whirl·wind

I've been a whirlwind of activity lately and loving it. (Not the sleepiness but feeling alive...)

I delight in the new. New people. New places. New ideas. New challenges.

It's late so I won't dwell on why, tonight.

Highlights of the week

1. Seeing Florence + the Machine at the Sydney Opera House. I'd been waiting for this moment for three and a half years. Such beautiful voice and stage presence, I had tears in my eyes. Love. A night I will never forget with my irreplaceable friend L. This... this is why I work Mon-Fri.

2. Catching up with J and browsing all the bookshops in Newtown. Four years since we met!

3. Finished Small Acts of Disappearance by Fiona Wright. It is brilliant. Review to come soon. In the meantime, here is an interview with Wright. Loved this exchange in particular:

Writers Bloc: That part where you discuss Berryman's 'double consciousness' as a writer was the first time I've read something that articulates that state of mind peculiar to writers; of spending half of life participating in the world and half analysing it. Over the years I've come to think of writers as some kind of aquatic organism, not pond scum exactly, but some kind of sensate insect that skims over the surface of life without ever really submerging oneself. At various times I've wondered if it is an affliction, rather than a talent.

Wright: I'm not sure that it's either an affliction or a talent. It's not an easy way of living your life, I know that much, and I do often think that I'd be a better, more functional human being without it - but then, I don't know anything different, so it's impossible to judge.

I think that it is tied to this endless search for meaning, for the symbolic and poetic as we move through our lives, and I think that everyone does this to some degree, it just seems that it's sharper in writers, and other creative people too. So it's too common to be a talent. I think it was Patrick White who talked about this kind of thing as a 'magpie-like tendency', swooping down and picking things up as they catch your eye; and I like this image because there's a cruelty to it as well that seems quite fitting.