“The condition of living in a changing society is that previous solutions for the individual situation are no longer applicable. We all have a sense of disillusion and are more like each other than like the past.”

On the shelf at eye-level are some small glass bottles decorating the shelf. The sun is shining through the window onto and through them. Extraordinarily quiet just there in that area though it’s not so quiet outside. The shelf and bottles look like the protection that domesticity offers – familiar and fond objects and spaces.

I could do a drawing of a bottle rack, not for any reason, it seems attractive in this domestic way, like David Mayor’s poem, “washing up the washing-up mop/losing the toothbrush down the toilet”. Why is that so delightful. I feel like Brenda Starr saying: (to her girlfriend from college who gave away her career and lives in the suburbs with three children) “No, Sue-Ellen, you’re the lucky one. Here I am noting everyday things, but the every day things I notice are the tinsel and glitter ones, the drama of everyone’s lives, what Ted said to Robyn and how we came to realize he was becoming upwardly mobile, not being a hustler anymore and getting a job, smartening himself up. Or what Colin’s reasons were for not wanting to ride his motorbike. Or what the implications are for the Labor Movement now that the Liberals have produced an employers’ market. We all realize that at a job interview they ask you what you expect of the job because they want you to display Initiative, but not many of us can say the right thing. But you wouldn’t have these troubles Sue-Ellen, you’re noting everyday things but they are the ones that go unnoticed by a Starr Reporter who looks for the sweep of implication. Everyday you see something like a row of bottles sitting quietly on a shelf without thinking, Aha! An everyday experience I hardly ever see, I’ll note that down.”