Family history
Our Colonial Roots
A brief account of our ancestors, the Levey, Marks and Harris families, who migrated to Australia from London, in the nineteenth century. [Pdf]
The Webbers
My account of the family's creative endeavours and various other exploits beginning in the mid-1960s and spanning about twenty five years. >> More...
Fiction
Outer Island
A short story about a year spent on Norfolk
Island, in the South Pacific. The surfing
adventure creates the setting for the narrator's
personal journey, which can be gleaned from his descriptions of
the island, its cultural and geologic past
interwoven with the narrator's present moment
explorations. The island thus serves as a
metaphor for the narrator's psyche. [Pdf]
Encyclopedia
Surferpedia
An online encyclopedia of surfing that anyone can edit. By contributing material to Surferpedia, anyone with knowledge of surfing can supplement the commercial depiction of surf culture. It therefore empowers surfers who wish to challenge the way commercial interests distort the message for mass appeal. www.surfing.wikia.com
Philosophy
Zen and the Art of Surfboard Design
A phenomenology of design based on spatial perception, using surfing and surfboard design as a vehicle for understanding spatial perception as an interplay between temporal and spatial relationships. The aim of this paper is to show (a) how motion has ontological priority over space and (b) how the relationship between motion and form underpins mindness. The analysis of spatial perception reveals an interplay between spatial and temporal relations that is evident in language and surfing. >> More...
The Surfism model of Perception
Surfism is a philosophy that likens the mind to surfing, in the sense that the imagination rides the mind like a surfer riding a wave. The interaction between the surfboard and the wave represents the roles played by spatial and temporal relations in how we perceive reality. Surfing is an ideal analogy for the psyche, because a variety of interconnected elements can be represented, with scenarios representing their influences within the system. >> More...
The Surfism model of the Psyche
There's something about surfing that touches the very essence of what it is to be alive. It's hard to explain to non-surfers how it feels to carve across a wave, to push the limits of your surfing ability and to surf even better than you thought you could. There's a magic in surfing that only the experience itself can communicate to you. One surfs with the wave, drawing on experience to manoeuvre the surfboard in synchrony with the wave, all the while anticipating how it will change shape. >> More...
The Surfism model of Semiosis
If you think of the surfboard as the medium for surfing expression, then surfboard design is its grammar. It is the structure through which surfing expression can flow. The aim of surfboard design is to refine this structure so surfing expression can become more fluent. >> More...
Zen and the Art of Spatio-temporal Analogy: A Surfer's Vision of Semiosis
Drawing on a range of interrelated phenomena, I present an ontological perspective on language that transcends the limitations inherent in spatial relations. The rational framework for this approach is based on the notion of embodied cognition (EC), which characterises the mind as physically grounded in its situated presence. My contribution to EC concerns the nature of situated presence, which I describe as oscillatory. If oscillations thereby ground intentionality, they might help to explain the patterns and processes evident in language. [Pdf]
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