down south dillettantism

christmas day was really quiet around the traps, so i went for a bike ride in the evening. i took my mum's bike on a good trip from bunbury to the far end of australind, which is a pretty fair old trot for someone who usually only rides her bike down the road, it was probably 35km or so. my hindquarters were quite tender the next day.

the reason i mention this is because the roads were so impossibly quiet, what with it being christmas day, that i barely saw a soul, and suddenly i had this incredible idea that maybe i could sing whilst riding my bike. oh gosh, it was great. i felt like a real old-timer, just trundling on past paddocks and creeks and empty factories and railroad crossings and all the time singing songs, first quietly and under my breath and then loudly when i realised that there really was no-one around. i really recommend it.

i also re-read the dharma bums which i think is marvellously inspiring (i intend to begin standing on my head every day), and i read a farewell to arms by hemingway, it was my first hemingway and i found it terribly sad. i had expected it to be terse and unromantic and, i admit, dull, but it was nothing of the sort.

and i also read white teeth by zadie smith which was very warm and enjoyable but kind of lost me in the last hundred pages or so. and i started reading oscar and lucinda although i only got about 30 pages in.

anyway, with all that reading i didn't really do as much creative business as i perhaps should have.

still, when i was singing and riding my bike i couldn't help but notice how creepy some parts of bunbury are. so i came up with a kind of country death song, not all of it but some bits of it and later on i did manage to work out guitar parts for some of it.

it's called "when you go back to your hometown there's a hundred ways to die," perky business. maybe i'll write some more of it now.

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lion