The Maroon Diaries

Dear lovely readers, I am so sorry I haven't gotten back on the blogging horse. And I don't just mean that I'm sorry out of an obligation to the blog or anyone - I'm really, honestly, just sorry for myself. Truth is, I've been pretty bloody depressed lately. Yep, it's possible to get depressed even living in a tropical paradise. Various people whom I care about are going through hard things like illness and outrageous family problems, and one died recently. And the bloody federal election didn't help any, let me tell you. Like life is worth living under a Tony Abbott government. Pfft. At least my late friend didn't live quite long enough to see that come to pass. And I've really been missing the blogs so much, mine and all the beautiful ones I love to follow. But you know how things seem harder to catch up on when you're already depressed. But this morning, as part of my ok-I-really-have-to-pull-myself-together mission, I made a deliberate po...

Tonight, I had such a strange feeling come over me that something was wrong, something that felt terribly like a premonition of danger. Have you ever had that? Well, I reckon it would be a pretty safe bet that somewhere in the world, there are many terrible things happening tonight. But I've just had the strangest experience. Mr CJ and I were out and about, and planning to go get some takeaway for dinner. But then suddenly, I started to feel bad - an anxious, dreading, foreboding kind of bad. It was such a profound, unusually keen sense of immediate disaster. It was just not 'like me' - I'm not generally prone to paranoid tendencies. I insisted that we go home immediately and check on the house. We got home and the house was fine. I called my mum and my best friend - they were both fine, relative to their circumstances. I turned on the news to see if there's been a terrorist attack or an earthquake. I checked my blog list for any indication of bad news. Nothing ...

On February 14, 2001, I went to a certain pub in North Hobart to attend a local writers' open mic event, with a theme, rather appropriately, of Valentine's Day. I'd seen some fliers around. I went alone, carrying my journal in my bag. I was so nervous. My heart was in my throat the whole time. I didn't know what to order from the bar. I don't drink beer and I hadn't yet discovered the delights of sparkling wines. I settled on a Stones and ginger. I sat way at the back of the room. I watched and listened as, one after another, people went up to a small impromptu lectern and read stories, poems, letters and essays, all somehow related to the phenomenon of love in all its varied manifestations, aloud to the audience, perhaps some two dozen people. As each person finished their piece, there would be a moderate, polite round of applause. I was unsure as to the protocol or procedure for getting up the front to read, so I waited until it seemed that most people had alr...