The suburban exile is over. On the way back to the city I stopped off in Mont Albert, and sat in a garden with a tape recorder. Initially it was fairly quiet out there, but then Tom Parbery, poet and game inventor, came out and joined me. I turned the tape recorder on and we got going. It was good. Tom is a very articulate man. He's also responsible for my all-time favourite haiku:

Like a desert cactus
The outer suburban
Chinese restaurant

So he talked about precision in poetry, the art of inventing games of pure absurdity, and being able to notice and appreciate moments. And I was certainly aware that just being with him was a moment in itself: this was the second time I'd seen him in many years, and in less than a week he'll be back in Japan. Tom, if you're out there, thanks.

He also got me thinking about the interviewing thing. Over the last six months I just decided to start interviewing people. I didn't have any set goal in mind: I just wanted to sit down with people and see what happened. It's all been really interesting: at some point there I just thought "I want to be able to do this better," so ever since I've been searching for ways to make that happen. I'm not there yet, but I'm going to persevere with the thing. It's been a delight to find out how articulate people are when they're talking about their lives, about their interests, about themselves.

Guan-Ji versus The Sandman

I've gotten Guan-Ji interested in reading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. This is a very long, very ambitious, very dazzling comic book. The central character is Dream, also known as Morpheus, the god who looks after the sleeping world. But it also features the rest of the Endless, who are Dream's brothers and sisters: Death, Destiny, Desire, Delirium, Despair ... and one other. Gaiman takes his time to introduce the missing character, which led to Guan-Ji making guesses about what this missing Endless might be called. His first guess? Departure. Not technically correct, of course, but a wonderful try.

If I was in his position, my guesses would be along the lines of Dumbo, Dweeb, Diddleysquat ...