tiring, ’cause I’m not the kind of guy who makes new friends easily. I make new acquaintances. I’m good at new acquaintances. Making friends is harder. I don’t like to impose on people, especially now we’re in our thirties. I need clear signs that acquaintances would like to take things further. I assume, for the most part, that people have their shit down and don’t want me to show up and mess with it. I don’t bother ’cause I don’t want to be a bother. Besides, making new friends is all kinds of awkward. There are friends who skip Melbourne and just go overseas. I cant even imagine how to migrate like that. It’s not in my DNA to relocate that far. There are days when moving to Melbourne seems all kinds of daunting. I keep saying I’m going to do it, and keep failing

Big Thoughts

13 Notes for a Story That Won’t Get Written

I shouldn’t be trusted with the internet at the moment. It’s summer and I am maudlin, and these two things do not go well together. I find myself picking at old scabs and realising that the wounds beneath them never fully healed. I find myself creating drama, simply because drama is easier to handle. Inhabiting drama makes it easier to exist. It’s good for writing, I’ll give it that. Less good for everything else. # Two instincts wage war within me. The first demands silence because silence is my natural state, because what does not get said cannot be examined. # I’ve never hidden my heart. I’ve never placed my heart inside an egg, to be placed inside a duck, to be hidden in a well inside a secret courtyard, located in a keep on a distant isle far from charted waters. I’ve never done this, but I’ve been tempted. # Through it all there are words, ’cause writing is

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Adventures in Cat-Sitting, a Play in One Act

Peter sits at the table, trying to work. He is grumpy and irritable after being woken two hours early by a deranged cat yowling at the bedroom door. The Cat jumps on the table and sits on the computer keyboard. Peter moves The Cat. Peter: What do you want, cat? The Cat: Feed me, mortal. Peter: Dude, I fed you ten minutes ago. You ate. There is no more food. The Cat: FEED ME. Peter: No. The Cat: I stare at you. Peter: Totally cool with me. The Cat:I stare with mighty stareness. Peter: Huh. The Cat: FEEL THE WEIGHT OF MY DISPLEASURE Peter: Got it. Trying to work. The Cat: I savage your toe. Peter: Fuck. Shit. Rack off, I was using that. The Cat: FEEEEEEEED ME! Peter: TRYING TO WORK. The Cat: Holy shit, there’s birds in the yard. Peter:They’re chickens. They’re there every day. You know this, because I pull you away from their pen every morning.