Hi, I’m Daniel

A Short Story from Central Australia — Yesterday we took a walk at sunset. South, along the nature strip that runs between the road and the railway line. Towards a gap in the timeless procession of rocky caterpillars that stretch from east to west across the desert. Yeperenye, they’re called, by the Arrente people. The weather was…

Another true story — A wagtail attended my great-grandmother’s funeral. We saw it from inside the modest stone hall where we gathered to attend the first rites of mourning. At the rear of the hall, two large doors opened to the cemetery grounds. A bitumen road lay extended between grassy beds. On the road…

A true story — There’s a mouse in my house. I know because it leaves little poos by the stovetop. I don’t like the mouse. Because of the little poos. If it weren’t for the little poos I wouldn’t mind if it came and went as it pleased. If it took refuge at the…

After reading a poem by the same name — Those who have suffered moment to moment the torment of addiction know too well the times when “what is truly near becomes distant and ghostly, and you are visited and claimed by a simplicity sinister in its singularity.” That quote is excerpted from the poem For an Addict by John…

Repentance and other hard to understand words — I’m fasting today but I don’t know why. The calendar said to fast on Tuesday. To remember the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 425BC. Back then this day was the beginning of the end of two houses of worship. For people whose culture, and God, I still try…

Another short essay on grief — In my last piece I tried to write about grief but I wrote about ethics. It was a welcome deviation, all in good time as they say. …

A short essay on grief and being for the other — To reify is to become real, to materialize, to have a dream become viable, to consummate in pursuit. Its associated experience, of reification, is a turbulent confluence of relief, elation, grief, and all things between. This short essay is about the grief. Grief is an aspect of emotional life that…

What is the first line of a short essay on anxiety? — Anger is the deepest form of compassion. I often come back to these words from David Whyte’s short essay titled Anger (2013). He writes, “What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound…

Where is it and what to do about it? — There is much to be said, and felt, about trauma. Its mysterious influence and origins are central to many of our current conversations about health, criminality, and social justice. Last year I read a book by Ruth Leys (2000) called Trauma: A Genealogy, which provides a broad, far reaching history…