Black Dog

Was toddling around after breakfast this morning when a black dog ran into the house, having somehow slipped in through the various doors and fences between us and the street. Physically it didn't stay long, bolting the second our own hound noticed it.

Metaphorically it's been hanging around all day ...

Travelled into Fremantle this afternoon to speak to an academic from the University of Notre Dame about this genocide piece I've been asked to write. In a final burst of research before the meeting, I read through some transcripts of genocide survivors the interviewee sent me last night, and the grimness has clung to me all day. These are tales of humanity broken down to its most basic, animal level, both on the parts of the persecutors and the persecuted - everything from senseless beatings and selling out your neighbours to settle old scores, to infanticide and cannibalism. How much of it I'm actually going to be able to use in the article itself is debatable. I suspect it'll be simply too unpalatable for the regular readers of the magazine I'm writing for.

The interview went well, filling both sides of my tape with details and filling me with respect for the woman who's made it her mission to get the information out there. How she manages to live with it all, day in, day out, is beyond me.