I met Frank Moorhouse today in Tamani. He remarked that ‘organisation of energy’ was a crucial matter. A very nice man. Greying curly hair, massive head—a bullyboy in form but sharp and reserved and intelligent in expression. Very careful about wiping his lips while eating. Two blokes I vaguely knew came in and sat with us. They turned on a Carlton performance: rapid-fire wisecracks about Chomsky, war, politics and corrupt journalism. I wanted to scream. Later Frank bought a bottle of ‘good bourbon—seeing as I can afford it’. I walked with him (having trouble keeping up) to his office at the university.
HG: ‘I can’t stand it when blokes talk like those two. I just wish they’d shut up.’
FM: (mildly) ‘They were high on caffeine, weren’t they. It was a coffee thing.’
——
I passed through the kitchen and saw N at the table with my huge galleys on her knee. She looked up with a laugh and said, ‘You’re going to be hung, drawn and quartered.’ I went away in a panic. This morning she said, ‘It’s delightful to read. I kept laughing. But you’re very hard on the character who’s partly you.’
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M’s entrance exam at University High: a hundred and fifty frightened kids being harangued by an old fart in an academic gown. I saw that her face was white. I was ready to kill. I cried all the way home on the bus and walking down our street. She did not look well as she came out of the exam: strained, pale and slightly vague. She told me all about it, with seriousness. I looked at her skinny little leg muscles in fawn tights and wanted to do terrible violence to someone. She said, ‘The maths was really hard—you know—“If n equals m times 2”, that kind of thing. I nearly cried when I saw some of the questions.’ She made a trembling gesture with out-stretched arms. ‘I just thought, Oh, no!’
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A perfect spring morning: colourless clear sky, luminous at the horizon, faint roar of distant traffic, car window pearled with condensation, power lines and antennae sharply defined in pure air. A tall tree behind the house opposite is thick with creamy blossom. A rooster crows far away towards Westgarth Street. Nothing moves except the odd passing bird.
——
I was cooking dinner tonight while a couple of hard-line leftie visitors raved on at the kitchen table about an academic they knew who was writing a book on Indo-China.
‘In Bangkok,’ said the woman, ‘he got up to all sorts of stuff he could never do in Australia.’
‘What, like fucking prostitutes?’ I asked.
‘Oh, worse. You know—twelve-year-old virgins.’ She laughed. ‘The kinds of things he shouldn’t really be into, considering where he’s at.’
I turned back to the stove.
‘Actually,’ she went on, in a voice softened by affection, ‘he fell in love with the first prostitute he got involved with. He wanted to bring her back to Australia. It was a tragic story, really. He spent a fortune getting her papers and everything, and then she didn’t want to go.’
Smart girl.
——
‘Once you’ve used your experience to make something,’ said T, ‘it takes on a life of its own. It’s a bit silly to keep dragging it back to its source.’
——
When I read the writers, particularly the Jews, in Best American Short Stories I feel lazy, weak and lacking in skill. They will drive and drive, these blokes. What does this mean, for me? It means I must push myself outside what I’m sure of. Take risks.
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Spring night: black sky speckled with stars, air cool and thickly scented with grass, and the odours of things growing.
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She says she’s writing an essay on the nature of art as myth, myth as the expression of male dominance, myth as useless to women.
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Honour will be out in two weeks. It has several fairly serious typos. I resolve not to look at it any more.
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Yesterday I felt like burning all my old diaries. I spoke about it to two people, a writer and a photographer. Each replied to this effect: ‘You’ll be the same person, with the same past, whether you burn them or not.’ I decided not to burn anything, but to pack them up and store them somewhere where I can’t get at them.
——
My eyes are sore, and yesterday my front tooth got chipped while I was eating a Butter Menthol, but is now fixed.