To Slide Into The Domed Reading Room

I Suppose There Must Be Idiots Who Dream Of Signing Deals With Publishers While Fully Intending To Drink Martinis In Cool Bars Or Ride Around On Skateboards. But The Actual Writers I Know Are Experts In Neurotic Self-torture. Every Page Of Writing Is The Result Of A Thousand Tiny Decisions And Desperate Acts Of Will.

But There Are Some Wounds That Can Never Be Healed.

And Always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Over And Over The Same Photo In Glaring Greens And Reds, Of A Tram, Huffy, Blunderous, Manoeuvring Itself With Pole Akimbo Round The Tight Corner Where Bourke Street Enters Spring.

On Melbourne Summer Mornings The Green Trams Go Rolling In Stately Progress Down Tunnels Thick With Leaves: The Bright Air Carries Along The Avenue Their Patient Chime, The Chattering Of Their Wheels.

It's Disturbing At My Age To Look At A Young Woman's Destructive Behaviour And Hear The Echoes Of It, Of One's Own Destructiveness In Youth.