Some lovely people, Andrew and Amanda Stewart, in Lake Grace, Western Australia, sent me this photo of an Italian POW hut which is on their property. They said that it was of a very high standard for the time. It certainly looks better than my brother’s old outdoor laundry, which was built around the same time. The gorgeous women in the photo are (from l to r): Jo Hos, Sophie Hamdorf and Amanda Stewart.

Tonight, I went to hear the unstoppable Dorothy Alison speak at Calisthenics for Shrapnel, not knowing that I would hear a new poet, Tristan Silverman, who would completely take my breath away. It’s not often that I cry when I listen to someone speaking poetry out loud. The last time was over some Rilke that my friend Bruce recited for me, but that was, I think, about three years ago. I must have been saving the tears for tonight.

In which timid Australian dweeby personage travels to New York City and meets scary Famous People, but also gets to eat yummy kosher foods in fancy kosher restaurants. And amazingly, that last is not an oxymoron but quite true. One may sit in comfort in aesthetic surroundings, with a cool Brooklyn breeze blowing through open doors, and eat something as spectacular as fetta-white asparagus pizza. One feels like a normal human being.

One also discovers what it is like to have a subway train scream past ones window every minute throughout the night, without curtains to screen one from the eyes of passersby.
One discovers that the large police presence in the nearby subway station is both necessary and helpful.
One discovers that smart and Famous People can be fun to hang out with.
One discovers that hundreds of folks might come out to support a LGBT reading in a Jewish space.
One discovers that one’s friend is even more lovely than previously suspected.

So, phone calls this week mentioning not knowing my slang have reminded me to add some more Australian words here:

retreads: tires that have had rubber put back on them…old women wearing tight spandex…old men who play at being boy soldiers

ringbarking: cutting or eating the bark in a strip all the way around the outside of a tree, thereby killing it.

king snake: king brown, dugite, bloody dangerous snake that can make you really sick or kill you if it bites you. Fortunately not fond of people.

“our native friends”: indigenous Australians, aboriginals.

gidji: a kind of sharpened wooden spear for stabbing at stuff. My Mum used to scream at us for chasing each other with gidjis. She’d yell”You’ll take out an eye with that!” Eye, nothing…we wanted to take out brains.

salmon gums:

jarrah:

golden wattle:

ironbark: Just because I love it so, here’s a poem about ironbark. Gilded youth. Oh I love it.

mallee: