In the midst of a pandemic that is laying bare the failures of nearly every system and institution we have taken for granted for the last 50 years; at precisely the moment when the country could benefit from new thinking, challenging thoughts, and the views of someone who could engage us and rouse from visions of the ordinary; instil in us some measure of newness, some frisson of possibility, some program that allows us to see past and through the things that divide us, that have made us vulnerable to this virus, and offer us some alternatives, the chair of… [Read more]
How The Dark Gets In
My family and I lost a dear friend this week. We mourned her passing with prayers and candles. She had been tall, straight and true, a constant companion, and this week my husband and I made the heart-breaking decision to cut her down. Our magnificent white cedar tree is now but a pile of logs and a startlingly large mound of sawdust. Though technically the tree was not a casualty of Covid-19, in a way she was collateral damage of the pandemic. We live in Melbourne, where Lockdown 2.0—now under Stage 4—has forced us back into our homes in new… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
‘the fact that who needs heart shapes getting in the way all the time’ —Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann She is lying in bed in the afternoon, reading a big thick book with lots of pages. The book prompts her to have a thought. Maybe if I have a child, I’ll make sure to take care of the both of us? When a thought is a question, is it still a thought? The book is red and blue and so hefty she used it to press down the collar on one of her shirts a week ago, because she doesn’t… [Read more]
Breeding Roses Out of The Dead Land
The first signs of spring are there now. In the narrow bed by the kitchen window, the climbing roses that I cut back hard to the bud in deep winter are flushing out leaves. Cumquats are green on the bushes down the back, and in the dark chocolate soil there are signs of crimson new growth on the dormant nubs of peonies. These are little flinches of hope in a world that seems otherwise stripped of it, a world treading water in a strange and apprehensive hiatus; signs of nature’s perpetual, rhythmic press forward. It abideth forever. I’m waiting for… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
I’m trying to find the relevance of my PhD project again. I’m sitting in the room where my editing job was made redundant over a Zoom meeting, and I’m watching the time in the corner of my screen. A million years ago, it was March. Yesterday, it was the middle of April and then somehow, somewhere, May and June happened. Finding yourself in the centre of a dystopia while concurrently trying to write a dystopia is an odd thing. The situation is both mundane and frightening. Last year, I had spent the month of November drafting an entire creative manuscript… [Read more]
Beyond the Valley
Forgetful princess confuses past, present and future. * * * Last summer I became obsessed with an old mobile game called Monument Valley. Released in 2014, it’s a puzzle game that involves manipulating the landscape for the protagonist, the princess Ida, to move through. This is done via mechanisms both apparent and hidden. I found its Escher-esque design beautifully compelling, its music soothing, and its puzzles gently challenging. I spent hours playing it and its sequels—on the toilet, in bed, on the plane. What I found most intriguing about the game was its narrative: Ida seeks forgiveness for… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
Rereading Beloved Children’s Books in the Time of Coronavirus One of the greatest joys of becoming a parent was the opportunity to share my favourite children’s books with my daughters. When my firstborn, Tiferet, was just a few days old and I was up at night nursing her by the moonlight, I read her all of my favourite childhood books in instalments—just so she could get used to the sound of my voice. By the time Tiferet was three months old, she had already ‘read’ L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
THE UGLY, THE GOOD & THE BAD THE UGLY Government forms. (Trying to keep farm operational.) How to become a tick in a box—and which fucking box??!! That said, appreciative, privileged and lucky to live somewhere that has some form of a safety net and then, disturbed, concerned and distressed as there are so many the net doesn’t catch (and doesn’t even try to). Why it would be good to have a better idea in the first place than a net in the second. THE GOOD OK, my wont is to read quite a few actual paper… [Read more]
An Interview with Elizabeth Harrower
‘A blackbird always sings the same song.’ I just do have preoccupations, but you can come at them from so many different angles. What you often find is that one person might be enthusiastic about one particular book, and not at all about the others. So that in order to reach people, you just keep drawing on those preoccupations to explore different things. In this way the books are different, it seems to me . . .
Food Delivery Is Not Enough: The Way We Do It Matters
On Monday evening, I volunteered to provide food assistance to the residents of the North Melbourne housing estate in lockdown. Before my arrival, community volunteers from the local mosque had just delivered some food. Across the way in Flemington, Sikh community volunteers were providing trolleys of hot meals to residents. Stacks of staple food boxes sat outside the entrance foyer of each of the housing towers waiting to be distributed. We stood among a sea of uniforms and officials—Victoria Police, Fire Rescue Victoria, State Government staff—in varying degrees of Protective Personal Equipment. Some were in surgical masks, with or without… [Read more]
