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Our teachers come to us in many guises. Mine came in Dr Russell Cope, Patricia Azarias, Dr James Cumes as well as Gabriella and Alexandra, my two amazing angels of the Velvet variety ... There might be many languages, but there is only one truth! These teachers teach us that there is never an ending without another beginning. Even death is a beginning of something new no matter what late Kerry Packer tried to tell us ... indeed, there is hell and there is heaven ;-)

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Lets not raise our eyebrows at the challenges that face us.
Lets raise our spirit recognising that we will conquer every single one of them ...

Magic happens with an open heart just like the open love heart which will hover over the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Saturday night during the Silverster fever (New Year Eve Fever)
The greatest magic of all has been and always will be love, agape ...

Why do we write about the most painful experiences in our life? Are we wallowing in the misery? No. Writing helps expunge our grief and lets us heal. Our most powerful weapon is emotional honesty ...

All that mankind, poor or rich, famous or unknown, has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. Antipodean indies, Readings, push boundaries of independent voices: “We hear a lot these days about publishing becoming more and more risk-averse, the bean-counters taking over, and so on .... This is of course a massive generalisation and there are some great things coming out both here and overseas on a regular basis - perhaps the larger problem is our excessively concentrated media world, which narrows our chances of learning about new and exciting work!”
As one of the 80,000 or so readers of ‘My Surreal Vienna’ kindly noted, ‘Jozef Imrich has written the War and Peace of escapes. It lends new meaning to the word 'harrowing' and one sometimes shudders to read it. But deep down, beneath all the layers and the masks, there lives something unconquerable in Jozef's hurt spirit... And the writing, the writing, the writing.’
All in all, Jozef has created fresh, bold and edgy read. The first of its kind, and rather masterful ;-)

CODA: Support Independent Bookstores:
You can buy many of the books mentioned on Double Dragon Publishing from Powell's, the online branch of one of the West Coast's finest indie bookstores. Or you could find a local bookseller through BookSense if you prefer.

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How old is my heart, how old, how old is my heart,
and did I ever go forth with song when the morn was new?
I seem to have trod on many ways: I seem to have left
I know not how many homes; and to leave each
was still to leave a portion of mine own heart,
of my old heart whose life I had spent to make that home
and all I had was regret, and a memory.
So I sit and muse in this wayside habour and wait
till I hear the gathering cry of the ancient winds and again
I must up and out and leave the embers of the hearth
to crumble silently into white ash and dust,
and see the road stretch bare and pale before me: again
my garment and my house shall be the enveloping winds
and my heart be fill'd wholly with their old pitiless cry.
-Christopher Brennan

Bondi Muse
Tamarama Breeze

Internet book sales are a threat, but also an opportunity. "People look up the books on the net and come into our shop and order it. People just love to come in and feel and smell the books: The things that happen to writers are either a stumbling block or a stepping stone. Turning over a new leaf

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Not Wrong Just Different: My Soul just returned unto Sydney
You Know You're From Sydney When...

You make over $100,000 AU and still can't afford a house. You never bother looking at the train timetable because you know the drivers have never seen it. You are genuinely surprised when you meet someone who was actually born in Sydney (but then, they are Swiss/Thai/Brazilian).

Man is the only animal with the unique ability to generate surplus. As Russell put it in The Impulse to Power: Between man and other animals... One of the chief emotional differences is that some human desires, unlike those of animals, are essentially boundless and incapable of complete satisfaction... The activities of animals, with few exceptions, are inspired by the primary needs of survival and reproduction, and do not exceed what these needs make imperative. With men, the matter is different
• What a bunch of malarkey [A place where leaves crackle after dark and the faint sound of a banjo draws up your pucker strings Unwonderful People are Strange; When I first met Cold River (I gave him this nickname because he has a bert lahr/ned beatty skittishness) When a movie was discussed, he would holler, "the book was better." Yep, one of those... Cold River was a labeler. To him, everything had a term ; One needs to be higher on the ladder of evolution to develop the ability and the desire to dissemble, be ambitious (sometimes inordinately), over-reach (Icarus may be the archetype but he isn’t the only one), accumulate power and wealth, create Fabergé eggs and heavenly music, write, paint, sculpture, strive for self-recognition to the point of mortal combat (Hegel’s First Man), even seek immortality. The coloniser was the serpent who came and got them banished from Eden ]
• · The Reasons for Us Being HereSex sells, and with the write stuff, wins awards ; The Rogue likes to observe creative space which seems to fall into an area between rational thought and total immersion, a sort of lucid interactive place Kaboom!
• · · Psychologists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Open University found that professional artists and poets have about twice as many sexual partners as other people... The great objective is to establish an exotic mood :-P Creative people have more sex ; This is what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be The Secret Agent; Topless sandals - also called "down unders"
• · · · Frank Gardiner was just a common thief. Ben Hall's career changed the nature of bushranging. He was the first to bail up a bank. The first to burn a storekeeper's ledgers (so debts of customers were wiped out). The first to burn a squatter's farm. He was the first to bail up two towns - Bathurst and Canowindra, where he held his famous party which Ned Kelly copied at Glenrowan the day he died. "They were the actions of a man trying to upset a system which had upset him. Ben wasn't a revolutionary. He was a criminal. But he wanted to change the balance of power in the area where he lived Hall lived up to his proud boast to police three years before: You'll never take me alive Getting away with Antipodean murder; The Cold River: Getting away with Californian murder
• · · · · Radio National books in Ramona ; All life is a competition. Hitting the line on the tennis court. Getting promoted in the office. Edging for position at the bus stop. Beating your daughter to the bathroom door!! L’Espresso magazine ; The cage shook: nothing is taboo in advertising
• · · · · · Songfacts is a searchable database of song information compiled by radio professionals, music enthusiasts, and visitors to this web site Songfacts ; Chronic shortage of donors puts IVF clinics in jeopardy

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To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.
- Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

To Those Who Appreciate the Art of Giving Cold River does not Mind Sand in the Spine
While much is left to the imagination, I console myself with knowing that everyone’s first book is autobiographical to some extent. The escape story across the Iron Curtain was a bit like constipation, it had to come out in the end ... When I'm crying, as much as when I'm laughing, I feel completely alive. It works for me. As a writer, the test of my best work is whether it does more than simply stimulate thought -- it must also provoke emotion. Memoirs can mine psychology in a way that films can not. Films are all about surface and speed. Books are all about depth and taking one's time swimming in the deep end of emotions. What other art form allows you to live inside another person's mind—a theater of other people's minds—for days or even weeks on end?
The experience of writing serious non-fiction is comparable to a shamanic journey. We must be willing to let go of our attachment to our everyday lives and concerns and make the solitary pilgrimage into the deepest reaches of our psyches to explore a strange and often frightening landscape. We return changed, blessed and burdened with our most profound wisdom and the need to communicate it. The attempt to shoehorn such an emotionally and spiritually engaging venture into a twenty-first century Western schedule can result in frustration, inhibition, and spectacular rejections ... Two zillion books a year are published, of which top one hundred are given the Big Rush, and all the rest tend to drown without a trace ... They say it's OK to charm, to cajole, to manipulate, to sell your soul if need be. But the most important thing is caring enough to get the story right and tell it well! Thank you for reading ...

Most of us don't like risk and uncertainty. That's too bad, because there's no shortage of either ... Next year will be bigger than ever. Take it easy, run a risk, have fun, go for it! 2005’s been a huge year for Cold River! Skipped the Coldest River the first time around? Here comes your second chance! If great escapes are all about redemption, isn't it kind of fitting this book gets a second chance? Here is a book peppered with gripping account of escape just out in paperback. A staggering achievement, especially considering this was a debut memoir. Cold River created a stark and painful record of what happens to families when death moves in. And showing that he's unafraid to tackle big themes and larger questions, Jozef links to links about writing for posterity. Remember: great books don't only get better with age. They get less expensive. So dive right in as every day in the deep end of life is a good day... The Cold River Comes in From the Cold: Dissent Protects Democracy

Cold River: Fluid Memoir

Gut-wrenching memoir never forgets that cold war was fought by human beings

Sink or Swim: If It Were All So Simple

Iron Curtain Brought to Book: This Book Will Save Your Life

Cold River: Telling tales against the tide

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Be careful, it's my heart,
It's not my watch you're holding, it's my heart.
It's not the note I sent you that you quickly burned,
It's not the book I lent you that you never returned.
Remember, it's my heart,
The heart with which so willingly I part.
It's yours to take, to keep or break,
But please, before you start,
Be careful, it's my heart.
-Irving Berlin, “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” (music by Berlin, courtesy of Marc Myers)
Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world: You are different. So is Cold River
Sink or Swim: If It Were All So Simple

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... Sometimes your crazy impulses, your irrational impulses, are the right ones. To have the courage to follow them can lead to a sort of bigger understanding of what life is like....

No matter what form the dragon may take, it is the mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will be concerned to tell.
- Flannery O'Connor

I am in the jaws of the dragon as Flannery would say. As the movie rolls forward on the screen, this is where the obstacles, tests, ogres, and the ordeal begins. Mr. Campbell's trial and initiation. (Aside: That's good news my teacher says last night. Yep, being in the lion's mouth is how Ramana Maharshi put it. There's no way out. The lion will take care of the rest. It's inevitable.) This is a phase of doubt. And oft times miracles. The knight is now firmly committed to quest for the Holy Grail. The unknown lays between the them. Of Journals, Journeys, Julie and Julia

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Secrets of the Fathers
I dreamed and fantasised about what my biological father would be like... You look at people’s faces, you always wonder...
Their quest constantly ran up against a wall of secrecy that has surrounded sperm donation for decades. But gradually, they discovered clues: his education, his field of work, even a description of his teeth...

The right to know versus the right to privacy... as donor-conceived children battle a secret system in the search for their biological fathers

• Gift of Life: Good Night, and Good Luck [The Los Angeles Times, columnist Meghan Daum has an op-ed that begins, For pro-choicers like myself, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s position regarding spousal consent for abortion seems like one more loose rock in the ongoing erosion of Roe vs. Wade Shouldn't men have 'choice' too? ; ‘Soft pawn’ row as chess world discovers sex]
• · Telling tales against the tide ; George Clooney doesn't mind swimming against the political tide Rebel with a cause
• · · If we think poets and painters have better sex lives, it may be that they are good at persuading us - Sex and art ... It’s a great chat-up line. But why would Pablo Picasso think anything else?... Sex and art are really the same thing ; Man is a social animal – utterly dependent on forming and maintaining relationships with other people FREEDOM: The Ties That Do Not Bind: The Decline of Marriage and Loyalty
Beauty is the battlefield where God and the devil war for the soul of man Art in Crisis
• · · · Journeys involve both highs and lows ; “Puritan roots run deep,” says Hugh Hefner, whose parents would not show affection: “no hugging and kissing.” He is making up for it The oldest swinger in town
• · · · · Procrastination cure: you put on workshops for sufferers. Trouble is, some who sign up miss the first session, or don’t show at all... Procrastination cure; Mary McCarthy mistook snobbery for morality, just as Edmund Wilson mistook life for literature. Theirs was the union of a true bitch with a genuine bully... Forgetting Edmund Wilson
• · · · · · Chinese Etiquette Lessons for Germany ; Rebels Without a Clue - Communism tried to transform capitalism. It ended in tragedy. The counterculture tried the same. It ended in farce

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I spoke to my Mamka (Mom) this morning it was 5:30 am in seaside Sydney and evening in the High Tatra Mountains. The temperatures also could not be more different as it is nice and warm here whereas it is freezing in my old home country. At 89 ( in February next year) Mamka is bright and alert and can recall so many childhood stories I have forgotten. My sister Gitka is her guardian angel keeping her company as they share stories and sew or knit together. They are an amazing couple of friends - so alike in appearance and temperament - so much more than daughter mother relationship ... Both cannot get over that we have moved again as neither my sister or my Mamka ever left their place of birth and are still living where they were born. I am glad that they have always provided for me with a sense of stability, a place and home to call whenever my heart desired ... My sister and my Mamka seem to agree with the sentiment expressed in the sweet sixteen points below

16 THINGS THAT IT TOOK ME OVER 40 YEARS TO LEARN

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5. You should not confuse your career with your life.
6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
7. Never lick a steak knife.
8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
13. A person who is nice to you but rude to a waiter is not a nice person.
(This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
14. Your friends love you anyway.
15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
16. Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

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'On The Importance of Telling Stories'
My grandmother often told me the story of her father-in-law who found out just before Christmas that he was going to die. Determined to live through the holiday to be with his family, he died right after the new year. She and my grandfather, then very young newlyweds, took that rapid loss as a lesson to live for the day and be happy with what they had - a lesson they truly followed. When she became old and my grandfather died, my grandmother thrived on telling old stories to keep herself going. It wasn't so much that she was living in the past, but the telling of the stories made the past alive and relevant It is that same sense of the need to live in the moment while telling stories of the past that Joan Didion has infused through her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking.

If I had a million dollars, I would slap it all down on the table in front of any jackass that said they could write a fabulous book if only they had a big fat advance, and tell them they could have every single penny if they could bang out a genuinely salable book in six months ... because your basic loudmouth non-writer is no more capable of writing a salable book than I am of piloting a 747, and roughly for the same reason—it’s a skill you have to learn, baby, and one generally learns the writing skill by writing most days of your life (and generally—alas—you’ll be doing that for little if any pay).
– Whatever
Publishing, Writing, Getting Published

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I survived the Bondi to Bronte ocean swim. Just ;-) In at the deep end no one asks you about the time it took. It is one thing to walk from Bondi to Bronte but it is another thing altogether to swim the distance. Swimming around the rocks really does give you a strange sense of existentialism ... as well as a deep sense of being part of this amazingly wonderful world!

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rançois Truffaut defined a great movie as a perfect blend of truth and spectacle. Now it's become bifurcated. Studio films are all spectacle and no truth, and independent films are all truth and no spectacle."
-Howard Franklin

Former editor in chief of Grove Press and co-founder of Carroll & Graf Kent Carroll is featured in LA Weekly for Europa Editions, the sprightly new publishing venture he has just started in New York, as a kind of book club for Americans who thirst after exciting foreign fiction Tough Guys, Effete Snobs and Mad Women: Introducing Europa Editions

But Enough About Me ...Let's talk about other writers and books.
Did you know that today was the day that Elizabeth Bear's latest book Worldwired debuted in the stores?

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Time is a very strange thing.
Time is a very strange thing.

So long as one takes it for granted, it is nothing at all.
But then, all of a sudden, one is aware of nothing else.
It is all about us, it is within us also,
In our faces it is there, trickling,
In the mirror it is there, trickling,
In my sleep it is there, flowing,
And between me and you,
There, too, it flows, soundless, like an hour-glass.
Oh, Quinquin, sometimes I hear it flowing
Irresistibly on.
Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night
And stop all the clocks, all, all of them.
Nevertheless, we are not to shrink from it,
For it, too, is a creature of the Father who created us all.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier (music by Richard Strauss, trans. W.H. Auden)

• The number of men paying women for sex has nearly doubled in a decade, says research. Why? Time is a very strange thing [Some couples may disagree, but romantic love lasts little more than a year, Italian scientists believe. Romantic love 'lasts just a year' ; Hot off the page ; Relationship breakdown and separation can be a challenging time, but you are not alone Australian's are suffering from a new epidemic called ‘Divorce Disorder’ ; So many young women who can make sense of spreadsheets, quote Shakespeare, and tone discrete muscle groups – can’t cook a proper Thanksgiving dinner Many young women wish they knew their way around the kitchen ; This week has seen a report showing shocking attitudes to rape and a case thrown out of court after the prosecution said drunken consent is still consent. Naomi Wolf looks at what can be done to improve a desperate situation Take the shame out of rape ]
• · Showing their lighter side, Forbes introduces yet another list: the richest fictional people Forbes List: Richest Fictional People ; Forbes’ List of Imriches ; Literacy is in the eye of the beholder
• · · Nomads: The Jewish Century ; Myth and Memory in the American Identity ; Hans Magnus Enzensberger looks at the kind of ideological trigger required to ignite the radical loser - whether amok killer, murderer or terrorist - and make him explode The radical loser
• · · · Yes, we know you can identify T.O. and 50 Cent. You're a devoted reader. But who or what is Slavoj Zizek? The wild Seinfeldian philosopher ; Pop philosopher Colin Wilson provide clues to a serial killer’s motives? Scott McLemee is banking on the idea A Killing Concept; Useful for understanding the current political situation? Piled Higher and Deeper
• · · · MetaxuCafe: Literary cool-kid hang out? Time sink you didn’t know you needed? Best idea ever? Yes, yes, and no, unless you disqualify sandwiches, in which case, yes. Latest Entries from MetaxuCafé ; I wanted to recommend that everyone go read the Reproductive Rights issue of Nerve It is hard to get flies off of honey
• · · · · Great Stories, People, Books & Events in Literary History::Tortured ROMANTICS ; I know it's the hip thing to talk about how overrated sex is, but ; In Hollywood, there’s a studio price and an indie price