Traveling 'round

It's been a long time since I was here. I was still getting over the car accident, got sick, and so it goes. But now I'm better. Acupuncture, Chinese herbs and a shiny new car! And I didn't have to pay a cent for it! All those insurance payments did some good after all. I'm having a couple of days off after going to Mudgee. About three and a half hours north west of Sydney, it's a wine growing town. I love the drive. There's been lots of rain so it was green but that gorgeous grey-green of the Australian bush. And every where was Pattisons Curse. It has to be the most beautiful weed in existence. Brilliant purple strips on the side of the road. Sometimes whole fields. A nightmare for farmers, but visually stunning. There's something about driving on that terrible road between Lithgow and Mudgee with Paul Kelly on the CD singing about winter coats and making gravy that just makes me feel jubilant and free. Then kd lang singing songs from Canada. The perfect drive. Topped off by stopping at the Oakfield shop just when you get to Mudgee and buying lots of chocolate. White chocolate with pistachio, licorice and marshmallow embedded in it. Bliss.

If you get to Mudgee, go to my friend Evelyn's shop, Heavenly Mary. One of the few places you can get holy cards, St Christopher medals, Ganeesh water features, statues of Buddha and flashing Virgin Marys along with Dashboard Jesus, Nunzilla and some stunning icons. No web site but I keep nagging her.

But I got no writing done. For five days I was surrounded by people. I realise I can't write unless I have long periods of solitude. Not just to write, but to think and dream. I've always been an isolate and writing makes it worse. Or better depending on your point of view. I'd forgotten how other people are so draining. Which makes me sound like some kind of misanthropic eccentric, but I do spend large amounts of time on my own, so lots of company takes some getting used to.

Discipline still remains my biggest problem. I want to write everyday but get consumed by the perfectionist demon. And the terrible fear of the blank screen. But 629 words done today on my second Trixy story, so that's better than nothing.

Floating through my mind is a story about a very ordinary man pushed into something else by a woman who looks about seventeen, with a boyish body, hairless and smooth, her sex exactly like a ripe peach and her eyes deep green but millennia old. Don't know where that comes from but I'll track it along . . .

I have a new web site! Here it is.