Tag: cats

First date lines

I can tell you that I play the violin, albeit badly. But everyone plays the violin badly until their tenth year of playing. I can also tell you what the inside of a methadone clinic smells like: mildew and urine and cheap caustic soda. Home brand, no matter how private the clinic. I can tell you that such places are great equalizers, with everyone in the queue hovering at the edges of their skin. That some people will take their ‘done and sell it or chase it with ice or steroids.  That others will swallow their dose and let the chemicals hold them, like a slow-release embrace, and they’ll go to work as accountants, or academics or tradies.

What else do you want to know? I can tell you that each Christmas I consider driving to Flagstaff Hill and free falling from the jagged cliffs. But then I think of my calico cat who licks my nostrils every night and my tuxedo cat who enjoys second and sometimes third dinners.  And with this thought I realise that no one else would love them in the same peculiar way.  Instead, every Christmas I drive northwards past the leafy suburbs of Sydney where the self-declared successful people live. And I keep driving, to friends I would call family if only the latter felt like safety.

Anyway, did I tell you I play the violin badly?

I can tell you that I sound like a funeral dirge in the key of D minor, played in the corner of a small-town pub, sung by a tone-deaf Nick Cave/ Joan Baez cover band.

About Word Upon Word

Margaret Atwood once said “Word after a word after a word is power.”

Perhaps I do err on the side of megalomania. My tortoiseshell cat certainly does. What is endearing in a soft furry sociopath is hardly endearing in a human, however. A quietly spoken five-foot two Eurasian woman is not the stuff of tin-pot dictators. I know, I know. You might be thinking, power need not be destructive. But it is rather covid-y in my neck of the woods and a tad cold, so any freedom fighting must be done quietly, lest I break lockdown orders.

So, I write instead. This is a site that showcases my writing because…well…because marketing, really. Oh, and I write about matters that are never to be uttered in polite company. Trauma, politics, the absurdity of humanity…and cats. The internet loves cats. I love cats.

On this site you will find links to a novel that a publisher once told me was well written, but unmarketable, a collection of short stories and my rolling blog.

You’ll also find the odd poem. I will keep poetry to a minimum. Unpublished, unsolicited poetry is usually a cry for help and I like to keep my psychoses private.