A Sensitivity to Things

My stories often have their origin in something that actually happened – an incident, a memory, something heard. (In this case it was the leap out of a plane at 12000 feet – one of the scariest things I’ve ever done). It’s then a case of finding a voice, letting characters take shape, coalesce round [...]

The following story has sentimental value for me far beyond whatever worth it may possess of its own right and writing. Not only was it written in Japan, penned during the final hours of first visit to a land that has always had a mysterious, wasabi-strong pull, but it was more or less my first [...]

Find an empty space in the sky and stare into it. Anywhere. Up there, over here, left of somewhere or right of over there, it doesn’t really matter, just pick a spot and stare, stare and stare. What you find might change the very universe. And it will almost certainly blow your mind… In 1995 [...]

Japanese Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama did the impossible last week, a landslide victory won for his Democratic Party of Japan, an unprecedented reversal of election fortune over the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party, who have ruled Japan for all but 11 months since 1955. Retired actress, author, lifestyle guru and wife of the Prime Minister, Miyuki [...]

Monday morning, 9am, back on the contracting treadmill again, contestant and collaborator in the nine to five daily grind, my services as an Art Worker required and hired by an inner city design studio. It has been a while since I’ve worked in an office—my work is mostly from home and for my own clients [...]

Thrift stores, cheap chocolates and masterpieces by Van Gogh and Cezanne—so begins the 16th edition of Inspiration-Letters, magazine style forum for inspired writers of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. A fitting beginning it is too, for all the authors are koan-carrying members of a meditation group espousing a philosophy of merging the heights of spirituality with [...]

Time passed writing about passing time in an airport coffee shop… Travelling. Again. In Melbourne Airport, for four and half hours, but not my final destination, or even second to final in this marathon, budget airline leapfrog across the Pacific, Tasman and Indian Oceans. I am in an airport café sipping the oh so treasured [...]

Karate, kata, perfect form and perfectionism in Japan At the age of seven, the result of an I don’t know from where interest in Japan, I began learning karate, lessons undertaken at my own insistence, my mother’s weary acquiescence. Perhaps she sensed that it would be either breaking blocks of wood or chopping bones on [...]

Bob Munden is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest man with a gun who has ever lived, and we’re not talking about a 4×100 metre relay with gun in hand. Of the eighteen world records you can hold in fast draw shooting—the sport of drawing and shooting a gun in [...]

Rhino attack drill at Tokyo Zoo Fear has four legs, walks in circles and is covered in paper and glue in Tokyo, Japan. But is Japanese nonetheless, following the direction of public signs and never moving faster than a brisk walk. Should you meet Fear—say on an outing to the zoo—lull him into a false [...]