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8a418b5
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Where I had expected to appreciate the monuments and love the natural environment, the reality was entirely the reverse. The immense beauty of many buildings and landscapes had an immediate and visceral impact, and yet in the natural world, where I am generally most comfortable, I was hesitant. While I was duly impressed by what I saw, I could never connect bodily and emotionally. Being from a flat, dry continent, I looked forward to the pr..
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Tim Winton |
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49c96b0
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And the moon is only the moon. But they're not empty things you know. The past is still in them. The force of events long gone, it lingers. These heavenly bodies and earthly forms, what are they but expressions of matters unfinished? ...Mebbe lunatics are men who've remembered they're just men, not angels.
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pathetic-fallacy
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Tim Winton |
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a8e6da2
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Peace, that's all I'm after.
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Tim Winton |
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f397358
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In a seedy cinema on ru du Temple, watching Disney's Peter Pan with my son, I found that although we were all gazing at the same screen in the flickering dark, I was seeing a different film to the rest of the audience. What seemed fantastical and exotic to the Parisian kids looked like home to me. I knew secret coves and hidey-holes like those of the Lost Boys. I'd grown up in a world of rocky islands, boats and obscuring bush. To my mind t..
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australian-literature
homesickness
home
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Tim Winton |
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dd253fb
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the ute was casting a shadow that no light was ever gonna make. A shadow doesn't search for a drain like that. Shadows don't have blowflies drowning in them.
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death
decay
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Tim Winton |
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c0dcaa0
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He was scarcely sixteen years of age when he left his father's home, And through Australia's sunny clime a bushranger did roam. He robbed those wealthy squatters, their stock he did destroy, And a terror to Australia was the wild Colonial boy.
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history
vernacular-music
masculinity
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Tim Winton |
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bd86301
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But I'm not such a good judge of monsters; I don't know if the idea of a good death repels me now because it's in itself repellent, or because I no longer have the courage to seek such a thing.
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religion
roman-catholicism
martyrdom
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Tim Winton |
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06d8115
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God is what you do, not what you believe in.
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religion-and-philoshophy
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Tim Winton |
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f0b284f
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It's just an old fella. Mostly bald. Walking dainty like his feet's tender. And still singing. With some things in his hand. He puts them down on a drum. Sits on a milk crate in the shade. Pulls on a pair of gumboots. Then he snatches up the things from beside him and shuffles out in the sun and leans against the verandah post and I see him clear enough. Singlet. Baggy arse shorts. Thick specs. He's short and thick this fella. Red in the fa..
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violence
irony
music
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Tim Winton |
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1c46048
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discretion will generally keep a fella safe.
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taciturnity
secrecy
safety
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Tim Winton |
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afe7ddf
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The sea is one rare wild card left in the homogenous suburban life.
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Tim Winton |
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a29df54
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What does it mean for a community to edit itself like this, to so spurn the past - or perhaps fear it - that the slate must be wiped clean for each new generation? What self-hatred does this betray?
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Tim Winton |
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a40e75d
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During those years of travel I saw that architecture is what we console ourselves with once we've obliterated our natural landscapes.
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Tim Winton |
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6e50690
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elbows-out walk like a scorpion all burred up for a fight
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anthrpomorphism
lyricism
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Tim Winton |
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2af2952
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Please God, whatever I was I am no longer....All is forgotten, if not forgiven--it could have come to that. But I don't trust the thought. I don't know if it's because it would be too easy or too terrible to imagine no one cares anymore.
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time
self-knowledge
remorse
insignificance
memory
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Tim Winton |
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8fb7dc5
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For the first time in my life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. But it wasn't always like this. I have been through fire to get here. I seen things and done things and had shit done to me you couldn't barely credit. So be happy for me. And for fucksake don't get in my way.
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social-awareness
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Tim Winton |
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3e81aa2
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Don't you see it Jaxie Clackton, you are an instrument of God.' 'Oh, I said, you mad fucker. You been out under the moon too long.
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religion
premonition
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Tim Winton |
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eee4020
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The spent shell come out the .243 shining like a bright idea.
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Tim Winton |
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d8674fc
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sort of worked, our arrangement. Before I couldna seen the sense in it. But two of us getting meat and wood, two of us keeping a look out, it was more efficient that one bloke faffing about on his own. And it wasn't we had anything in common exactly but we was another human to talk to.
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companionship
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Tim Winton |
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9d63c2f
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In the end he wore me down. Always asking. And the answer I give him is still the only one I have. What do I want? Peace. And it actually shut him up. He didn't niggle me about it. It was like he got it straight off. I don't just want quiet, neither. I want peace.
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philosophy
peace
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Tim Winton |
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385128e
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I suspect that God is what you do, not what or who you believe in. But people do shit things all the time, I said. There's something wrong with us. Perhaps. And maybe not. But when you do right, Jaxie, when you make good -- well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the divine, to the life-force, to life itself. That's what I believe. That's what I hope for. And it's what I have missed. That's all jumblyfuck to me, I sa..
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kindness
love
life-force
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Tim Winton |
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0c833f6
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Liam Rector's "Song Years": "Change is hard and hope is violent"."
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Tim Winton |
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039c153
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I spose it's wrong to pray that someone dies... But I've thought about all the prayers. If that's what I was doing them years...Asking something, someone, anything, for a big black anvil to fall from the sky like in the cartoons. Kerang! On Wankbag's head. Because nothing else was gunna save [me]...
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irony
death
religion
salvation
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Tim Winton |
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aaac802
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Say I hit your number, called you up, you'd wonder what the fuck, every one of youse, and your mouth'd go dry. Maybe you're just some stranger I pocket-dialled. Or one of them shitheads from school I could look for. Any of youse heard my voice now you'd think it was weather. Or a bird screaming. You'd be sweating sand. Like I'm the end of the world.
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self-aggrandisement
introspection
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Tim Winton |
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6af964a
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Where was I? Who was I? What was I? ... And for a long time Fintan took it just like that. Giving them nothing. And it was horrible and incredible and it all piled up on me, squashing me in, forcing me down, until something cracked and all in one moment it was like everything landed. All the birds landed. The sunlight landed. The song landed. All the decent things in him landed. On me. On my head. And I knew where I was, and who I was, and ..
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Tim Winton |
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f4d81f0
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So we had some blues, me and Fintan. He said we were merely conducting civilised conversation. But sometimes it was like he didn't know how close he was to getting his head stove in. Or maybe he didn't care. Even so, everything was peaceful more or less. Until the wind came round from the north.
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Tim Winton |
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e7221f2
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Jesus, I told meself, harden the fuck up. She heard me say that once, Mum. To me little cousin out by the laundry where he was bawling, his knee bleeding a tiny bit. She had that disgusted look on her face. What? I said. I didn't do nothin. You're no better than your father, she said. Listen to you, Jaxie, you sound just like him. I didn't talk to her for three days.
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kindness
mercy
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Tim Winton |
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b31cae0
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Drug dealing worse than kiddy fiddling, is it? Stop that, now! There's no need and you've no right. You think the Catholics care how they make their money? They bloody love gangsters, it's their bread and butter. Good God, child, you wouldn't know the half of it. You wouldn't have the faintest notion.
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irony
roman-catholicism
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Tim Winton |
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7630e43
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We was just kids, we did kid stuff. And we didn't have things to do like people in the city. We couldn't catch the bus to the beach or the movies or hang out in big shopping malls. We had to ride everywhere or shanks it. Go for a milkshake at the roadhouse, check out the tip. Because there was no KFC or Subway. We'd walk along the highway looking for eagle feathers.
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country-life
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Tim Winton |