Magic Words and the Power of Language?

The first words of 'Boy Swallows Universe'

The meaning of Trent is "rapid stream"?

I've only read the first chapter of Trent Dalton's novel 'Boy Swallows Universe' and my mind has already been swallowed by the universe of ideas those opening pages of words have sent my mind into.

The cover with the blue fairy wren didn't hurt by casting my mind back to when I had the most remarkable encounter with a blue fairy wren when I was down in Port Arthur in Tasmania in 2016 standing on the spot of where a gun massacre had occurred -

The Fairy Wren stepping out
 to greet me at Port Arthur

Hit Me with Your Best Shot

Trent writes in the first chapter of the book about Eli's babysitter, who sounds like the real, "Arthur Ernest "Slim" Halliday, who murdered a taxi driver and was the only prisoner who managed to escape from Boggo Road Prison twice."
And since this novel, according to Trent, is semi-autobiographical, I was wondering if this taxi driver killing babysitter was Trent's real babysitter, or just the real guy used for a fictional novel?

Either way, with my own father having been a Brisbane Yellow Cab driver for most of his life, and me knowing a lot of his cab driving mates, I have little sympathy for anyone who kills a cabbie without good reason, so I was taken aback from the get-go.

I've never done a tour of the old Boggo Road Gaol, but having read about and been through Port Arthur I would imagine Boggo Road Prison would be Hotel California next to the Tassie prison.

If Slim did kill that cabbie in cold blood, then I truly believe "The Universe" isn't finished with Slim, because prison is just a man made "punishment", but karma is a real bitch that you can't side-step I reckon:-)

According to the Boggo Road Gaol website you can pay for a tour and see the real Slim's prison cell.

I notice that the Friday the 13th "ghost tour" is sold out.

And that 42 prisoners were hung there in total ... whatever that means?-)

And the graphic descriptions of male rapings in Boggo Road Gaol hit home to me, as I worked with a lady who told me how her brother hung himself at the Mt. Gravatt Showgrounds after getting out of the jail as a young man put in there for traffic offences.

She thought he was raped in there and couldn't live with the shame of it.

Big Ideas: What the convicts
tell us about prisons

She was the lady I've written about whose husband dreamed the first 4 numbers out of a Saturday night lotto barrel, but never played them, because he couldn't remember the last two numbers of his dream.

She told me those numbers a few nights before the draw, and I didn't play them either.

But my jaw dropped when I watched those 4 numbers come out of the barrel on the live TV draw in the order she wrote them down in.

Fate can deal out some tricky hands in life, it seems to me:-)

Illusory Magick?

Speaking About Fishy Things and Librarians

I also grew up with a brother who couldn't talk, but boy could he scream and throw the wildest traumatic tantrums you could ever imagine.

He lived to be 57 and he was cremated at a Covid safe funeral this year.

So, while Trent Dalton is about 16 years my junior, we sound like we have a lot in common in our Brisbane upbringings and this will be a bittersweet read for me, I guess.

I think his words will cast a spell on my memories of Brisbane and times past;-)
I can't wait to see what sort of movie Joel Edgerton makes out of Trent's book.

A Local Magick Shop Disappears in all of the 2020 Chaos?-)

The Garret Podcast:
 At home with Trent Dalton

I just started reading chapter 2 of 'Boy Swallows Universe' and had to laugh when I read that there was a character named Astrid in the book, since it was after listening to Astrid's high praise for Trent's 2 books in the above 'The Garret' podcast that I decided to buy them and read them for myself:-)

Thoth, Writing, Books, Magazines and SubSCRIPTions?

What does Trent mean?

And I just realized today is Tuesday, too:-)

You would have to read chapter 2 of 'Boy Swallows Universe' to get the significance of that last comment about it being Tuesday.

Oddly enough, the next X-Files episode I watched today in my quest to watch all 217 X-Files episodes was 'Trevor' about an escaped convict who gained the ability to pass through solid objects after being struck by lightning ... and yeah, it was as stupid as it sounds it turns out, but it did get me to thinking about another old post that I had written about a bird in Tasmania named Trevor -

Trevor means from the large village?

Free Thought?! Free Trevor!!