What I’m Reading
The very last thing I read was a US magazine piece online about 9-11, because I was chasing a curious and allegedly true fact circulating the internet that ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ by the Bee Gees was playing in a Twin Towers foyer when the planes hit. It turned out to be half-true—it was a muzak version. But still. ‘…and you come to me on a summer breeze, keep me warm in your love then you softly leave…’ The song is now rendered differently, as if it’s gone through some sort of machine that has made it more haunting than […]
Twiction2: The Return Of #meanjin280
For 80 years Meanjin has been a home for the best in Australian long writing, in essays, short fiction, memoir … plus poetry of course. Which is not to say that brevity doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. So here’s a challenge: write an exquisite piece of super-short fiction in 280 characters or less and post it to Twitter with the hashtag #meanjin280 … and yes, we know that leaves you with 269 characters, but these are the constraints of the medium. We did this back in 2017, and now, as then, we’ll be publishing the pick of the […]
Extinction Rebellion and the Politics of Creative Tension
Are Extinction Rebellion protesters shooting themselves in the foot? Commentators have been quick to accuse them of doing no more than annoying motorists and alienating the public from their cause. That argument assumes that all protests are aimed at winning over the public to one’s point of view. Put another way, protests are effective only when they operate within the boundaries of the accepted norms of the political system. But that completely misconstrues the strategy of XR’s campaign of civil disobedience. The point is to break out of the boundaries imposed by normal politics and challenging the system, the system […]
The Paradox of Dependence
In her recent essay about learning to pry herself away from love that drained her, from a man who emptied her, CJ Hauser offers the fable of the crane wife. In the story, she writes, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be […]
Essays
This Vast Conspiracy of Memory
Google has this handy and terrifying feature called Timeline, which shows you everywhere you’ve ever been, how many times you’ve been there, and how long you’ve been there each time. It collects data from your phone, constantly if you have an Android, and if you have an iPhone, it logs your location every time you open the Google Maps app. Nothing disappears: your every movement is a collection of data points, fed into algorithms that use this information to do everything from alert you to traffic jams in your area to notify you when you’re running low on nappies for your […]
Fiction
Let’s Talk Trojan Bee
I
There is shock and horror in the Californian almond region tonight.
—CBS Sacramento
Initial reports suggest ten dead and at least a dozen more injured.
—CNN
Memoir
Writing and Its Demons
I have always thought of myself as a good person, but I recently began to suspect that I have been kidding myself. What’s more, I began to believe that my failure to be a good person is inseparable from me being a writer—an activity that has taken on the character of something diabolical. I should clarify that I am in the habit of second-guessing myself, of being self-critical. Generally speaking, scepticism rather than faith, self-doubt rather than self-confidence, have served me well. I think of these characteristics—undoubtedly with an obnoxious measure of self-regard—as the foundation for learning, thinking, self-reinvention, and […]
Poetry
Mont Aigual
In the crumbling church there’s a bone of a saint the Romans boiled in olive oil. A coat hanger is a deformed cross that has outlived the golden vestments of the priests. In her office on the hill the virgin’s ears intact in fake fur. She’ll stare forever at the very same stars that wheel above the world of the true night. A forgotten swamp’s refilled to the level of the recalled banks and the swifts return each dusk to the paper map spread out candlelit, and illumined as their valley. Adam Aitken’s memoir One Hundred […]
