Category: Exile

Tonight I saw an Ozzie comedy show, with many Oceanic celebrities, everyone having fun, in-jokes, etc….. When I’m really frustrated – aching, rather than bitter or resentful – at the Sydney debacle, at not living in that city, I don’t think about the really grand or remarkable times or scenes – not the bridge, not…

I have always (at least since I was very young, and sharing a room with my rather controlling, sometimes combative older brother) been meticulous about my home. Given the vast number of books this involves, and the huge number of moves between 1992 and 2002 (about fourteen, if I have counted right – some of…

I tend to avoid politics, at least in its concrete form; gender politics, identity politics, and such are comfortable for me, but perhaps because I was a teenager during Watergate, and then watched my life and career disintegrate in the 1980s under Reagan, I tend to distrust the entire discussion. Not that I am willing…

There are a number of stock phrases for it – familiar from Vesaas, Hamsun, Jansson, Nabokov, many Scandinavian and Russian writers. Here, we are far enough in the north (far north of any of the major Canadian cities, for instance) that we have the same light that they do – sometimes, at least, including this…