Last night I went out for jazz and at the bar a man nibbling on the ...

Yesterday I was at my friend's place after a thunderstorm and she had a little curving ...

I was lying on my bed reading in the stifling heat today and a cane toad ...

At rehearsal with a Ghanaian band for whom it is imperative to have two different drummers ...

Imagine that. Imagine claiming a whole vast and fast continent was empty, naming it Terra Nullius. ...

For weeks after the diagnosis I was still having episodes of shock as deep as flashbacks, ...

In a cafe where I write, the staff are terrifically grumpy. One sometimes meets me with ...

I woke up strapped to the bed by six different apparatus. The last thing I remember ...

When I got there the doctor said, "You know when we call you in at seven ...

I showed up at the supermarket checkout at closing time with a tub of ice cream. ...

Hi Callum! Good morning I'd like to ask your advice as I don't know now what ...

'Hello, Department of Pumpkin Soup? I've just reinvented the form and I thought you ought to ...

Ten years ago the EU was still called the EC. When it was first mooted that ...

My phone rang just now with a number I don't recognise. A grandmotherly voice said, "Kyle! ...

Three days ago I posted a picture of my face on a dating site because I ...

Adept at dancing in small spaces & a one-man dance party, at any party you care ...

I want to wish everyone a beautiful festivities, in whatever shape you find them, the end ...

I went to a Sunday afternoon gathering of people I didn't know, who regularly host discussions ...

Paying for my breakfast at the counter I noticed another customer, reading the paper intently, with ...

In a little Hungarian cafe I found a tourist map of Budapest. It very much resembles ...

On the underground train above ground the whole carriage overheard two rather stoned young dudes speaking ...

The courage… to get through life without this sense of home, without this refuge, whilst surviving ...

I am leaving Accra today. I said goodbye to Nii and Kadija and Mariama, the littlest ...

Woman at the next table films her third slow sweep of the entire restaurant. I am ...

All the way home I am paying attention to the trees. These are my champions, companions, ...

Today I was walking down the street wearing shorts and within a block two men had ...

I met the grandmother of the chief of the tiny coastal village near where I am ...

I am crying all the time this week and in order to get anything done, I ...

I met six (6) beautiful British-Ghanaian men, who were sitting at the next table to mine. ...

The littlest member of drawing group was handed over in a hurry and he settled down, ...

The long trotro ride from Accra Mall to the middle of nowhere. The long wait under ...

Looping conversation with a lady sitting on a park bench. She had met her husband at ...

It's nine years this July since I came to Berlin for a week and after 10 ...

I came to visit a Ghanaian friend who runs a very tiny, very humble business. When ...

I walked past a group of boys and one of them said, opportunistically but with a ...

In Accra I have four or five street friendships with little doggoes and pussycats who live ...

My date took me to the poolside with his mother. This was an accident. I had ...

I am in Africa. I walked home the long way late and carrying a huge bracket ...

Have you noticed how racists feel the description of their racism is worse than the actual ...

I just learned that Ghanaians call ketchup catch-up. I learned this from a poster advertising tomato ...

There is a plump old man near where I’m living who is so extremely sweet that ...

A man saved my life today, deftly and in German. He sped past on his bicycle ...

First wasp kiss of summer. She was drinking the sweet sweat under my arm, a wasp ...

Thinking this afternoon about the insulting phrase All Lives Matter, and its to me clear and ...

It is summer and the lockdown is easing; I went to pick up my disreputable, battered ...

Eleven weeks ago today my husband walked out. I went to the park and when I ...

Hey Europe! It's like this. We stole the whole world from everyone. Retired behind desks to ...

In the late afternoon I walked down to the square. I've been indoors now every day ...

Once an Islander man stepped out onto the pavement as I was passing. We both stopped ...

Well, this evening I've reached the end of my first month in quarantine, 28 days, 4 ...

I went down to the square to catch some sun. I had been sitting on the ...

Prostitution: my wife doesn't understand me (by providing herself as a slave to my sexual needs) ...

My mother's best friend is sick with coronavirus. She also suffers from dementia, so she likely ...

Today I would give anything to run outside into this suddenly warm sunshine. I woke to ...

Self-quarantine day 10. Me and two other neighbours ran into each other in our pyjamas down ...

I just spent a few precious hours working in a greensward where I could be safely ...

It's wonderful to be cheerful and I will be cheerful. We are alive and are blessed ...

In Berlin this early in the quarantine it's ok, the sun is out and I would ...

Things my African boyfriend wants to know: Why do white people need to take coffee or ...

Today in Ghana I ran into my friend Kwame, who sells jewellery from his lap in ...

Wild animals are now approaching humans, desperate for water. Magpies are mimicking sirens. It's so catastrophic ...

My little Tisch is dying really fast. It seems her body is already cooling and her ...

I bought my bike second hand and we went all the way to Leipzig to get ...

I had a beautiful friendship once, with a woman who is also a writer. We read ...

I am in Faro and the moon has been full for days. Everywhere we walk he ...

When we eat too much ~ what we really want is love. When we cling too ...

In the supermarket I queued for the African check out dude who's always calm in the ...

I still spend an hour every morning coughing earnestly and can't laugh without coughing. I thought ...

We went out to the white people's restaurant, as he calls it, which is a street ...

We are walking down the road in the middle of the night. The road is made ...

Ahhh, weekend in a hammock, swinging softly from side to side and hearing the waves crashing, ...

It is my birthday tomorrow and I've woken up in Africa! Beautiful Ghana of the glorious ...

In New York I came into 34th St subway station to hear a bunch of dudes ...

I went on a ten-day meditation retreat & on the last day, made an appointment to ...

Yesterday when he asked I told a trans-identified friend over coffee, No: you're not a woman. ...

Today in Berlin I found a hand-blown wine bottle so beautiful I had to pick it ...

In my twenties I worked at the front desk of the Queensland Art Gallery for a ...

One thing I love in Ghana is people seem so good and kind. Not all of ...

I went on a date with a guy who for nearly a month had been pestering ...

Tomorrow is my Mum's birthday, she's eighty. Tomorrow is already today in Brisbane because Australia is ...

Moth drowning in the shower. Poor fluttering little guy. Even if his whole life flashed before ...

A man I had been chatting with climbed on top of me as I was falling ...

I was overtaken on the bike path today by a puzzlingly hostile man. He seemed to ...

The grandiose way of telling this would be to say, I am flying back to Ghana ...

Try to work out whether I can afford to get back over to Ghana to see ...

This summer as the world goes to literal and immediate hell using bushfire and corruption, misogyny ...

In a crowded lunchtime cafe we were pressed elbow to elbow. The couple beside me talked ...

Transactivism has usurped the struggle of genuinely marginalised vulnerable people and become swollen with the entitlement ...

I will tell you what Berlin is like in the summer. As I cycle home from ...

The woman behind me at the supermarket checkout had a little pile of five caramel bars, ...

I learned a poetic new German word just now at the little health food shop. The ...

A woman in my neighbourhood has put up little signs all round the flower gardens in ...

I just sold my air mattress, late on a Saturday night, to a small, muscular, warm ...

It is my birthday and I had kind of a depressing morning because (various reasons). But ...

Whole streets in Berlin have grown into green tunnels while I was away in Africa. Trees ...

Standing on the street in my Dad's old pyjamas taping a sign "GORSS" next to the ...

Today I am going down to my favourite Berlin cafe to write. Last time I was ...

A friend of mine took her own life, from herself and from the rest of us, ...

On the one hand, consensual sex is nobody else's business. On the other, I feel sad ...

The battle to take seriously my own life and prospects, and to treat myself well, is ...

"Oh my queen," said a man walking behind me in the dark African night, and we ...

Two men unfolded themselves and stood up. One of them grabbed my hand. I was passing ...

It’s a beautiful night in Ghana and the moon is very full. Immodestly so. What need ...

A few years ago I was living in Berlin and it felt indefinite. I had not ...

Beautiful sunset over Berlin today: pink, stippled like wet sand, and spacious. The man in the ...

My dad trained me to be raped, by minor and persistent infringements which he would not ...

My date took me to a bar that was open late. We sat round a splendid ...

Monday morning I left my doors wearing a tiny skater skirt. I flung a leg over ...

Late night supermarket in Berlin's wild west. Two pretty girls in their pretty outfits are queuing ...

Pedalling home along a tree-lined street which is set aside for bicycles, I heard a crash. ...

The best thing about living in Berlin so long and getting better with my German again ...

I went to have my hearing tested. This became necessary because a man had walloped me ...

Yesterday I was reading the paper over coffee in a huge, bleak market hall in Berlin. ...

I was walking home up our rainy street when a woman popped her head up and ...

Coming past the apartment below me I heard from the stairs the unmistakeable noises of grief. ...

Just walked past a cafe table where both parents had their phones out & were intent ...

Today is the Autumn Equinox. As a southern hemispherian I decided to finally find out what ...

I went to see Paul Kelly play Berlin. I was going with my girlfriend and the ...

Today I was in a tiny bakery in Brandenburg and laid a ten euro note on ...

Across town today I had the impulse to come through an overgrown island of trees that ...

In an Italian cafe I saw two eight-year-olds locked in a passionate embrace. I had to ...

In a second hand shop I tried on the superlong pair of creamy trousers that had ...

I just got a letter from my mother explaining she has been in hospital for five ...

The Declaration of Independence lists crimes against the American people which drove them to reject British ...

I was cycling along the river where the water meets the trees, there is a little ...

Had to change trains twice to get home and I was reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, ...

Two people made fuck, out on the concreted area in front of the apartments. I recognised ...

Only Shirley Hazzard could end a novel by writing explicitly of a virgin woman's clitoris - ...

Today we will be making a new song, the first towards Cathoel & the New Government's ...

Och, my heart's pounding! I just queued in the supermarket next to a man taller than ...

I was working in a cafe, head down, muttering the words aloud under my breath as ...

I went to a new physiotherapist today for my injured hand, and experienced all the Germanness. ...

I came home after a long day, festooned with groceries. The bench on the subway platform ...

This is the lunch I had today, in a Saturday cafe set up by a refugees ...

On the subway a woman suddenly opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice was ...

After an exceptionally difficult night and a day of doing difficult work, I said: I need ...

In the cafe he showed me the pictures he had taken on his walk here, of ...

He didn’t want to be President. Not if President means making sticky decisions, and being blamed ...

Every week I cross town on the train and we pass a tower block of identical ...

I may or may not have been down to the markets today to visit the man ...

The young man in the place where we are staying is Moroccan and comes from the ...

Alone in the house for the first time in days I feel a sadness descend and ...

I've joined a Facebook group which posts pictures of people's dogs. The rules are long and ...

Last year and the year before that and four years ago too we went down on ...

Late night walk through the freezing fog. "Like Blade Runner." We turn down all the opportunities ...

A homeless man was sleeping in the stairwell when I came home. Or, to put it ...

Saturday night, home with the one I love. We cycled over to the Korean grocers' in ...

In the supermarket carrying my two jars of honey, because it's been nonstop chai masala weather, ...

Young, scruffy, insouciant Indian boy is walking by the greasy canal with his parents. Evidently he's ...

In the museum today we followed the script, that is, the writing. Ancient forms of writing ...

On the subway I sat down next to a guy who was remarkably good looking. Tall ...

The narrative of the powerful older woman in our society is a dangerous and poisoned one. ...

The Senate and the House. They are just going to do so much damage. I can ...

Just found a line in a notebook which I wrote, on July 15 last year, and ...

My nephew and I had a conversation about death. He is seven. His teachers have said, ...

My father has just died. His name was Peter Roy Jorss. His own father died of ...

Made a little performance the other night at a beautiful cabaret improv evening hosted by the ...

Big guy who shouldered in front of me to the vegetable stall on the markets kept ...

Autumn in Berlin and the grimy guy begging outside our supermarket is absorbed in a book. ...

Some lines from a musical we are idly writing, online, a bunch of strangers, in response ...

Reaching my Kiez in the late afternoon* I nearly ran into a boy-girl couple kissing strenuously ...

Off to the hand surgeon to find out whether in his opinion he needs to operate ...

A lot of noise round the house today as the Hausmeister - Deutschland brims with masters ...

I wonder if anyone else has trouble adjusting after travel, it would be reassuring to me ...

It took me four hours to make my way across town, people kept shaking their heads. ...

Went for a long wander in the forest with a local acquaintance to guide me. We ...

The little cat puts her hand possessively on my arm. After a moment's thought her other ...

Today I am sitting beside my father while he sleeps. It is the last time, probably ...

This week I'm going home to Berlin to find an apartment of my own, via a ...

Mum's just taken Dad on an outing & waving goodbye to them I began to cry. ...

Yesterday I dislocated my finger. I tripped on a folded horse blanket and fell against the ...

My parents have a spare room which they have been eager to put to use as ...

Walked into a Turkish convenience store late on Friday night, they sold water pipes as well ...

In this house of illness and pain I get lonely. Everyone is in bed by eight ...

I spend a lot of time in this household running downstairs to close the door and ...

I'm at my parents' place spending some time with my dying father. He is frail as ...

Caring for Dad is painful. I love him, naturally, and now he's very frail and unwell; ...

I spent 36 hours in Bangkok and it seemed to me just like the Jakarta of ...

I'm going into the difficult embrace of family life to say goodbye to my father. Our ...

Two Americans in a coffee shop staffed by Australians. This is Berlin where not everybody bothers ...

My German sweetheart and I argue about my right to make up new words in his ...

You know you're in Germany when you can saunter into a department store carrying your dog ...

Let’s think about the whole gun control question from another angle for just a moment. Imagine ...

In the supermarket I was queuing in front of a woman with a lot of groceries. ...

Today my boyfriend discovered the illicit dried flower factory I have been running in his apartment. ...

A German's interpretation of my Australian pronunciation of flasher just yielded the phantom of the flesher: ...

Is it Germans who are so trusting, or just Berliners? A woman cycled up with her ...

Walking home we were following a guy who could not stop fiddling with his own underpants. ...

What bothers me most about getting older is losing that glorious, elastic authority which I used ...

I have a friend who teaches piano. Today she said to me, "I have two students ...

Heavy in the heart today and the German man I ran into at the mailboxes, who ...

Mum's in hospital. Dad's in hospital. Both in the same hospital and admitted on the same ...

I went to a strange and interesting event which was sentimental and yet truthful and moving. ...

Though I live in one of the grimiest areas of Berlin, and that's pretty grimy, right ...

I just acquired the most beautiful new German word. We are discussing privilege and a new ...

It's a moonlit night and I am with my favourite person. I am lying on his ...

My friend has died. She was very courageous and had cancer. She was a photographer, a ...

Walking through the park in the unexpected sunshine yesterday I realised suddenly: strolling through summer in ...

The hottest bath imaginable. Coconut oiled my hair. Wrapped head to hip in towels. New book ...

I saw a couple come into the cafe out of the sun, I have seen them ...

On the bridge I pass two young women pushing prams walking with a guy chugging beer. ...

Dad's number is 0412 195 957. Mum's number, obtained in a different year and from a ...

Last week I stood on water for the first time in my life. So eerie. My ...

Miserable with flu I staggered down to the markets in search of star anise, lemons, and ...

Two hipsters compete in a Berlin bookshop, the day of David Bowie's death Hipster One: I ...

On the markets I passed a tourist with an American accent who was saying to his ...

It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing! I came into a cafe going, It's snowing, and she ...

Thinking of love today and how it has such deep transformative power in our lives. I ...

I saw a girl on the Underground travelling with the man she's in love with and ...

In New York we had dinner with two New Yorker friends, one from Chicago, who are ...

If I ruled the world for one day: to do list 1. make leafblowers illegal. These ...

I lost a baby last year, after a long time trying to conceive. It died inside ...

Knowing one another in the dark: this is life in the wintertime, in Germany. Three days ...

I met a man with shit-stained pants on the subway and we sang together. He had ...

New York is hard to write about. There's so much of it and it keeps changing. ...

New York I am going to climb right up in your lap and press my face ...

In New York we stayed off-island, on the sprawling mainland of the USA. I found it ...

Imagine a lake. It is vast and extends, if you swim out to the middle and ...

Is Tony Abbott 'a good man' as Finance Minister Mathias Corban has it? Yes, if you ...

So it's Friday night, I am in my pajamas and baking sticky gingerbread for dinner. About ...

All my life I have been me. I didn't realise it at first. Presumably, as we ...

Today I pulled my ugg boots out of the back of the closet and yanked them ...

In Berlin people do all kinds of things out loud in public. You can buy drugs, ...

I rode home after writing in a large dim room in silence with four other people. ...

What a strange feeling to watch Mitch Winehouse, father of the Amy who died young, telling ...

Sometimes at night I like to talk to myself in the dark, on the way home, ...

The sun is shining over Berlin today and I feel so glad of the blue it ...

Today a day of wheels and wings. On the high street I set myself an errand, ...

For four weeks now, this terrible grief. It takes up residence in my throat, is heavy, ...

Jeez, America, stop shooting each other. At least in Australia we only drown refugee babies, jail ...

"The wind was rising, so I went to the wood. It lies south of the city, ...

Berlin children are adorable when it rains. I came upon a flock of them, holding hands ...

It's 3am now in New York but when we landed in Berlin, it was 7 o'clock ...

The film poster that has Godzilla tearing up great chunks of the city and eating alive ...

Some of the friends I made in New York four years ago are so precious to ...

Giggling to myself at what seems a very typical Berlin expatriate conversation I just passed. American ...

On Sunday in the midst of strife I had a most wonderful day. Met an acquaintance ...

I love how in Germany restaurants closed on Mondays will say, Montag ist Ruhetag. Monday is ...

I had an email from my partner’s new lover. It was my fault, I wrote to ...

I walked home at last through the markets and by the time I got to the ...

Over breakfast my partner announced he is falling in love with another woman. I said, "What?" ...

My dad has cancer. They thought he had got rid of it but now, it's back. ...

Bearded guy walking past rather fast along the cobbles holding his cell phone up to type ...

Feeling a bit unsettled and displaced today in unfamiliar Berlin humidity and the eventual but sudden ...

Walking at night through the little woods that runs along the shore. I can hear a ...

So on December 4th I stripped myself out of the hammock tied under a tree that ...

Philip Glass: a man who halfway through his own memoir, written by himself about his own ...

Was quite excited to work out last night by decoding the allergies notice in a Korean ...

Pleased as Punch, in that resinous phrase, that in my first days in Spain I worked ...

The moth which landed in the glossy black curls of a woman sitting on the Metro ...

A beautiful girl went into meltdown at the post office counter at ten o'clock at night ...

Today I had my hair cut and lost enough length to stuff a small teddy bear. ...

You know how sometimes two souls collide in a fleeting way, like two bells chiming in ...

When I woke up I remembered the beautiful girl who was sitting outside a coffee booth ...

The people dancing on bus stop rooves. The leggy punk marching in ugg boots. The giant ...

I am in Kreuzberg, middle of Berlin, middle of Germany, middle of Europe. Today is 1st ...

I was in a bookshop yesterday with my friend just arrived from Copenhagen. It is around ...

I came clattering down the stairs to find the train already humming, its destination sign was ...

In my dream I was in this amazing cafe taking five floors of an abandoned building ...

Oh, Germany. Sometimes I am just so grateful to you! I came three years ago, for ...

Imagine we were all living in a world where almost everyone was carrying a book in ...

When I travel I am never alone because always there is the companionship of my shyness. ...

Walking home I saw a man clinging to the upper part of a set of ornate ...

At ten o'clock at night I went out walking round the curve of the road under ...

Oh, Spain! Is so filled with amazing events! Walking home just now I saw a man ...

I saw two girls, two women, long-haired and standing round bags, close together on the subway ...

Today a very fortunate wander took me into a place I adored: several places and all ...

Unable to stomach any more Spanish food I went out and found a tiny Thai place. ...

I saw three Spanish boys doing parkour in the gardens. I have run out of money ...

Following a little family down the long walkways of Terminal One to reach Terminal Two and ...

Finally experienced the piercing joy of eating ice-cream in the freezing cold, I always used to ...

Changing the side of the street I walk home on to avoid having to avoid the ...

I just saw a Berliner sitting with legs planted apart in the sunshine and hugely enjoying ...

A literal translation of the conversation that took place between me and the gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish ...

Ok listen up. Abbott wants to forcibly shut down outback Indigenous communities in remote areas of ...

A man in front of me got up from his bench and ambled towards the train. ...

So cold outside that I can keep cheeses and yoghurts fresh by stowing them in between ...

I walked into one of those joyless lunchtime buffets so ill-suited to Chinese cuisine. The name ...

The term "white trash" is so racist and offensive I cannot believe people ever use it. ...

Tonight I walked into a Chinese restaurant alone and was seated at a tiny table in ...

Today I was writing in a cafe and when I pulled out my laptop to transcribe ...

I saw a woman who looked just like you, I wrote to my friend, smoking a ...

Today crossed the old abandoned airport towed by a dog I felt the mist rising all ...

The dog and I went out for a late night walk. The rest of the world ...

Good god, I just voted. By email in Queensland, which is currently in the grip of ...

On the bus coming home from our forest walk we passed a billboard for Hochzeitswelt: Wedding ...

The aspects of Australianness I feel most dearly attached to, and which are also the aspects ...

I found a bar lit solely by candles. To get there I had to pass twenty-five ...

Oh, I love my little desk in my little borrowed room. At night the night is ...

We are travelling with a medium-sized hound named Felix and tonight I learned something uncanny about ...

Woodford. What I forgot is that it is less of a festival, more of a place. ...

All my life people have been telling me not to get too excited about things. They ...

Tiny revolutions in other people's lives, I just can't stop making them. When we got here ...

Christmas edition of the local paper, West Germany. Four pages of articles welcoming the first couple ...

I was at a dinner party and came over all poorly. In fact I thought I ...

One of the world's sweetest men has been reading me snippets from the local paper. There ...

It fascinates me how people invariably preface racist statements with the words, "I'm not a racist ...

We came today to a small town in West Germany to stay with family, my out-laws, ...

How convenient for our struggling Government that a lone imbecile equipped with a gun has showed ...

Night walk in the late afternoon. There is a large punk stationed outside the supermarket, asking ...

So cold and empty at the heart today. I feel all the little threads connecting me ...

Walking past yet another housing estate whose walls are festooned to arm's length with torn posters, ...

A man on the street broke my heart open and I can't stop thinking about him. ...

God, I am so in love right now. Partly because of food and partly because of ...

Being back has been all too much. My body is toiling through an endless misery of ...

No Murdoch press and the sun has come out! How much fresher can Germany get. We ...

I got up in the middle of the night and went over to the window. It ...

Abu Dhabi airport. The altered reality of long haul travel is hard to convey. It does ...

Queensland. The Sunshine State. Skin Cancer Capital of the World. Spending as much time in the ...

So it's late afternoon and the storm has passed, the light has begun to pearl. I've ...

Walking under the devastated trees the afternoon after a huge storm, their fresh scattered blossoms and ...

The guy I adore has conversations with birds. These appear to be actual reciprocal chats, where ...

We tried out a new coffee house, on our bicycles. Actually it was an old cafe, ...

Pissed on by a possum as I was lying in the hammock. Cat sprang out and ...

I just cycled home through the spattering rain, with thunder rolling heavy overneath, and as I ...

I have no depth and everything within me is shallow and small. I waste this only ...

Seems to me when you have yourself a brow bar (they only do eyebrows), a blow-dry ...

God, I feel so depressed about the American midterm results today. What seems clear is: the ...

Yesterday I accompanied a friend to a medical specialist who has been urging invasive and ill-tested ...

Being shoved up against the train windows by a much older man whose friends looked on ...

If one Australian festival was to take over the world as the British/American Hallowe'en has this ...

I've been using the exact same folded square of toilet paper to blot my fountain pen ...

I was so tired. I rang my mum. We rarely speak. I said, it's me, I ...

We went to a party and everyone got drunk. This came treading the heels of some ...

We went out to a swanky bar without getting out of our gardening clothes. It was ...

Beautiful African woman, standing with her back to the street in a luscious canary-yellow dress. She ...

Tony Abbott threatening to "shirt-front" Putin? And that meme that has the two of them side ...

The people across the road are drunk and two of them are planning to have sex ...

I was working in a cafe today for the first time in a while and the ...

I had a pen name, once, after I wrote two excruciatingly awful romance novels thinking this ...

On the markets I ordered a cup of coffee under canvas, under trees. The fig trees ...

Saturday night festival of explosions, fireworks and low-flying fighter jets scamming the river. I was standing ...

We were on the markets when a tiny, white-haired lady came up to my partner and ...

Yesterday I entered into a conversation with someone asking, Why don't the moderate Muslims speak out ...

In my pajamas at 6pm: pajamas are my favourite clothes. The phone rings. It's a woman ...

Sat for half an hour watching this bouncer refusing entry to a drunken girl who had ...

Something annoying I remember from the endless days of smoking and working is how ganja made ...

The strange screeching of tropical birds spurling into midnight's blue sky at 6 o'clock, as the ...

An African guy who lived in the apartments near me had the warmest smile always courteous ...

A knock at the door when we finally trudge home, carrying our groceries, exhausted. It's the ...

The number of times I have been sitting in some cafe and have said to the ...

Someone was asking for songwriting ideas and I came up with these. Ideas are easy, it's ...

I decided to stay home from the Writers Festival and read, all weekend, in the hammock. ...

I went to my parents' place to bring them a copy of my new book. Afterwards ...

Brisbane is in the grip of its Spring gales and of a morning I wake up ...

I can't stop crying. A friend of mine, a musician from Berlin, just wrote to say, ...

When a poet walks into a printer's and says, I have written a book, I want ...

I have here this neighbour whose skin is dark and seamy and white hairs sprout from ...

I love how the cat comes and sits, not next to the fridge, just sort of within range... letting me ...

I found a little seed in my pocket. If I grow it, I wonder what it ...

I have a lamp that is shaped like a shell, was in fact a shell, is ...

I went into the bottleshop and found the most approachable face. A guy from Canada. I ...

Every time somebody private or prominent dies by their hand, there is a rush of resentment, ...

I have this really long poem which I have rewritten decisively - indecisively - thoroughly over ...

Lady Barista and I made each other laugh today, or maybe I just made myself laugh, ...

Waking up on a hill in Brisbane when the sky is white and high, like the ...

Went to my first life drawing class in eight years. Boy, was that challenging. For one ...

Some delightful person left a little note in our letterbox this week, thanking us for something ...

I was seeing this guy once who got comfortable enough to start flossing in front of ...

My god, I'm so drunk. What happened is: it's all Diamond Dave's fault. What I mean ...

My boyfriend and I had a huge fight and I went storming into a bar and ...

Our nearest cafe has made such a bold and tender innovation. Simple, really. How shall I ...

"Meet us at Southbank on Saturday night, birthday party, surprise party." We turn up late, missing ...

What if the things we are most dependent on are insufficient substitutes for something else? Walking ...

To overcome a longterm injury I've taken on some personal training, in a stinky gym paved ...

I was chopping wood today & remembered a guy from Wales many years ago who was ...

It's getting dark. The gentle end of a slow and satisfying farm day. My farm is ...

Hooray, I just perfected a new & absolutely unexpected skill. You know when you have to ...

Finally my bike! There have been various substitute treadlies in between but my own blue bike, ...

. today the way the world is run and the people who run it making me ...

Last week on the market I spoke to the girl queueing before me at the fruit ...

This morning I woke late and slowly and heavy and smiling, blindly at everything, the sun ...

One's German companion begins to assimilate. He is working his way through a jar of Vegemite, ...

Does god want us to live in a cage? Doesn't god want us to be good ...

I think this cat's favourite person is the sun. She believes everything he tells her and ...

Today was a torrent of windiness scouring Brisbane, everybody turning inside out like umbrella-bats. Wind Creates ...

I just feel so ruddy fortunate to have a decent academic education. It obliges me to ...

Brisbane. Took me ten years to settle here, having uprooted from sultry Jakarta and a school ...

Sometimes a song I've been listening to intently for ages suddenly rolls past in a different ...

I think maybe my superpower is interfering in other people's lives. I pick up their rubbish. ...

Last night I saw an amazing film. It uses South Australia as a post-Collapse landscape, compellingly. ...

In the back of my ute is so much soil and sundry scraps of leaves and ...

Brazil has, how can I put this, the richest store of remaining rainforest in the universe. ...

A house nearby is small, wooden, and humble, a tiny workers' cottage in the classic Queensland ...

"To truly understand something is to be liberated from it." This fascinating film held me riveted. ...

Fought the good fight, and won. The battle if not the war. We came home an ...

At my last place I cut down one of those plastic "NO JUNK MAIL PLEASE, thank ...

I went and sat in a church for an hour. Outside and around us the traffic ...

Bought The Saturday Paper, the one not owned by a misanthrope sadist. Carried it into my ...

My comfort reading is romances and children's literature from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. What I ...

Somehow I just made enough dahl for twelve people. There's two of us. Similarly every time ...

I don't know why there's not more discussion about the connection between entitlement and mass shootings. ...

Today was a sad and complicated day and I couldn't get myself off the couch. Life ...

Two girls in high heels and tiny skirts chatting outside Eye Candy peep show. A dishevelled ...

Had to write a blurb about myself - a bio - for Queensland Poetry Festival. Oh, ...

When I walk downhill carrying my computer and the old man sitting underneath the tree nods ...

Last night, lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket and reading his book, my companion ...

Tonight I passed a very low hedge, glossy and cropped to ankle height. Into the shining ...

It's going to be my birthday on Saturday, along with perhaps 19 million other people. Good ...

This morning carrying coffee I walked past the hostel where an old Aboriginal man, gold-chocolate skinned ...

Want to know why I dislike Mothers Day? We were in a cafe, crowded against the ...

I cannot describe what a privilege it is to have a home of my own after ...

Getting a phone line connected. Guy: "So you're all good to go!" Me: "Can I ask ...

Dancing in the dark. It's so beautiful. I heard about it back in Melbourne, where it ...

Ok, so: imagine you have a lover whose second language is English and who one day ...

A lucky, lucky bike accident. I was following the river on a very narrow path, about ...

Wandered into a cavernous caff in West End and the girl there was showing me her ...

I'd like to say I've been baking but the truth is, only about half the mixture ...

Brisbane's underground opened up unexpectedly and swallowed us whole. Like two fishes we went down, happy ...

My dad has cancer. Our relationship has been so peculiar and, at times, so intolerably painful ...

Two men next door with an FM radio addiction came this morning and took half the ...

This cafe installed in a loading bay has floor-length open windows, I am sitting with my ...

Yesterday three of us went along to a workshop whose purpose is play. They say, there ...

Jogging up the stairs through a fresh afternoon breeze past which all I can hear is ...

Can there be anything more magnificent than clouds passing, at night between us and the stars, ...

But it's not bigotry, it's just smallotry, littlotry. What's happening in Australia this week, laws being ...

Last night I climbed into a tree that took me into its embrace. The saddle of ...

Most joyous demo/march I've ever been involved in. There was a sense of colourful exultation, a ...

A sex offender or child killer gets convicted. Somebody posts about it on Facebook. Their thread ...

Lying on my back on the sharp grass I saw the stars, some of them, saw ...

A small scream from the other room. "What? What?" "Can you come here?" On the rug ...

Could our fear of brown-skinned asylum seekers with unfamiliar cultural origins actually be self-hatred? Years ago ...

Finally, bodysurfing. It must be a decade since I have surfed, maybe since before moving to ...

I love that porridge rhymes with forage. It feels like you would go out gathering the ...

If there is a chance you can get to see the Italian film before it closes ...

Racism is cruelty, what else can it be? Sometimes it is cruelty enabled by privilege & ...

Today I was sharing a cafe table with two pilots who spent the entire time talking ...

This morning instead of coffee I tried an Ayurverdic broth of boiled milk, powdered turmeric and ...

Brother has a new baby and is taking paternity leave. In the struggle over dinner to ...

Found this dim-lit, twinkling little bar in an unexpected quarter of town. All seats were empty ...

Felt a little jangled this morning after accidentally intercepting a phone call from my Aunt Who ...

We ventured into a very comfy, very shabby secondhand bookshop with couches, because I had read ...

Brother is staying for a few days & brother and Berliner are sharing a desk. They ...

Visited my twitter account & brushed all the cobwebs away. I could write a book: Twitter, ...

An Abbott and two Bishops. Are we actually being governed by some weird splinter faction of ...

As the evening creeps across the land/groping its way towards us like the bleeding protagonist stabbed ...

Making a pun in a foreign tongue: Lord, but it makes me feel smart. My friend ...

Brisbane always was like this.... for me. Suburban and shrill in the day; shadowed and sultry ...

Berliner to Brisbaner, who has urged him to cross against the lights, at peak hour, right ...

Two boys scribbling either end of the dinner table. "What are you drawing?" 6yo: "It's a ...

I think mining is a really primitive way of making a living. You gouge it out ...

Whenever people ask, So do you make a living from your writing, I feel obscurely coal-hauled, ...

How amazing that we merrily use some products of industrialization without stopping to think that they ...

Queenslanders! If you want to feel good about everything, get yourself a European recently arrived from ...

The other day we found a bookstore which has a cafe in it. These are little ...

I feel so ashamed and disgusted and frightened at what's happening in my country. The inhuman ...

Sunday. Drive down to the beach. Past all the worlds. Seaworld, Dreamworld, Movieworld. This tiny horseshoe ...

@.............. Sister-in-law: "Yeah that was my uncle who used to be a beekeeper. But then he ...

We say, they have so little, yet they complain so little. They have so much suffering ...

Deciding not to put up with the height shite any longer has been inneresting. 18 months' ...

Kookaburra under the eaves of the giant Storey Bridge, last night as it grew dusk and ...

War on drugs is not working. Except, of course, as a war: dispute over territories, profit ...

February 6 On this day in 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in New Zealand ...

Coffee Olympics, on an outdoor table whose whitewasher left a paintbrush hair behind. Because they is ...

In Brisbane we found a bookstore which has a cafe in it. These are little paradises, ...

The Queen should say sorry. One of the most pungent ideas from today's pre-march speeches and ...

"The local press spoke with the unrelenting language of a war front. 'We have seized their ...

Survival Day gleanings. This is what I cleaned out of my bag after we got home. ...

All the noisiness of sun. To a German, the crashing in the bamboo at 3am sounds ...

To the person who decided that every cafe, restaurant, waiting room, bus station, bus, and public ...

Phone call from Berlin, around two months ago: My mum: yes, and so Me: yes, and ...

Got lured into a conversation tonight that reminded me of the old truism: that in some ...

It's very nice to "take time every day to think through your day and see if ...

Woodford. What I forgot is that it is less of a festival, more of a place. ...

I was uncomfortable at Woodford to hear the Tibetan monks who had been hired to chant ...

It's Monday afternoon and we are eating meatbags for lunch. This is because we are in ...

Went into the corner store. "Do you have olives?" "What?" "Olives." "Oil?" "No, um, olives." "What ...

I must have lived in Berlin too long because it's screeching hot on a Sunday afternoon, ...

Something I dig about the guy I'm travelling with. We are staying with my folks and ...

Christmas can be excruciating. All this talk of love and family throws heartache, loss and loneliness ...

I'm peeling. Last time this happened I was about 14. Went for a long long walk ...

Brisbane screams and Berlin roars. Can that be what it is. I ask what do you ...

The guy before me loaded five litre bottles of milk onto the counter at the BioMarkt, ...

A man who loves to cook but cannot bake is so good for a girl's convenience ...

A confluence of kindness in the Sunday cafe this morning. People were slouched about, eating their ...

Crossing the park I passed the usual gatherings of African men standing about under trees, whiling ...

I wonder at the charmingly gap-toothed Engrish on the front of the chopsticks packet. Wonder hardens ...

Two swains drifting like white roses on the dark canal. My Berliner swain calls them swains ...

The last time I was at the airport I watched a band of six merry hipsters ...

So the skies are white, the rooves are grey, the buildings brown and cream... the either ...