We Are Not The Only Animal That

Certainly I'm Still Mining My Experiences As A Journalist. I Think It's No Coincidence That All Three Of My Novels Basically Are About How People Act In A Time Of Catastrophe. Do They Go To Their Best Self Or Their Worst Self?

For Most People, Chemotherapy Is No Longer The Chamber Of Horrors We Often Conceive It To Be. Yes, It Is An Ordeal For Some People, But It Wasn't For Me, Nor For Most Of The Patients I Got To Know During My Four Months Of Periodic Visits To The Chemo Suite.

I Am Not Part Of That Earlier Australian Generation Who Set Off On A Deliberate Search For Fame And Fortune In Distant Lands. My Generation Was The First That Didn't Need To. By The 1980's When I Left Home, Our Culture Had Grown Deep Enough And Wide Enough To Encompass All But The Most Rarefied Of Ambitions.

And When I'd Be Reporting In Israel, Palestinians Would Say, The Jews They're Not Like Us, And The Jews Would Say The Same Things About The Palestinians, They Don't Want What We Want. And I Never Bought It As A Reporter And I Don't Buy It As A Novelist. I Think, You Know, The Sound Of Somebody Crying For Their Lost Child Sounds The Same.

All The Times, All The Very Many Times, I Had Been Forced To Thwart And Stifle My Own Nature Seemed To Gather Together Then, In That Hot And Dismal Corridor. I Heard A Rushing Sound In My Head And Felt A Pressure In My Breast, Like Floodwaters Rising Behind A Flimsy Dike. Before I Knew I Did It, The Soup Bowl Was Rising In My Hand As If Elevated By Some Supernatural Force. Then, Its Yellow-gray Contents Were Running Down The Nurse's Pudgy Face.