by Alan Johnston, Pottsville, Australia 

May I tell you a few things I love?

I love the breadth and depth of expression that is coming through all the student blog posts. So uniquely and universally real.

I love each writer’s different way with words. The sense of how they set them to abide with each other and convey the whole. And within such honesty I love the words themselves, the sound, the form, the flow.

Which can be direct – as in the startling white herons I saw feeding at the feet of the ineffably lush sugar cane field…

Or indirect. I love metaphor and allegory – how they can unify the disparate and say so much with less. How they can point to what is real, how they can, as someone once said, ‘eff the ineffable’.

So I’ll finish with what I woke with.

You know how it is lighting a fire when the kindling and the gum leaves and the wood itself are damp all kind of smouldering and smoky a tinge of warmth hinting at what’s to come smells so sweet but probably you’re paused for that instant when soundlessly or maybe with a little whoosh the flames are just there and then they are and the instantaneous light and heat is so just fire and no two fires are the same and there’s the immediate dispelling of the cold mind and its comparing?

I love that, the inner flame, the way it is always there even after a damp spell.

And I love that match.