The motivation to blog; the conversation of literature; fond friends.

I am very fond of some people and I enjoy the conversation of literature.

I also like to do a little of the "talking" in that conversation.

My conversations of late have been less in the field of published stories, plays and films and more in the medium of the emailed letter and assisting fond friends with their "literatures".

I am also aware that in the publication of literature most of it disappears into the ether and that it is primarily for the satisfaction of the writer and the few dear readers. I remember a story about the visit of Xavier Herbert the author of Poor Fellow My Country visiting an australian University which taught Australian literature. The faculty had to look under dormitory beds to find any teacher or student at the Uni who had read his literature. One was found I believe.

I am drawn to publish in the google/gmail/ blogspot medium by the relative purity of the page. Facebook's insouciances and agenda-ing of my relationships I find a little taxing; but the illustrated email, the public radio video channelling and their rainbow coloured "White Pages" do have merit.

The Murdoch News Ltd aligned Myspace too is a little cloyed with ads reminding me of my once greatly dear old friend Paul Brosgarth's story after he had been employed at the Manning River Times. He was told by the newspaper's editor: "You're not here to write literature son; you're just here to fill the space between the fucking ads!"

I am also aware of the snake oil salespersons' banditry of our present media. I learned in a book subtitled "How Rupert Murdoch lost a fortune in China but found a wife." that these media companies are vying to have access to a holy grail: the installation in patrons houses of "open wallets" for easy pilfering.

The commodification of sport is something that particularly riles me where sport is no longer broadcast without selling of snake-oils and where that sport itself is more soap opera than sport. Kerry Packer's spell binding wizardry in subjecting Australia and myself to the inherently vicious game of cricket, where fine swingers of the willow and athletes of great grace are invariably and eventually crueled by the shystery of the hoickers of the hard cherry or the battered pink ball, has also caused me regret.

Anyway back to literary things; I did catch up with one of my dear old mates on Facebook who I thought in my youth was a swell gel. (Was it she who illustrated a magazine I wrote for with the most provocative of nudes? To this day I remember the fauvist drawing and text and it still sends a shiver through my loins which have been girded long years since in the savage but sexless game of cricket) (And would that beautiful drawing and exclamation and urging, oh so bohemian, fauvist and pure, now be deemed unsuitable for Facebook and the like, the new purveyors of our "literatures"?)

My sweet young friend (we have aged nought since we last saw each other forty years ago) has now led me to this literary platform the blogspot. I am inspired by my old friend's blogs where she reflects on an almost daily basis and I can enjoy once more our conversations and share again our comprehensions in literature. Maybe from here we can share a view of the art of Otto Dix and continue to plot the good marriage of our children.

It was this dear old friend or one of her other swell friends or indeed both these two and a third alluring creature who made me switch campuses and decide to study Arts at the Australian National University in the 1970s after being given by my greatest patron Gough Whitlam access to a free university education and an allowance to do so after working in his government for two years.

Had I been a few years older I would probably have been called up into the army like my father had thirty odd years before and been employed to kill people from my wife's country. How the world can turn.

Now, after twenty years work cleaning the Augean stables of public and University libraries in Brisbane I am ready to seek refuge again in the arms of a place that values a place where the creation of literature can be pursued. I am not sure if I will be able to find any place that will offer me any where near as good a deal as Gough offered me in 1972.