Edition 7: Memento Mori by Bossy

The ANU Women’s Department Magazine

Bossy

Memento Mori

Edition 7 October 2021

Bossy would not exist without the generous support of the ANU Women’s Department, Woroni, and YWCA Canberra. We thank them for their support, and for the amazing work they do for members of our community.

We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, who are the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Bossy is sourced, edited, printed, and distributed. We pay our respects to Ngunnawal and Ngambri Elders; past, present, and emerging. We also acknowledge that this land—which we benefit from occupying—was stolen, and that sovereignty was never ceded. Within this ongoing echo of colonialism, we commit, going forward, to do better in amplifying the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within our community. We also commit to ensuring that the incoming team for 2022 honours the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, and stands by their right to recognition.

Editor's Note

Dear Readers, No words can describe how proud I am to be able to share the results of the 2021 Bossy team’s year-long labour with you. Before I dive into anything else, I want to thank the rest of my wonderful editorial team—Alisha, Ana, Faith, Hengjia, and Neve—for dedicating so much of your time and passion to the magazine this year, and going well beyond your responsibilities to shape edition seven into a publication that I believe is one of Bossy’s most exciting yet. Thank you to the ANU Women’s Department, YWCA Canberra, and Woroni for your enduring support. Thank you to the 2021 subeditor team; to all of our contributors; to all the friends I successfully swindled into exhibiting their creativity across the magazine's pages this year; to you, reader. There is no Bossy without you. If you aren’t a first-time reader, you might have noticed that we’re trying something a little different this year. Our 2021 theme, Memento Mori, is a Latin phrase that translates to ‘remember you must die’. We—not only as a collective, but as a generation—have been navigating several difficult conversations about death for well over a year now: for the first time in decades, the pandemic’s sudden unveiling of the human condition has forced us to confront ideas of grief and our own mortality to an unprecedented extent. How do we navigate the idea of death as a public affair? Will we ever relapse into ‘normal’,

private death behaviours? Maybe we shouldn’t. This year, Bossy’s team and our contributors are giving ourselves the space to grieve: not just for death, as you will soon find, but for identity; systemic injustices; environmental degradation; lost time. Death, we have realised, is everywhere we turn, and to acknowledge one of the only sure eventualities of human existence is to commit ourselves to making choices that matter to the world we will one day leave behind. Beneath the surface of this issue lies endless ardour; labour; uncertainty. I began writing this letter on the first day of the August 2021 lockdown in Canberra: by then, I had already begun to feel clueless about the state of the magazine, and particularly our launch (at the time, it was scheduled for October). As I send the magazine into print production, I am still unsure where edition seven’s fate lies. But come what may—no matter how this magazine falls into your hands—I hope that something between these covers gives you whatever you need: let each story serve as a moment of respite in the shade, away from whatever 2022 brings forth in its arms. Each time you turn the page, know that someone like

you—someone who lived through the same impossible year—made the choice to speak into the darkness, hoping that their passions and experiences would resonate with you in a way that only art ever truly will. Let it bring you peace. In 2020, I joined the Bossy team with the drive to give a voice to students who don’t always necessarily feel as if they have a platform, particularly within feminist spheres. This year, the diverse collection of perspectives within the magazine fills my heart with joy, and I firmly believe that I can step down from my position as Content Editor knowing that our team’s cultivation of inclusivity within this space will only get better from here. At Bossy, we see you. We cherish your stories. We are so honoured that you have chosen to let them find a home with us; that you are willing to share your successes just as openly as your losses. As a result, you have taught us that grief isn’t linear. It isn’t shameful. It also doesn’t make life any less worth living. Remember death, readers—remember the inevitable end—but more importantly, I hope your time with us reminds you to live. Your art, your time, your choices—it all matters. It can change everything. With love, Cinnamone Winchester

Avan Daruwalla

2021 ANUSA Women's Officer Bossy is nothing short of special. In the past six years, the magazine has grown to be a notable feminist publication and voice for representation and change on campus. The ANU Women’s Department could not be more delighted to support, promote, and be the home of Bossy. The magazine is emblematic of the incredible standard of creativity, talent, hard work, and intelligence of young women and gender diverse students at ANU. It is by far my favourite ANU-organised publication, and those responsible for its conception and delivery have proven to be not only lovely individuals to work with but also highly competent and thoughtful. As the Women’s Officer this past year, it has been an absolute pleasure to work with passionate intersectional feminists across the student body. Bossy is a prime example of this culture of activism and community of support. The empowerment of our collective has been particularly difficult in the pandemic pandemonium. Engagement is low everywhere, and the focus of students—and likewise the university administration—on highly consequential issues has been compromised. In the spirit of this magazine’s theme, I can only hope that this publication marks the death of one cycle of student activism and burnout, and also the rebirth and reinvigoration of the Women’s Department community. I am so proud to serve the Women’s Collective and to work for and alongside such a supportive and passionate Department. Dialogue surrounding sexual violence, deconstructing patriarchy, and reconsidering oppressive capitalistic structures has taken a prominent place in media in 2021. This has only increased the urgency of intersectionality, diversity, and inclusivity in our approaches to feminism and protest. The Women’s Department will continue to stand with women, non-binary people, and feminists across all intersections of society. We refuse to limit ourselves and our advocacy to fit within an existing framework of patriarchy, racism, elitism, homophobia, and transphobia. As our compassion for one another grows, so too does our radicalisation in acknowledging the scale of change necessary to realise a safe world for all women and non-binary people. Caring is exhausting—but we will continue to hold each other up, and we will keep fighting. In solidarity and love.

Sydney Farey Cover Artist

Sydney Farey is a multimedia artist based in Melbourne on Wurundjeri land, and is a recent graduate of the ANU. She is especially interested in the meticulous notions of mark-making, and her passion for drawing sees that immense thought and care are put into every line made on paper, with the hopes of producing tangible and meticulous forms of human imagination, storytelling, and memory. Observing a character-driven narrative, this issue’s cover of Bossy follows a young woman as she navigates a spooky off-kilter world filled with gothic monsters and spooky imagery. The cover saw strong influences drawn from horror Manga, particularly the surreal, otherworldly eeriness found in Junji Ito’s works. Also inspired by traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, the imagery on the cover borrows from the ghosts, ghouls, and mythical creatures often found in works by artists like Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi. This is coupled and contrasted with inspiration from classic western horror novels, including R. L. Stine's “Goosebumps” and “Fear Street”, series which were significant to many of our childhoods, and various other western influences like contemporary renditions of the danse macabre. The cover hopes to reflect the plethora of varied content within this issue of Bossy, and encourage the reader to explore themes of death and fear, both physical and existential, that lie within the pages of this issue.

I am a tiger, what am I afraid of? Sydney Farey, 2020

Grandma's Warning Sydney Farey, 2020

Face to Face Sydney Farey, 2021

Contents

1 Acknowledgement of Country 3 Editor's Note 4 Letter from the Women's Officer Avan Daruwalla 5 Cover Artist Feature: Sydney Farey 10 Is That Human Hair? A Brief History of Mourning Jewellery Eleanor Rainer 12 The Sea Wolf's Hymn Cinnamone Winchester 16 maybe memory is all the home we're allowed Myka Davis 18 Schnittlauch Pfannkuchen Nayantara Ranganatha 20 Grave Affairs: Grief, Mortality, and Death in Literature Aseel Sahib 22 Expiredia Bernadette Callaghan, Riley Guyatt, Lily Harrison, Samson Ullinger, Cinnamone Winchester, and Kate Wood 24 Evermourn Nova

26 Ask Diogenes: Advice from the Afterlife Bastian Debont

49 Alabaster Mascara on a Damaged Mannequin Lisa Pond-Keter

28 Angel of Death Talyah Livanes

51 Self-Reflection Paris Robson

30 Desiring the Undead in the Twilight Era Sukhman Singh

53 The Mason Jar Lily Iervasi

32 New Moon Rising Lily Iervasi 34 Luna Sangrante M. Constance 35 If Humans Can Live Anywhere, Can't Monsters? Annabelle Nshuti 39 Grave Lies Aveline Yang 41 The Destructive Paradox of the Tragic Artist Yige Xu 43 Skewed/Silenced Self-Portrait Natasha Tareen 44 Too Young. Too Woman. Lily Harrison 46 "You didn't think this was the end, did you?": A 'Promising Young Woman' Review Gabriela Wilcox

54 My Life after Death Tisha Shah 55 Atticus, I'm Sorry. Alice Keane 56 The Bite Clare Mason-Cox 60 Doors Kiara Berriman 62 Murphy Yosha Pathmaperuma 64 Butter Beans, Best Friends, and Big Noses Sirria Li 66 Exploring the Chasm Made by the Intimate Stranger 'Toritse Mojuetan 68 Of Rusted Bikes and the Dildo Under the Bed Anonymous

71 Vicarious Trauma: The Unintended Consequence of Doing Feminist Research Arushi Ganguly

87 Saturn Returns, Death, and the Existential Mystery of Transgender Identity Bastian Debont

73 At/Of the Institution: What the Churchill Saga Represents Zenia Vasaiwalla

89 Savasana Ana Isaacs

75 Return to Sender Anonymous 76 Twenty Chair Vivien Clarke and Campbell Miller 78 The Freeze Neve Traynor 79 The Yellow Sunflower Faith Stellmaker 80 Waking Nightmares: A Feminist Critique of the Revenge Sleep Phenomenon Imogen McDonald 82 Let's Not Get Back to Normal Scarlet Hill and Charlotte Stump 84 The Floating Rock: Nihilism or a Rejection of Expectations? Eugenie Maynard 85 Identity Theft Neve Traynor

90 O Corpo Seco Cinnamone Winchester 96 The Dark, the Twisted, and the Downright Frightening: A Defence of Horror Literature Kaila Minotti 99 Here's Why We Shouldn't Give Up on True Crime: Hope in Intersectionality Moving Forward Heyma Nahar 102 The Life of the Water Strider Alisha Nagle 108 Pick Your Poison Sophie Hayles 109 La Petite Mort Natasha Mills 110 Womanly Role Models Brontë Charles 113 Derby Girls Reema Hindi

115 An Ode to My Garments and the Machines that Alter Them 'Toritse Mojuetan 117 Gothic Garments Yi Zhang 120 The Final Boarding Call: Identity Loss at the Airport Xiao Marshall-Taylor 122 What We See Holly Ma 123 Water Lilies Sophie Ryan 124 To the Shore Lucy Sorensen 125 Do We Outgrow Joy? Lily Harrison 127 A Love Letter to the Little Things Avan Daruwalla

Section Design: Hengjia Liu Alisha Nagle Paris Robson Sebastiàn Ungco Navita Wijeratne Cinnamone Winchester

To face death.

Is That Human Hair? A Brief History of Mourning Jewellery Eleanor Rainer

CW: Death. If you are anything like me, you like handmade art, crafts, and jewellery. And if you are anything like a Victorian mourner, you love them to be filled with the hair of your deceased loved ones. No, really—this was a thing. It seems odd to modern sensibilities to keep the hair of someone who died and wear it on yourself as a token of grief, but it also makes a lot of sense—hair doesn’t decay easily and collecting it avoids that tricky conundrum of desecrating a human body. So, in times where you didn’t have the luxury of numerous photographs and videos to remember and grieve your family by, why not keep a permanent piece of them with you? If you’re still with me, let me introduce you to the weird and wacky world of mourning jewellery.

Your humble Authoress pictured with a framed Gimp-work hair scene with symbolic turquoise from 1856. This one can be found at Lanyon Homestead near Tharwa.

Love of the macabre hasn’t always been isolated to your local goth population. In the 1600s, Europe saw a social fascination with death. Plagues, wars, religious persecution, and a literal miniature ice age caused many people to become focused on death, dying, and the frailty of life. Vanitas-style paintings and jewellery with motifs of death— including images of skulls, skeletons, hourglasses, graves, and coffins—were a popular ascetic, designed as a ‘memento mori’ to remind people that human life is fleeting and that they should abandon earthly pleasures and be their best self by turning their attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. Apparently, people in the 17th century were as aesthetic as any modern goth reading the works of Mary Shelley for the first time.

If mourning jewellery was an aesthetic in the 17th century, it became a way of life in the 19th thanks to Queen Victoria establishing a veritable institution for mourning after the death of her beloved husband, Prince Consort Albert, in 1861. Victorian memento mori were not as macabre as those in the 1600s, and far more focused on personal grief and remembrance of deceased loved ones than remembering one’s own mortality. Don’t get me wrong, though; the Victorians took mourning very seriously. Mourning had an extremely strict dress code: women in particular had a social requirement to wear black clothing for the ‘deep’ stage of mourning, which could last anywhere between three months to two and a half years; after that, they were allowed to add small amounts of white or purple to their attire to indicate the ‘half-mourning’

Memento mori skull watch, c. 1600.

The mourning dress Queen Victoria was wearing in 1894, 33 years after her husband’s death. Image taken from The Met Museum (public domain).

stage. Wearing mourning clothes could potentially last years; Queen Victoria herself is famous for having worn black for the rest of her life after Albert’s death. This fashion even affects how we mourn today—it’s rare to see any other coloured outfit than black at a Western funeral. While the dress was important, mourning jewellery incorporating the deceased’s hair in extremely delicate, artistic, and symbolic patterns also became popular tokens to wear and display. Semiprecious gems like jet and vulcanite were popular for their dark colours, turquoise was a stone that meant “thinking of you”, and pearls were popular as they represented the tears of the mourner. To a Victorian widow, these pieces—often

made by her own hands or crafted by another woman—were an expression of the tender belief that neither time nor death can destroy love. Unfortunately, few things remain innocent, and mourning jewellery became increasingly dramatic and— dare I say it—ostentatious. As beautiful and symbolic as these intricate pieces became, by the late 19th century mourning jewellery was as much a show of fashionable style as it was for mourning your mother. Mourning jewellery lost popularity during World War I, as photography became more accessible and the need for a physical piece of your loved one dwindled. And with difficulty of access to the remains of soldiers as well as the amount of

A Victorian mourning brooch with gold, enamel, pearls, and hair. C. 1860. Image taken from the New York Historical Society (public domain).

mass grieving and wartime rationing experienced by millions of women at the time, perhaps the idea of showing off the expensive jewel you had—made with your late husband’s hair, at that—was a little too on the nose. Mourning jewellery experienced brief resurgences throughout the 20th century, but it never really came back into fashion like it had during the Victorian era. However, in the age of COVID-19, it will be interesting to see just how much our mourning practices change and adapt in response. Frankly, this Authoress would welcome a more death-positive society, and with a new rise in appreciation for aestheticism in modern culture, perhaps mourning jewellery is ripe for revival?

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The Sea Wolf’s Hymn Cinnamone Winchester

CW: Body horror, multiple allusions to murder. Adapted from the Ulek Mayang legend.

her always, an ancient call that echoes from ear to ear in the darkest moments of the wicked night before it lays down its arms and surrenders to the dawn.

1. Let us sing a song about the woman in the cave: brown skin, time-worn boots, keeping her torch held high with one white-knuckled hand, grasping the hilt of her sheathed keris with the other. This is not where she belongs. Adventuring is only for the daring sort these days—even the most worldwizened souls do not dare enter the inviolable necropolis and risk the wrath of the dead—but the Sea Wolf passes beneath the ancient stalactites, which tremble with each echoing footfall, without very much thought at all; aside from that which lingers upon her destiny. Her destiny, quite naturally, is split in two like the equator’s meticulous division of the ground upon which she stands. There is the Before: the melodramatic account of her slow rise from street urchin (pitiful, poor, worthless) to pirate lord (revered, respected, feared). What waits for her now is the After. The After will be greater, so believes the Sea Wolf. The After is imminent. The After will reunite her with gentle Setia, Setia who was taken from her, Setia Setia Setia. Gentle Setia is a song she knows by heart and carries with

The Sea Wolf’s downfall, when it comes, will arise from her failure to heed the Now. Beneath the western wall of the cave, where the villagers’ forefathers once painted tales of monsters, men, and their vessels, the vacant death ship stands stoic and unmoving before her, aching to shelter another soul in search of the unseen realm. Bodies must remain in the coffin for the duration of one full lunar cycle, so that the soul may complete its journey and reach its ancestors—or so the rule once went. As far as the Sea Wolf knows, it had remained unbroken until the grieving villagers had finally abandoned their rituals within the caves. It would be easy enough to lose herself in the haematite paintings; easy to drown. One by one, she unburdens herself— white candles, kemenyan incense, mangoes, and bunga malai (made for her by the local bomoh despite his initial protests that he was forbidden to offer his help)—though she cannot quite shake the lingering weight upon her shoulders. “There is magic here, indeed,” said the shaman, twelve lavender quartz stones richer than before he had entered the

cave at the Sea Wolf’s request, “and you will need great strength to use it.” What is love, if not strength? So, she kicks off her boots, kneels before the boat-shaped coffin, and unbuckles the baldric at her hip. The Sea Wolf’s keris sits heavily in her hands, and as the cold, serpentine metal catches a glimpse of the light that pours in from the yawning mouth of the cave, she sees her father’s smile, hears the gruff overtures that had sought to disguise the unguarded tenderness in his voice when he had first proclaimed that his dagger—the weapon which had once been forged in fire and imbued with a protective spirit by a particularly powerful empu; the weapon with which he had built his reputation across the seven seas over hundreds of years—would one day be bequeathed to his long-lost daughter, as if a musician’s spindly fingers are plucking at his silenced vocal chords to reproduce the sounds for her now. The keris has tethered her youth to her body long enough. It is time to pass the guardian’s blessing on, she thinks. Eventually, she begins to harmonise with this ceaseless hum in her heart as she clutches the keris tightly enough to draw blood from her fingers and calls out to the woman who last lay here in a low chant—but she is not afforded the chance to finish before a cataclysmic tide erupts from beneath the surface of the cave’s nearby river shoreline, dragging the kneeling Sea Wolf beneath the water’s edge and forcing the breath from her lungs.

Let it be her, prays the Sea Wolf as a pair of open palms settle upon her chest and push. I will walk gladly into the arms of death if she so desires. Kill me, like he killed you and I killed him.

the ground—but her soul… her soul lingered in the space between the mortal and unseen realms. As did mine, and the others—strangers in life, sisters in death.”

(“Speak your last,” she had told Aslam of the Raiders of the Shallows, her father’s keris at his throat. He’d opened his mouth, and she cut him down where he knelt.)

“Others?” Amina whispers, her stomach twisting itself into knots. More than anything, she is thinking of absconding from this crime scene and burning down the evidence behind her. “But why?”

But she opens her eyes and sees a corpse. A soundless scream bubbles from deep within the Sea Wolf’s chest as she wrenches herself away from the decomposing body and kicks desperately toward the surface. When she breaches, chest heaving, the presence in the river follows. At first, she sees only the stray tufts of hair that cling to a wet, discoloured scalp—but the skin slippage on the forehead soon follows, along with a pair of hollow eyes and a rotting nose. It is conscious. Not a corpse, then: a spirit. “A-mi-na,” the spirit calls: protracted, rasping, as if she cannot bear to breathe above the water. “You came.” The Sea Wolf’s heart stops. “You are not Setia,” she says, pushing her wet, black hair from her eyes. Not at all— though, she is another girl from the village. Another dead girl. Something is horribly wrong. “Where is she? The bomoh told me that… that they left her for last.” “The bomoh knew not the truth,” says the spirit, arms unfurling as if to comfort Amina—who lingers in the water—in the wake of this mistake. “You sought the last woman for whom the boat served as a vessel. I am she.” As she speaks, a maggot inches out of her ear and into her empty nasal socket. “But Setia—” “Setia was not afforded the privilege of death rites,” the spirit interrupts. “Her body was left to rot beneath

“So much carnage,” the spirit wails, fingers knotting into her hair. She does not appear to notice when a clump disconnects from her head entirely— but Amina cringes away as she floats closer. “So many corpses. The village—they did what they could for us. But our bodies—the smell… the smell was maddening. They could not keep us above the ground long enough to complete six moon cycles—so we each spent only three days… three days in the ship. They could not have known…” As she comes to a grating halt, her mania declines, and she whispers—to herself, more than Amina. “They abandoned this place not long after. Because of you.” At last, she understands. “I know,” Amina whispers. “I know I am at fault. This was a mistake—all of this. I am sorry. I did not intend to summon you and invoke your suffering for a second time. I will go now.” “Oh, but there is nothing your apology can do,” the spirit coos, a cold, grotesque finger trailing down the curve of Amina’s chin, and then her neck. “Besides, the happiest of accidents like these should be shared amongst company, like a plump pomegranate passed between hands.” “No, I should really—” “And how I have waited,” the spirit continues, sliding her fingers between Amina’s ribs and coaxing her soul from her sternum with all the exertion of an exhale, “for the pleasure of your company.”

2. It is a matter of hours before the gentle river carries the Sea Wolf to the ocean’s shore, the length of an evening before her crew recovers her insensate body on the beach and summons the bomoh, who realises his mistake too late. “This,” he says, “this is why we dare not set foot within the caves. We in the village remember very well what happened here—the spirits do not allow us to forget. They…” They haunt us. “They will not be dissuaded from their plans so easily.” Miraculously, the clutches her keris.

Sea

Wolf

still

On this first day, the bomoh’s plea is a trickling stream more than a tidal wave. “Spirit,” he calls at dawn, palm frond in hand. “I entreat you, spirit.” The spirit cackles from the safety of her sanctuary beneath the ocean’s waves, her hold upon Amina unwavering, but she throws her head back and begins her own chant nevertheless. “Sister,” she echoes. “I entreat you, sister!” The vice-like grip upon Amina’s soul tightens by twofold, and she chokes for want of breath as a second sea spirit appears in the water and her vision blurs. “Amina.” “What? Who are you?” “Enough. The Sea Wolf: where is she?” “I don’t—no! Please!” Cruel laughter cuts through the darkness as a blade is pulled from its sheath with a metallic hiss. “You,” the second spirit whispers hoarsely as her bloated body comes into focus, “cowardly pirate. You are no better than the rest. You swore to protect us all—where were you?” “Please,” Amina begs, “please. I know I deserve this. Let me see Setia—once, just once—and then you can kill me.” “Kill you?” The second spirit repeats,

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leaning in close. “Oh, no. Mark my words, fiend: you will not be so lucky. You will never know peace, and if Setia sees you, she will help us keep you here—until your body withers away, and your soul has no home to which it may return. Until you suffer, the way we have all suffered by your hand.” The smell of rotting flesh assaults Amina’s sinuses, and she gags.

who, rather strangely, appears only to tell the Sea Wolf that she wishes for there to be no ill will between them. In the moments before she departs, she extends a hand, life slowly returning to her features, and the Sea Wolf takes it. This, too, makes her See.

She raises her hand, and the Sea Wolf’s sharp edges immediately bend. “I know your origins,” Setia declares, her voice echoing across two realms. “Let those from the sea return to the sea, and those from the land return to the land.”

“How can I possibly give you what you want when I do not know, myself?”

If she is sentenced by Setia’s hand, then so be it. Amina knows that none came before Setia: her lover was never laid to rest within the death ship’s wooden walls, was never given the chance to find the unseen realm. None, then, became a spirit before she.

“If you do not know,” he declares, “you are of no use to me.”

One by one, all five hands loosen from her soul—but still, something is keeping her here.

Amina will wait for the seventh sister.

Each of the five sisters’ faces are painted with exhaustion from their plight, though their trembling grip upon Amina does not falter.

“Spirit,” calls the bomoh at dusk, “I entreat you, spirit.” A third hand reaches to bind her soul, and a thin film stretches over Amina’s eyes. “You: tell me where the Sea Wolf is. She has something that belongs to me.” The woman is agreeable enough— until she sees the blood dripping from Aslam’s blade and unleashes an earsplitting scream. With the dawn of the second day comes the fourth. “So, you’ve seen it?” “Yes—but I swear, she told us that it was hers, she told us that it had once belonged to her father—” “So, she is a liar as well as a thief! The dagger is rightfully mine!” Then the fifth. “Aslam,” begins an unfamiliar voice. “Aslam! She is elsewhere, as is the keris. Our time is wasted here—let us return to the ship.” The resulting moment of silence between them is broken by a grunt as something heavy is dragged across the ground. “I will tear this village apart until my prize is returned.” And on the third morning, the sixth—

3. By the third evening, what is left of the pomegranate has begun to rot.

The bomoh is desperate, relying upon the Sea Wolf’s faithful crew to keep him upright as he continues in his unending series of choreographed motions over Amina’s body. “Spirits,” he calls, “I entreat you, spirits.” A shockwave ripples Amina’s soul— and for the first time, she feels her shackles weaken. An enraged scream passes through what is left of the fifth sister’s blackened lips. “Call her,” the third spirit quietly insists. “You know we cannot!” Hisses the second spirit, twisting to confront the third. “We must,” interjects the fourth, “or else we are doomed—” “Enough!” The first spirit shrieks—but her eyes, ravenous and desperate, betray her failing resolve. “Sister! I entreat you, sister!” Like the others, she appears from nothing—but where her sisters have rotted with rage, their faces at varying, discoloured stages of bulbous and sunken degradation, Setia—Setia Setia Setia—looks alive.

Setia Setia Setia. Her Setia. “Setia.” It’s a choked, hushed sound, and the Sea Wolf surges forward for the length of a heartbeat before bringing herself to a halt. “I killed you.” Her shoulders slump, her head bows— before Setia, the Sea Wolf is nothing but a pup. “Kill me,” she says, “as I killed you.” In the fraught moments between each of Amina’s quiet inhales and breathless exhales, she hears Setia’s skirts whisper secrets into the abysses of their delicate folds as she draws near. What she expects is anything but what she receives as Setia’s thumb and finger move to cradle her chin. “Amina is on the other side of the continent,” Setia tells the captain as he stalks across the threshold of her home and leaves the sweltering heat of the sunlight behind, leather boots marking out bloodied tracks upon the floor in his wake. “What do you want?” “I want my keris,” he hisses, turning on his heel to face the unflinching woman. “You know the weapon of which I speak, Setia.” “Do not play me for a fool,” Setia snaps. “It is not yours—you betrayed her father and stole it from his corpse. Amina merely took back what is rightfully hers; you are lucky that she only claimed the keris, and not your life along with it.” “She may as well have,” Aslam sneers, flicking his dagger into the air and catching it by the hilt as he approaches, “or do you not understand, foolish girl? Only one of us may truly live—the one who is protected from time by the

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guardian of the keris.” “The guardian will not protect you, Aslam. It was not made for your bloodline,” Setia cautions, shifting the positioning of her hands to reveal her grip on a sword that Amina recognises as one of her own—but he pays her little heed. “I warned the little wolf, once: love and sentimentality are naught but tethers… but of course, she would not listen. Now, she must pay the price for her weakness. One way or another, Amina will lose something she holds dear tonight.” “No more,” Amina whispers, but the vision is already complete. When her wet eyes blink open, Setia tips her fingers, coaxing Amina’s gaze out of hiding. “You once loved me,” Setia says, “more than anything else—and that is why he killed me. How can I blame you for the truth of your heart, Amina?” “I love you,” the Sea Wolf corrects, “I love you—and I would have never traded you away for that dagger if I knew I had to make this choice. I am so sorry for what I have done, Setia. If I could go back—” “You cannot,” Setia interrupts. “Neither of us may change what has come to pass. From now on, every step you take must lead you onward.” “But—the keris?” For a long moment, silence cradles the two of them in its arms and hums a gentle lullaby as Amina flexes her hand, eyeing the deep cut in her palm. “I thought… perhaps I could relinquish it, from my lineage to yours.” Perhaps it could bring you back, is what she does not dare to say. Her stomach twists itself into knots as Setia shakes her head. “It will only protect the living, Amina. This time is yours—take it while you can, and use it well.” “And what of you—all of you? What of your souls?” Amina asks, taking Setia’s hands into her grasp. “What can I do to free you?” “Nothing. The others blame their stagnancy upon a great number of

external forces—but the death ships only hasten a journey that will always be inevitable. It has been incredibly difficult for them to let go of their anger—but we will all be alright in time, Amina, and they will one day move on when they make peace with themselves. I promise you this. In turn, you must promise that you will only come back to me when you absolutely must. Until then, I will be here.” “You will wait for me?” She dares to ask. “Silly girl,” Setia whispers, touching her forehead to Amina’s own, “how could I ever go where you cannot follow?” Amina feels the tug of a tether as the bomoh calls her spirit back into her body for the final time, knows that there are many responsibilities in the realm of the living that she has yet to fulfil. But as their lips finally collide, she decides that she will be selfish for a moment longer. 4. Let us sing a song about the women in the cave: face to face, hand in hand, bent legs intertwined and indistinguishable from one another now that time has whittled their bodies down to dust and bone. One had been holding her breath for many years, waiting for the other to find her way back—and so she did, once she could state with conviction that her life felt full and satisfied. When the Sea Wolf passed her keris on to its next custodian and was finally returned to the ground from whence she came, her lover was there to welcome her home.

maybe memory is all the home we're allowed Myka Davis

Dear stranger, What does it mean to transplant your life? It means everything. There is a word. It isn’t real, or at least, recognised in any official dictionary—I think some Tumblresque person made it up. It’s hiraeth. A noun, defined as: “a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.” I don’t like the look of the word too much. But perhaps it’s not about its aesthetic quality and more so the acknowledgement of honesty it demands from me. I want to tell this story without having to confess anything. Present myself with polished inflections. A nice, shiny, sanitised version of my life containing all the answers people desire about identity and home and connection. A straightforward solution; a precise surgery sewing the organ of belonging into a hollow heart. It's amusing to me, then, that I chose epistolary writing. The medium of intimacy: nobody writes letters to strangers. But somewhere, that must not be true, because even as I write to you now, I am admitting I do not know you. Dear stranger, I’ll be frank: I’m terrified of writing. Oscar Wilde said it best: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” But I have donned no disguise here. This is the first time in two years that I have sat down and looked myself bare in the soul. To say something of meaning, we have to write from the marrow of our bones. Have you heard of the myth that says your skin is renewed once every seven

years? In reality, it only takes about two to four weeks for the bottom layer of your epidermis to become the top one. Sometimes even less, because each time you touch something, you leave a little bit of yourself behind. I think of all the things I’ve touched: my beloved books that have accompanied me to every new place I call my own; my Finding Nemo shirt—the one I’ve owned since the age of four—once gargantuan enough to wear as a dress, now fits perfectly; all the hands of those I’ve loved imprinted ghost-like on my palms and shoulders and waist and face. All the places where I’ve left fragments of myself behind. They flit past me like vignettes, and remembering them feels as though I’m stepping outside of my body. Andres Cerpa wrote: “When I imagine myself, I am always leaving. I could not draw my own face if God asked.” It hurts that this is the heart’s enduring task: learning how to hold memory, without it seeping through the cracks in our cupped fingers. It makes me want to find the spot where time is weakest, rip it open, and step through into the moments I most want to relive. I am in a different place again. A fledgling in a very clean nest. I won’t say ‘new’, because Canberra is not unfamiliar to me. This place feels like a liminal space, where I can pretend that I’ve forgiven myself for all the things I haven’t already become. People have travelled from everywhere I could possibly imagine to be here, whereas it was a two-hour day drive for people from my rural town. I remember the first place I moved out to. It was still, serene, as all plodding outskirts of farm properties are. I thought it was apt that I resided next

to a cemetery. It was the attractive part, curated with manicured grass and linear rows of granite headstones. At day, you were meant to grieve; at night, you were meant to avoid it. I reflect on this specifically because there was one such night, moonless with the stars sparking between the dark spaces of the sky. I woke up, faint yowling echoing through the open window. After calming myself, I realised it was two cats fighting, albeit loudly enough, to wake the entire street. They sounded like they were killing each other. I now picture that this is how my past interacts with my future: claws out and merciless, with the attacks sharp and quick but the injuries lasting. Sometimes I see older people and I think, “How do you

do it? How do you cope with the loss of people and places and things as life progresses?”” progresses? There are days I don’t speak the truth to anyone but scrap pages. The emotion runs dry inside the ink, and the period captures my silence. In the emptiness of these moments, I remember why I am here. Romanticising your own loneliness, turning it into a detached facade. But even that only works for a few months, before it morphs into a throbbing black hole. Dear stranger, I feel drawn to ask you: can home be two places I feel bifurcated by? My heart is in both but also neither. Or did my identity drown in the ocean between the two? I know what it is to feel like a broken compass, endlessly seeking my north. How do I find home if I don’t even know what it looks like? I was not born in Australia. I was born nearly 5,719 kilometres away, in the world’s second largest archipelago: the Philippines. I don’t remember much of my time there; I was five when I left. I’ve never returned. My mother, like other immigrant women, found her home in the kitchen; she told me of her childhood as she stirred the saucepan of pork adobo adobo,, ladling it onto steaming jasmine rice. In short, it was bleak. She emphasised this, made sure it reverberated through me. Her life in the Philippines was the stark reality of a woman born into poverty and unable to climb out. My mother did not receive a proper education, because her parents were financially unable to supply her with the

materials she needed. Furthermore, she was a girl, and girls did not need brains when they could marry men who would protect and provide. At least, that is what my grandmother informed her. My mother did not believe this. She remembered the men who had married her own mother, who did not cherish her, did not safeguard her, did not save her nor her children. It was these little things that had shaped her grandmother’s capitulation, the same way it handed my mother determination. They say everyone needs a home and that it shouldn’t be inside someone else. She did not want to rely on men. My mother wanted freedom. Autonomy. Independence. “I care for myself the way I used to care about you.” you.” A memory is a story told so well, it becomes part of your body. The shadow of poverty is not even a full generation away from me. It sings in my heritage, a reminder of the sacrifices others have made, so that I could be here today. In the times that I have been lucky to see my family, amidst the pandemic, sometimes I find my mother looking at me wistfully. When I ask her why she’s staring, she embraces me and tells me that I’m her star, her dream come true. Guilt always soaks into my skin when she says this, bubbling, dissolving my bones. I am lost. So unbelievably lost. People usually exist in three rooted places: here, where they were, and where they will be. The ones I know have homes in my heart: a little nostalgic crawlspace.

I imagine my relationships with people as a sprawling suburbia: my family in one street, close acquaintances in another. To reach my past romantic relationships, you have to take a left onto Last Laugh Lane. For me, these states are liminal; I am constantly going, with no clue of my destination. How can I tell my mother that I have been stifled most of my life, seeking approval so that other people can live vicariously through me? This is the first time I am free to be fully myself, but I have no idea who myself is. If I am a dream, then I am idealised. I am not real. And how could I feel tangible? Change is paradoxically something that never leaves; the instability of being alive is why nobody truly has the answers. Change is the tide ceaselessly washing up on shore, but I feel no relief in acknowledging that perhaps memory is all the home we’re allowed. I live as a rower does, facing backwards: I can see where I’ve been but never where I’m going. Does life really look better in the rear view? It’s hard not to wonder what life would be like facing the other way. To have a glimpse, an echo of what might have been. It’s hard not to wonder whether I’ll ever actually find home, a moment of tangency. In another universe, the sky is always the colour of peaches and I didn’t leave the people I love behind. And in another, the oceans take the place of the trees and vice versa. Maybe if there were a parallel universe, I would have belonged by now. But, dear stranger, if two lines are truly parallel, it means they’ll never meet. With love, Myka

Artwork by Natasha Pidcock.

Schnittlauch Pfannkuchen Nayantara Ranganatha

One summer, your mama took us to the forest to collect Schnittlauch. We came home and mixed the Schnittlauch with our pancake batter, and I was happy, because these pancakes were not sour, or familiar like our Dosas. These pancakes were made with white flour, thin, folded like gift wrappers and eaten on your terrace with Apfelsaft and Sprudel – Apfelsprudel. It was sunny and the radio played music I hadn’t heard before. We didn’t have pancakes at my home – salty or sweet – until I asked for them after I had your mama’s Schnittlauch pancakes. And we didn’t eat Schnittlauch until I went to the forest. Now we have pancakes with chocolate chips and blueberries, though my grandparents still don’t have them. We eat Dosas with my grandparents, But I remember the forest, because we took a picnic basket that looked like it came out of my fairy tale books, or the books I saw in the school library, with blonde girls and their families who visit Frankreich for the holidays, and the girls send little love letters in class. They ask me to pass them under the tables. I wanted to go to Frankreich too. Next summer my family will go to the beach, though I never sent any love letters. Maybe I wish I would have invited you to try Dosas. Maybe, maybe Amma offered. But maybe you weren’t so excited about My Dosas like I was about Your Schnittlauch.

Schnittlauch-Pfannkuchen Im Sommer haben wir im Wald Schnittlauch gesammelt. Deine Mama hat den Schnittlauch in unseren Pfannkuchenteig gemischt, und ich war glücklich, weil diese Pfannkuchen, anders als unsere Dosas, weder sauer noch vertraut waren. Diese Pfannkuchen wurden aus Weißmehl gemacht Dünn, gefaltet wie Geschenkpapier. Wir haben sie auf deinem Balkon gegessen und Apfelsprudel getrunken – Apfelsaft mit Sprudel. Die Sonne strahlte und das Radio spielte Musik, die ich nicht kannte. Zuhause haben wir keine Pfannkuchen gegessen – salzig oder süß – bis ich von den Pfannkuchen deiner Mama erzählt habe. Wir haben auch keinen Schnittlauch gegessen, bis ich welchen aus dem Wald gebracht habe. Jetzt essen wir Pfannkuchen mit Schokolade und Blaubeeren, obwohl meine Großeltern immer noch keine Pfannkuchen essen. Mit meinen Großeltern essen wir Dosas. Aber ich erinnere mich an den Wald, und an deinen märchenhaften Picknickkorb, wie aus den Büchern in der Bibliothek, mit Geschichten von blonden Mädchen, die mit ihren Familien in Frankreich Urlaub machten, und während dem Unterricht Liebesbriefe schickten. Ich durfte die Briefe unter dem Schultisch weitergeben. Ich wollte auch Frankreich besuchen. Nächsten Sommer macht meine Familie Urlaub am Strand, aber ich hab' noch keine Liebesbriefe geschickt. Vielleicht hätte ich dich zum Dosaessen einladen sollen. Vielleicht, vielleicht hat Amma das vorgeschlagen. Aber vielleicht warst du nicht so begeistert von Meinen Dosas wie ich von Deinem Schnittlauch. – German translation edited by Associate Professor Katie Sutton.

Grave Affairs: Grief, Mortality, and Death in Literature Aseel Sahib

CW: Mentions of death, grief, euthanasia, murder, and slavery. If you had the (pleasurable) misfortune of reading The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket as a child, you may be familiar with memento mori: remember you will die. At first glance, this phrase is quite morbid, and appears to state an obvious eventuality that many would prefer to ignore. And yet, for centuries, literature has served as an outlet through which both authors and their faithful readers may safely engage with the idea of mortality. We all know about the morbidity of classic gothic literature, but contemporary novels can also help us face the idea of our own death in a more relatable manner. The next time you’d like to do the same, give these titles a try! Scythe by Neal Shusterman Imagine a world where humanity has advanced so far that there is no hunger, disease, war, misery, or even death— and you have the basic plot of Scythe by Neal Shusterman. To keep the population under control, a group of humans known as scythes have been tasked with the role of ending life, with limited rules around who and how they kill. Going into (minor) spoilers, the novel poses several interesting ethical dilemmas: should we ever be allowed to decide who dies and how? Given the choice, should people who have experienced long, fulfilling lives be ‘gleaned’—or permanently killed— to save the young? Should people be allowed to opt in for their death? If you’d say yes, then it begs one to question current laws around euthanasia. In the novel, numerous scythes derive great pleasure from their role, and abuse

their power by going to busy places and ruthlessly killing everyone in sight. This is obviously abhorrent to the reader— but what does it say about real ethical dilemmas like indiscriminate drone activities in the Middle East, which often miss their intended targets? Besides being a well-written and gripping novel, Scythe makes the reader question the morality in their acceptance of realworld activities surrounding death. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas Throughout the West, there is generally an assumed taboo around death and dying. However, in some cultures, the living actively respect and remember their dead: during the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), for example, families build altars in cemeteries or their homes, containing their departed loved ones’ favourite food, beverages, photos, and memorabilia. This is done to encourage their souls to visit the living, when the veils between the two worlds are at their thinnest. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas is a paranormal YA novel that delves into this holiday, as well as the different burial rites that exist within Mexican culture. Throughout the novel, readers follow Yadriel as he deals with the murder of his cousin, proving his gender to his traditional Latinx family, and a ghost whom he accidentally summoned in his aforementioned attempts to prove himself a real brujo. It’s an all-round delightful, wholesome, and insightful read: by remembering the deceased with joy, the pain of losing someone and the stigma around it is lessened.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn It’s natural to grieve upon losing a loved one—but not all the ways in which we cope with loss are considered socially acceptable or ‘normal’. Typically, the process of mourning is considered timesensitive, and one is expected to ‘get back to real life’ within an unspoken timeframe. Whether these constraints are by-products of the death taboo (grief, after all, is an active reminder of mortality) or because long periods of grief are a symptom of something worse—like Prolonged Grief Disorder— is unclear. However, shelving grief to the recesses of one’s mind is both damaging and unrealistic; unfortunately, this is often how novels portray grief, such as Legend by Maria Lu (the death of the main character’s brother spurs the plot). One novel that not only features grief, but intertwines it with both modernday Arthurian legend and Southern Black Girl magic, is Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. Our main character, Bree, lost her mother in a car accident three months prior to the start of the novel. Instead of only briefly mentioning her loss and relegating it to the background of the plot, her grief is ever-present, even as monsters attack her campus and she stumbles upon a secret Arthurian society that may hold the answers to her mother’s death. Throughout the novel, Bree sees a university counsellor to help work through her suppressed emotions of grief, and is taught to accept her pain, as well as the new person she is becoming—instead of splitting herself into ‘before’ and ‘after’—and to let people get close to her again. Legendborn is refreshing in the way that it makes both the protagonist and the reader actively stand and face death.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes, and William Hutson Death does not always visit peacefully. Many around the world have lost family to violence, and The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes, and William Hutson is one novel that explores the intergenerational grief and trauma associated with the remembrance of violent deaths within cultures and communities. The Deep focuses on the history of pregnant African slave women who were thrown overboard by slave owners, as well as the concept of merfolk: in this story, unborn babies survived the drowning of their mothers by developing gills and fins to become merfolk—wajinru. However, following the traumatic circumstances of their births and their continued observation of ‘two-leg’ cruelty on land, the wajinru come to the decision that only one of them—the Historian—will remember their origin, while the rest of the community will live in a utopia without any long-term ability to recall the past. This dichotomy highlights the impact of memories. Just as the Historian’s identity is lost in the sea of memories of those who have passed on— they do not know where the history of the wajinru ends and their own identity begins—the lack of memories for the rest of the community means that their identities are superficial and fleeting, devoid of the deeper constructs we typically use to make up our selves (such as shared culture and history). The Deep is a short but impactful read. *** Processing mortality is a daunting task— but it is important that we learn to digest its impact and grow more comfortable with it as a natural part of life. As this is easier said than done, consuming different forms of media that focus on death and dying is arguably one way of beginning to acquaint ourselves with these eventualities. Reading these novels can make those of us who have

death-related thoughts feel less alone, while also opening the eyes of those who may have previously ignored all thoughts concerning the matter. Here is to breaking the taboo of death and bringing comfort to thoughts on mortality.

Expiredia

Bernadette Callaghan, Riley Guyatt, Lily Harrison, Samson Ullinger, Cinnamone Winchester, and Kate Wood Mistakenly Ordinary Asphodel Meadows • 1 contribution

Please note that in writing this review I have chosen to put aside the deep offence I suffered by having been deemed ordinary, in order to present a clearer picture of what the circumstances here in Asphodel Meadows are like. To put it plainly, it is uninteresting and unchanging. Everyone here is apathetic and bored by each other and themselves. I’ve done my research. This is the place for those souls who did not commit any significant crimes, but who also did not achieve any greatness or recognition. While I disagree with the premise that neither I nor my life were significant, it is obvious that all others who live here are exactly that—dreary. As a side note, though meadows are in the name, surely someone thought there was an overabundance of grass and might have had the creativity to offer some semblance of varying landscape? There is definitely room for improvement—and I would recommend a better vetting process as it is clear my being here is a mistake. A Hollow Man Purgatory • 1 contribution

Just as T.S. Eliot described, “this is the dead land, this is the cactus land”, and I’d like to leave now please.

With Unrequited Affection The Fields of Mourning • 1 contribution

‘Field’ is an awfully generous way to market this place. I get it, alright? By the Gods above, I get it. I wasted too many turns of the sundial yearning for Heracles—but really, I challenge you to watch a divine hero save your village from the beastly maw of a lion and prove that you aren’t in love by the time they first take pause to mop the sweat from their brow— and now he’s bathing in offerings on Mount Olympus while I wither beneath the feet of the living. Literally. If I could dine on melodies, I would want for naught—but while the shades around me keep themselves busy with pan flutes and lyres in the gloom of shadowy myrtle groves, I find the p o m egranates always grow just an inch too high upon their branches, the trickling streams dry out when I walk too close. I’ve learned my lesson, Hades. I understand the metaphor. Desire for that which is beyond one’s reach is a waste

of time, and I should have just settled for Lykaon. He’s no warrior, and his penchant for generosity has quite possibly turned him into the least wealthy healer in all of Greece, but I suppose he may have at least known what to do about that snake bite. Can someone please deliver me to Asphodel now?

Herodotus P.H.D. (Post Humous Doctor) Weighing of the Heart Ceremony • 76 contributions

The Ancient Egyptian afterlife has gone downhill since the last time I was here. The first time I visited the Duat, I arrived on a quaint reed barge and, as I was travelling domestically and not interhumously, I was treated to a lovely cup of date wine. When we arrived, the other people on my barge were processed with wonderful dignity. They patiently waited their turns to have their hearts weighed, and duly paid the tariffs to Anubis and Osiris. The system worked wonderfully, and I rated it as such. My second visit wasn’t for several millennia. The system was a great deal more stressed than the last time I visited—they’d recently switched from the individual heart-weighing method (which was causing half-century lines) to the more efficient multi-heartweighing system. Ammit (‘Great of the Dead’, ‘Devourer of the Dead’, ‘Eater of Hearts’), Osiris’ pet crocodile-lion-hippo monster, showed signs of overeating due to the increased demand for death. My most recent visit for this review was rather disappointing. Ammit’s health issues have progressed to a full-blown case of leonine heart disease combined with hippo gout. Her diet, exclusively composed of the hearts of the wicked, has been contaminated with large amounts of cholesterol due to the 20thcentury increase in arteriosclerosis. In addition, the processing system for the dead has been vastly strained due to the population boom of the industrial revolution, and new ships haven’t been delivered to the afterlife since the fall of the Roman empire, so conditions have become horrifically cramped. Linked below you will see a GoFundMe Osiris has set up to help pay for Ammit’s healthcare (people are no longer buried with money—this has caused a financial crisis in the Duat). Please don’t let this poor heart-eating crocodile-lion-hippo monster baby (5000 years old) live in pain. Feces Phantom Ghost • 1 contribution

I would rate this ghostly existence

higher, but the lack of closure rather lets it down. After centuries of wafting about in a dingy alleyway, I’ve come to learn a great deal about my after-death situation—and may I just say, it leaves much to be desired. My family knew I was being transported to Australia but I died before I could write to them, so they knew nothing of my demise, and thus were unable to pray for me. I only died in this godforsaken alleyway because I thought it rather undignified to die on the main street, and my illness took a turn for the worse on my walk home. Regardless, let me proceed to the review itself. I’ll start with the favourable aspects: I know all the gossip courtesy of the ladies who walk together every morning, I’m able to spook vagrant teens in the depths of the night, and I don’t need to eat nor drink. The more unfortunate aspects are that I will never see my family again, and I will never feel the joy of living a full life, let alone any life beyond this mildew-riddled alleyway. I will say, the more exciting moments in my afterlife have been the Spiritualist movement, and the recent ghost tour fad; it does make me feel appreciated in a small way. I simply wish people would stop trying to take photographs of me—if you expired in an alleyway covered in your own feces, would you want strangers attempting to take a “selfie” with you? Vexed in Valhalla Valhalla • 1 contribution

A promising concept for an afterlife with many failures in execution. The entire hoarde feasts nightly from the great boar, Sæhrímnir, who then regrows his meat each day ready for the next feast, raising some major food hygiene concerns. Further, while the constant feasts taste great, this boar regrowth phenomenon results in their being unvarying. Activities are limited to feasting, hunting, and fighting, which becomes monotonous after a few hundred years. There is no day spa, no quiet, and no public cleanliness. Some capital works are needed—the golden shields used as shingles to decorate the Great Hall of Odin look fantastic but the roof does leak in thunderstorms (which are not uncommon as, like me, mighty Thor suffers from a lack of relaxation time— it’s time to build that day spa).

Valkyries are polite, diligent staff who could kill a man with their thighs and I cannot fault them. Excellent service. Painfully Positive Hell • 1 contribution

I don’t think Hell deserves its bad reputation. Sure, it’s not exactly eternal paradise, but it’s not THAT bad. Look on the bright side! Okay, so, it’s very hot here, but if you close your eyes and imagine you are tanning on a beach in Bali, it almost feels pleasant. Yes, the screams of tortured souls can be piercing, but if you just think about it as white noise you can manage a couple of hours of sleep a night—more than I ever got on Earth! I’m sure you’re wondering about all the torture. Well, to be honest, I have found the demon torturing me to be quite an interesting conversationalist, and they certainly have innovative methods. Even reliving my worst memories on loop isn’t so bad; at least it’s something to occupy my time. And I’m confident that at some point I will lose all feeling in my body from the constant stabbings. Then maybe I will be able to work out how to get these spiders out of my ears… right? I just have to be optimistic!

Evermourn Nova

CW: Death.

come to betray them for all eternity.

had become ragged with age.

I'd heard legends of the snake woman— the ‘whore’. The monster amongst all monsters who slithered aimlessly in the comfort of her lair, serpentine tail coiling around endless slabs of dormant marble; eerie remnants of the soldiers who once dared to disturb her sleep.

How hundreds still were sent to return with her severed, bloodied head: a sickening triumph for the beasts who hungered for her death. How scholars— men who swore their allegiances to the book over the blade—journeyed of their own accord, wishing to satisfy their unending thirst for the truth behind the serpent woman's twisted visage and her ‘savage’ motives, as told by the common folk.

“It isn't too late to turn back now,” a voice of reason whispered in my head as I continued my trek along the twisted pathway.

I’d heard how each broad pillar marked the wretched grave of a man's hubris, showcasing their desperate grasps at mortality until their last breath... and how the frozen fear behind their f o r e v e r u n b li n k i n g eyes had

Despite the stark difference between a soldier's need for slaughter and the relentless research of the sage, they were one and the same in the end: naive wanderers—none of whom would ever know the sun's warmth again. If one believed everything they heard, at least. Around me, these tales upon tales were all eagerly dismissed—but still... still, I wondered. Perhaps I am one of many. But I am no man. *** An unusual aroma wafted in the air as I drew nearer; the endless quiet conveyed a warning. Despite the eyeless dark, my vision adjusted to the dimly lit structure of the serpent's lair, and, in turn, fixed to the disarray of rusted spears and torn cloth that

Not long after this string of doubts began to form in the back of my mind, I came face to face with the infamous stone warriors whose wide eyes bore holes into my soul. My footsteps—that had not once faltered upon entering—now wobbled with uncertainty as I stumbled backward into one of the many time-worn statues. Much to my dismay, it fell to the earth with an ear-splitting crash and collapsed into a formless heap, leaving naught but the remainders of human teeth among its debris. Perhaps then, I thought, would his spirit finally wander free. Then came an eerie groan that made my blood run cold. But unlike the savages who sullied the snake woman with spit to the face and a weapon to her neck before growing still for all eternity, I let my sword fall to the ground, sealed my eyes shut, and with a deep, shuddering breath did I speak her name. *** A multitude of hisses echoed in reply. “Why are you so willing to lower your defences?” The bitterness in her words held an essence of curiosity.

I paused, knowing full well I had a lone desire that I ached to share. “Perhaps I’ve come to break bread with the famed ‘monster’ that makes graves out of men whenever they enter.” I began to turn on my heel to meet her face first, eyes remaining shut—and she put a halt to my movements with an abrupt hiss. “Do not face me, mortal. Have you a death wish?” “And if I did?”

I’d lost track of the moonless nights as I continued to visit the woman—who by now, had grown accustomed to my company, as told by the silence upon her snake-coiled scalp. Indeed, her curiosity in me shifted to an abnormal companionship... and soon after, a kindling fondness, if I were to assume such with the way she’d greet my arrival with a beckoning hum. A hazy summer bled into fall, and I knew then that I yearned for more; that our promise would soon be broken.

*** I knew everything now. How life was ever painful to her, more so than the many she had taken with but a simple glance. How she was once a beautiful maiden coveted by women afar and by an unfaithful god, whose lover wished to punish her in his stead.

In return, she entrusted me with a pact: a promise to never open my eyes when in her presence. A rewarding promise between the serpent and I, so that I may continue to listen to her countless tales and regale her with my own.

My first and final discoveries were her soulless eyes, the unruly heap of snakes that instinctively sprung out at my nose, and I knew the memories we once shared would flee, as would my lifeless body when marble crept from up my legs to my lungs, restricting my breath. My vision was swallowed by a sea of black—but she, she was ever my focus, despite the pain caving in on me. My limbs grew stiff as I raised a hand to her cheek, and, smiling widely for the woman of woe whom I had come to admire, my journey for knowledge came to a halt until the end of time. *** I'd heard of the foolish noble from beyond the boundless plains; their eyes as bright as the sun I once basked in, their skin icecold as I held them close to my breast. I have never wept since I first wore human flesh, nor do I now, even as they stand tall among the shrivelled, pitiful cowards who once thought themselves fit to take my head.

The Underworld rained down from the heavens above, then, dismantling her will to survive for years onward. Would she simply live to suffer? After my first encounter with Medusa, I returned for more confirmation of the unknown truths, as well as whatever pitiful lies I'd toss aside afterward. Even if it were my assumptions betraying my rationality, the more I learnt of her sorrows, the more I felt a stir of hope: hope that a simple traveller's desire to accompany the ‘beast’ would heal a thousand wounds to her century-old heart.

At last... I had my answers now.

My hatred for man knows no bounds. I shall see it so that none may wander too close to my sanctuary ever again. There was but one answer that I would never know, and it haunted even my sleepless nights: what beauty did the famed Medusa have left upon her face? Would I one day live to know of this beauty that others sought to destroy? *** My eyes opened as she slithered close to me, just as she'd done so many times before.

Still, I suppose they were no man. Theirs is a pleasant smile—it makes for a fine addition to my collection.

Ask Diogenes: Advice from the Afterlife Bastian Debont

Alright, alright! Fine! I will answer your inane questions so long as you stop dropping stone tablets on my head! Do you people think I chose to keep living in a barrel because I like being bothered? Honestly, to think a shade cannot find a moment’s peace even in the afterlife. The irony of the dog being dogged is not lost on me. Diogenes, oh wisest of philosophers, I write to you with woes in my love life. My lover left me for my best friend, and my heart is broken. How can I possibly learn to love and trust another again? Sincerely, Crushed in the Classics Department Bite him. Find your lover and bite him. Next. Dear Diogenes, I'm a big fan of your work (especially your sabotage of that dimwit Plato). What's the best way to humiliate my mortal enemy in all things to the point of their surrender in our rivalry, and prove my superiority once and for all? Embattled for the Baldessin Building The first step in humiliating your mortal enemy is to transcend beyond humiliation yourself, as I once did, becoming immune to anything that would shame you. You must find comfort in going to extreme lengths; lengths that would induce lesser men to cower in submission. Next, you must learn to understand your opponent’s point of view in intimate detail. Study it as if you were studying the works of Socrates himself, leave no

detail unscrutinised. Then, when you know your opponent’s views as deeply as your own, dismantle them. Tear them apart as a wild dog tears meat into pieces, do it publicly, with wit and humour. Use props if you must, be as loud as physically possible, let no man walk by you without ensuring he knows exactly why your opponent’s views are awful.

prescribe, in that case, to actively seek out examples of lovers that don’t look like me. Read some books, perhaps, or watch those tiny theatre boxes people won’t shut up about missing d o w n here.

Failing that, shadow your foe and repeat everything they say in a mocking, annoying voice. That one always works. Why do I keep falling in love with straight, white, cis men? Pisces To answer your question as a straight white cis man, with no other information, I must put forth two hypotheses. The first is that, unless the people in the land of the living got any wiser and nobler in the eons since my death, your society is primarily run by men like me, who cast themselves as the heroes in every story. Everywhere you look to see a lover, there stares back the pasty face of a straight white cis man, until— much like a drooling dog—you come to associate those faces with the ideal faces of lovers, salivating at the sight of them. Any other kind of person simply isn’t an option, because you haven’t seen them presented as an option before. I would

Alternatively, it could simply be that your circle of friends and thereby dating pool consists solely of people who look like me. In which case, you ought to shine the lantern on your own face a while, and ask why that is. Diogenes, how do I get over my crush on you? Love, garlicbreadluvr When I still walked amongst the living, most of these ill-directed ‘crushes’ seemed to evaporate after the interested

party spent a mere shift of the sundial in my presence. However, seeing as there is no sun in Hades and I would prefer to be left alone, I’ll offer this instead. Don’t. Worship the ground I walked upon, read my texts, and take to shining a lantern in the dull-eyed, slack-mouthed face of your society. It’ll never be reciprocated, but anything to wake the populace out of their dazed stupor...

Puff, this is a difficult and multilayered question, so I will attempt to approach it with the utmost sincerity and gravity. If the source of your strife is the colour of your puffer jacket, and it is causing you ostracization, then the only effective course of action to take is to remove it entirely. Let them try and mock you if you’re not wearing one! Of course, then the object

Next question. Dear Diogenes, I am afraid that I have committed a social faux pas. I was at the pub the other day, enjoying some after-class beers with some friends, when one of them made a comment about my black Kathmandu puffer jacket. When I looked around at my peers, I noticed that they were all sporting beige, green, and even red puffer jackets! I’m afraid that I have fallen behind and become ‘last season’. Should I buy a new jacket? Maybe a pink one? Puff Puff Passé

o f your friends’ ire might turn to the rest of your clothes, at which point the only recourse will be to remove them as well. While you’re at it, save yourself from mockery by casting off all those signs of your interests that might be lying about your home. In fact, can you risk under such scrutiny? once again, from your home, with whatever have left in some kind. that is done, to ensure

having a home Pre-empt them remove yourself and go about objects you a sack of Once all the only way no further

mockery will be delivered onto your person is to ditch your friends. Congratulations, Puff, you’re now a philosopher. Welcome to the happiest years of your life. Or, if you

don’t want to discard all your material possessions, you could always consider that judgement on the basis of your clothing is the realm of fools, and skip directly to finding new friends. Fashion is a fickle thing, after all; one ought to put more stock in reliable, trustworthy people, who wouldn’t so much as sneeze if you showed up to after-class beers dressed as Heracles himself.

I personally don’t know why the toga ever went out of fashion. It had such a lovely cross-breeze on hot summer days. Perhaps it’ll come back into style one day. *** Well, I’ve had quite enough of this nonsense for now. For the sake of the Gods, next time you want some advice, ask some other philosopher. Just not Plato. Or Aristotle. Or Cicero. Or Heraclitus. You know what? I might be the only one down here who can give sensible advice. Write in again if you must.

Angel of Death Talyah Livanes

About the Artist Freelance artist and designer Talyah Livanes explores dark, intricate, and sensual elements within her digital illustrations of various fantasy portraits. Although undertaking a Bachelor of Design at the ANU School of Art and Design, Talyah invests time into developing and visualising these characters that are an expression of her own desires and self-discovery. Talyah’s portfolio showcases her style of utilising vibrant colours and careful composition to draw attention to the focus points within a piece and also help the viewer explore any creative elements that can be found amongst the linework. Through this, viewers are able to pick up on certain aspects that represent Talyah’s interests with ease. Artist’s Statement Angel of Death is a contemporary art nouveau digital illustration of a seraphim angel, notable by the six wings rather than the usual two. The character is a stark contrast to how angels are often depicted and that represents growing darkness behind the character itself. Surrounded by vibrant bloody red tones, broken earth, and hellish/religious imagery, it becomes clear that the angel is corrupted, and her vacant eyes communicate how she is also lost to this macabre reality that she resides within. The six wings extend and wrap around the angel’s body, visually representing how she is comfortable within her own form and confident with her existing state. The double-ended scythe is an exaggerated version of the farming scythe typically depicted on images of the grim reaper, the original Angel of Death. This careful imagery conveys how the angel has taken up a role that would otherwise be looked down upon, and instead showcases how she embraces the position, as well as the brutal consequences that come with it. The intent of the piece is to communicate how one can be masked by their outward-facing appearance. Inside, there is an eternal struggle with having to conduct themself in a way that matches that external appearance and what would normally be expected of them. The draping of cloth over the form is the temporary way in which one can display this conflicting demeanour and also depict a sensuality that would be often frowned upon and scrutinised. However, the angel embraces that risk of judgement and presents a front that is confident, harsh, and serene, which is then also supported by the red aura surrounding her form that expresses the power she portrays over embracing this darker and sexual immortal image.

Desiring the Undead in the Twilight Era Sukhman Singh

I remember sitting down with my friends during high school and eating a cake bought jointly in honour of Edward Cullen’s birthday. We were, quite simply, obsessed with Twilight. Vampires were all the rage in young adult fiction at the time. Twilight was a gateway to other series like Vampire Academy, Blue Bloods, and dozens of others that I have forgotten in the decade since: vampires apparently tapped into something that teen girls like me felt we could understand and desire. It wasn’t until I studied the gothic novella Carmilla that I really began to think about the appeal of the vampire figure. Before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, J. Sheridan Le Fanu wrote and published his story about a female vampire, Carmilla, who preys upon young women. Laura, the novella’s narrator and Carmilla’s present victim, often recounts her relationship with Carmilla in a highly erotic fashion: “Her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, ‘You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.’” Carmilla makes no attempt to hide her desire for Laura, and actively pursues both her body and blood. In one scene, Carmilla bites Laura’s breast in order to feed from her as she sleeps, representing a carnal desire for Laura that becomes a need she cannot control. Despite Laura’s more coded language, the reader can sense a reciprocal relationship building between the two women. Laura says to Carmilla, “There is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on”, establishing that despite the fact that Laura attempts to suppress her desire, she still feels a pull towards Carmilla. In Carmilla, we find one of the

original stories that establishes vampires as desirable figures. Carmilla is alluring because of her status as a vampire, while still undeniably dangerous. Carmilla got me thinking about the vampire craze in recent young adult fiction. When Le Fanu—and later, Bram Stoker—wrote about vampires, they depicted them as monsters who tapped into societal fears, rather than intentional figures of desire. Vampires tended to be Eastern European, the racial Other; their hunger for blood represented unrestrained sexual desire, which in turn highlighted their monstrosity. At the time these texts were written, venereal disease was rampant, and it was feared that unrestricted sex would spread illness. Additionally, during the Victorian era, women were not legally or socially considered capable of experiencing sexual desire, severely limiting their sexual expression. As a comment on these limitations, Carmilla’s overt desire for Laura demonstrates that she is unnatural and Other; meanwhile, Laura is caught between being viewed as equally ‘unnatural’ and being a proper English woman who has successfully suppressed her sexual desire. As social attitudes towards sex shifted and women gained more sexual autonomy through feminism and reproductive rights movements in the 20th century, the representation of vampires in literature changed. They were no longer read simply as a warning against rampant sexual desire—rather, they became the objects of sexual desire: figures who could be lusted after by the reader because of their beauty

and indulgent behaviour. Oftentimes, they were granted a tragic backstory so the reader would find them more sympathetic; no longer merely an unnatural Other. This is apparent in the portrayal of Louis in Interview with the Vampire and the redemption arc of Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The focus of the genre therefore shifted from a fear of the vampire figure to a deeper exploration of the vampire’s interactions with, and relatability to, humans, especially young women. Eventually, we reached the era of Twilight. In young adult fiction, of which the main readers are often teenage girls still discovering their identity and desires, the vampire figure ultimately became one of romantic attraction. Teenage girls longed for vampires not just because they were sexy, but because they represented an all-encompassing and pined-after romance. The modern-day vampire figure in young adult fiction was portrayed as a romantic hero who usually loved an average young woman. This allowed teenage girls to imagine themselves as desirable, despite any uncertainty about their bodies and emerging sexuality. There is no better example of this than the vampire Edward Cullen. Edward is presented as a suave hero; dangerous enough to protect Bella from the multitude of forces attempting to hurt her, but romantic enough to take her out to dinner and care for her. It was this combination that led to my friends and I declaring ourselves as Team Edward. When we imagined fulfilling relationships, we imagined ones where

our partners would be romantic and strong. As a vampire, Edward is part of a long literary tradition of a dangerous but desirable Other. However, Stephenie Meyer reimagined the legend of the vampire, making them less dangerous to humans and less sexual. Edward is depicted as a ‘good vampire’, a chivalrous protector. He can control his vampiric desires—his family only drink animal blood—and by extension, controls his desire for the human body and sex. Edward’s restraint presents him as safe and considerate, while still suggesting an ongoing tension between carnal desire and romantic love. This feeling may be something to which a teenager, in the midst of discovering their sexuality, can relate. In Twilight, Bella’s desire for Edward provides a space for teenage readers to explore ideas of sexual and romantic desire. The flatness of Bella’s firstperson narration has often been criticised, but its strength lies in allowing readers to connect more closely with Edward, because we can cast ourselves as her. Just like the confusion Laura experiences regarding Carmilla, Edward is perceived by Bella as a paradox. He is gentle enough to be protective of her, yet dangerous enough to keep her safe. While Bella is on a shopping trip with her friends, for instance, Edward rescues her from two men attempting to attack her, and then takes her to dinner. The moment he rescues her, Bella states, “[It was] amazing how suddenly the feeling of security washed over me ... as soon as I heard his voice.” Through the stylistic choices of firstperson perspective and the continual

description of Edward’s character as dangerous, protective, and attractive, a teenager might begin to shape their own conception of desirable traits in a

partner. In retrospect, the unhealthy aspects of Edward and Bella’s overly dependent relationship are clear. Bella relies heavily on Edward to provide her with emotional security, leading to her breakdown in New Moon when he leaves. Additionally, Edward takes it upon himself to protect Bella without

her knowledge, watching over her as she sleeps. However, at the time, heroes who represented a sexual desire that was previously unspoken and forbidden were endlessly fascinating. Ultimately, vampires are paradoxes. They are both alive and dead, human and the Other, desirable and monstrous—and who in society understands paradox better than a teenager? Both adult and child, teenagers are trapped halfway between the two, struggling with expectations of both. In the Twilight era, teenage girls were given an opportunity to begin understanding and exploring their emerging sexual and romantic desires within the relatively safe scope of literature. For many of us, the emergence of our sexuality coincided with our growing awareness of feminism and society’s re-evaluation of sexual mores, something which has been explored in literature through the figure of the vampire f o r ce n t urie s . Texts like Carmilla and Dracula e s t a b li s h e d the vampire figure as alluring, but ultimately dangerous. However, Twilight worked to portray vampires as complex individuals who readers willingly desire. The romantic trope of the undead allows for an exploration of desire that intrigues and engages teenage girls, who single-handedly revived the popularity of vampires in literature.

New Moon Rising Lily Iervasi

I started creating blackout poetry in 2012. It involves taking a piece of text and turning it into something that can be read in a new light. I choose books or newspapers that people have discarded, and work within the parameters of the page to evoke a new feeling. This series was created from Stephenie Meyer's 'New Moon' (2006).

Read more of Lily's 'New Moon Rising' series here:

Luna Sangrante M. Constance

If Humans Can Live Anywhere, Can't Monsters? Annabelle Nshuti

The world is shrouded in mystery. It has been so ever since the universe’s first heartbeat, a colossal bang! that expanded across time and space. With the help of faeries’ musings and birds’ chatter, we’ve kept a stern belief and curiosity in the unknown. However, is it only unknown because science obstructs our view, and superstitions are crammed further back into the bookshelf, amongst the dust, cobwebs, and folklore? For aeons, it has always been a tale of two worlds, on the border of magic and reality. But if humans can live anywhere, can’t monsters? *** “Miss Olly! You must keep your hat on your head, otherwise, you’ll get sick.” Amelie tsked as she picked up the tiny hat from where it lay upon the trimmed grass. Pastel flowers and bold green leaves complemented Amelie’s morning tea with Miss Olly—a doll who was a gift from mukecuru, her grandmother. She hardly spent time with mukecuru: they either lived too far away, or never found the time to visit. Amelie sensed that her mother had never intended for them to meet. As mukecuru tended to her flowerbeds, Amelie nibbled on a chocolate cupcake. Only a minute later, a surprised shriek left Amelie’s lips.

“There’s a small Barbie lady hiding in the flowers!”

everything that you see. This house sometimes plays tricks on the naïve.”

Mukecuru pulled her aside. “Darling Amelie,” she asked cautiously, “did you truly see something?” Amelie eagerly nodded. Mukecuru hesitated, glancing towards the house. “Don’t believe

The

chrysanthemum acknowledged its current occupant, but mukecuru shied away from the delicate faerie sitting on its petite, yellow petal. Does hideous and vulgar a monster make? *** In the city, tepid coffee was gulped down hastily, while underground, basement creatures staggered forward— each movement of theirs echoing a stretch. A curse was stifled in the barista’s throat as he burnt the coffee grains, sheepishly handing the takeaway cup to Cat. Giving him a comforting look, Cat grabbed the coffee, and jogged to the train.

Her preoccupied mind flew through the labyrinth of skyscrapers, construction sites, and cars. “Good morning. Is there someone available to see me today? …Oh— yes, it’s Catarina Uwimana… I just want to see someone regarding my settlement? …I know it’s really busy, it’s just that no one’s called me back in the last four days. Hello?” A sharp curse left her lips as she raced

across the street to the stale office buildings in the distance. in the distance nearby—following her The shadow of the forever man kept on running, sprinting, never slowing down and leaping an eccentric dance, one that should never be seen by another living soul. *** A mismatched parade of toys lay scattered across Amelie’s bedroom floor as her hand flashed through her favourite book. “Yes! I did see a faerie!” she whispered to herself as she stumbled upon a drawing of some, now. Amelie’s garden faerie was silky, fragile and had a smirk on her face—it was as if it knew Amelie wouldn’t be believed. As she turned to the next page, her smile fell into a grimace, and her eyes lingered on the gruesome image of a dwarf. Encapsulated in its face was terror and hunger. Daddy’s words floated into her memory as she recalled him reading this specific tale: the faeries of the mountaintop had to stop the dwarves from kidnapping the neighbourhood children. “The faeries won!” Daddy had told her, “Amelie, you’re safe and sound.” A shy tear now rolled down her face. Then, her tears had come from fear of the dwarves—and now, they were from the absence of Daddy. Where was he? His hugs had run cold—she needed warmth and love to function. A child isn’t ignorant to life’s issues: she knew the muddled emotions that her parents felt towards each other, and how, even throughout the separation, they continued to dote on her. But she couldn’t understand how two people could ever stop loving each other. Was she bitter? Perhaps. Hurt? Definitely. Amelie felt she couldn’t rely on either one of her parents. They didn’t deserve her trust: not for what they did to her— to their family. ***

A mundane day at work trickled by for Cat, with lengthy phone calls, hurried stacks of paper, and awkward conversations filling up her time. When she left for the evening, the balancing act of day and night resembled a seesaw, with dusk and dawn teetering on the outskirts. The train became a snake, seeking its prey; the café, an empty playground. But, for who? As Cat started the long walk from the train station to home, something caught her eye. The sprint of the forever man was electric; his dance was frantic. It was raw and never-ending—it was by grace that no one saw the figure. Her breath became staggered, and she began to dial her sister’s number with dewy hands. “This isn’t real, right?” Cat said aloud, knowing in her heart she was just imagining things—after all, she had been exhausted since separating from Ian. Her heart was confused. They loved each other, but love wasn’t enough. Something was missing. If you can't rely on your supposed forever person, then who can you rely on? Yourself? A deity? No one. As the dial tone continued like static, Cat hung up the phone. “I’m seeing Amelie tonight. We’re making dinner together. We’ll be fine.” Hope is an intriguing concept. It’s something that both the inhumane and human possess. Why else would monsters be around if they, too, didn’t have dreams or desires? *** During the ongoing divorce, Cat and Amelie found themselves living with mukecuru in Cat’s childhood home. It was pulled straight out of a faerie tale—grandiose, the old mansion was a sleeping giant: it slept in a bed of chrysanthemums, and wise, ancient trees. “Know this: a house will always choose you,” mukecuru told Amelie when they first arrived. “It knows what’s best for you: when to love, when to listen, when to discipline. You’re a guest inside whatever house you live in, and that’s

both a privilege, and dangerous.” A single mother, mukecuru made her own way through life, raising three strong-minded daughters. But life ran away with them, and as soon as they were of age, they left mukecuru—now she had strained relationships with them all. Sinking into sadness, she kept this all to herself, but mukecuru swore that she felt something had changed after her daughters left home. Not to the physical embodiment of the house, but rather, the atmosphere within. That evening, as mukecuru flicked through the newspaper, her hands began to shake, fear settling into her bones. She felt a shift in the house’s energy, and her lips slowly started to twitch—something was in the air. Just then, Cat entered the front door, and before a moment had passed, Amelie ran downstairs, straight into her chest. Cat was caught off guard: since the separation, Amelie had become a bit distant towards her, but now Cat felt Amelie’s heartbeat stagger. Cat was guilty of still treating Amelie as a toddler. She bent down and patted her head. “Amelie, do you want to make ugali with ibishyimbo and inyama?” *** Cooking brought with it a sense of normalcy and togetherness—routines stay with you, even after another family member leaves. Witches brew their mystical spells and reckonings in a coven. Laughter is shared, secrets told, songs sung. As the ugali was pounded in the pot, the cheerful atmosphere lent itself to giggles—a welcome surprise since the separation. “Mum,” Amelie whispered excitedly, “I saw a faerie today!” Eyes wide, Cat replied, “My gosh! Did you say anything to it?” Amelie shook her head. “It was being a bit cheeky, you know? It was sitting right on top of mukecuru’s yellow flowers! Do you think it has other faerie friends?” They both chuckled, enjoying each

other’s company. Once dinner was served, they called mukecuru, and gathered in the dining room. Cat pinched the ugali, and cradling it with meat and beans, she attempted to make small talk with mukecuru. “So, Amelie told me you were both in the garden today?” Mukecuru nodded in reply, staring down at her plate. After a few minutes of silence—interrupted by occasional spontaneous chatter from Amelie— mukecuru asked, “Have you found a place to move into, Catarina? I’m worried for my dear Amelie: this house will try to trick you, and oftentimes, it isn’t kind.” Cat pinched her forehead. “Mama, I’m going to ignore what you said about the house. But, let’s talk about it tomorrow, okay? I’m exhausted, I just want to rest.” Mukecuru’s head slowly shook back and forth. “The sooner you move out, the better. This separation is affecting both of you, and—” “And what, mama?” Cat said sarcastically. “Is this too much of a burden? I didn’t realise that you wouldn’t want to see us, after all of these years!” Mukecuru stared back, blankly. Cat chuckled. “To think that I thought you actually cared about us. It’s like my childhood all over again. Have you ever cared about anyone except for yourself?!” Quiet. Suddenly, an isolated wail erupted in the distance. “What’s that?” Cat asked, as Amelie’s eyes grew. Mukecuru looked just as stunned. “I’m not sure,” she lied. The quiet erupts into Chaos, like Hades’s chasm descending deep into Tartarus. To Cat’s terror, something dragged her to the ground. She shrieked, “Amelie! Where are you?” before she saw mukecuru shakily put her index finger to her lips. Amelie was huddled in mukecuru’s arms, her mouth curled into an empty scream. Cat felt a hand on her back, but before she could scream again, she saw mukecuru’s concerned eyes.

Mukecuru whispered, “Come along. Make haste, Catarina.”

***

They tiptoed through the house. Nothing had physically changed, but the atmosphere now felt cold, unnatural, and distorted.

Full-sized mirrors surrounded Cat, forcing her to gaze at the empty stares of a woman’s silhouette. Her arms were crossed, and she was cradling a baby. A smaller, handheld mirror materialised neatly into Cat’s hand, becoming inundated with memories—forcing her to fixate on forgotten dreams gone by. Her gaze lingered on Ian, the deepest and most regrettable desire of her heart.

Mukecuru herded them both into the study. Gripping both Cat and Amelie’s hands, she realised that she had been silent her whole life: silent to the anguish that her daughter’s adventures had caused her. She remained silent to the pain the house caused her.

The remnants of Ian’s caress lay in her arms. “Cee, can’t we just live in the moment? We have an adorable girl— tick! Ten healthy pot plant babies— double tick! A never-ending stack of books that we’ll never read—ding! Ding! Ding! Need I go on?”

She finally decided to speak up. “Catarina, I don’t know what to say. This started happening after you and the girls left home. They feed on sorrow, ego, and anger. They’re probably feeding on you and Amelie’s emotions, because of Ian.”

She reminisced on his cocoa-coloured eyes, staring at her intently as he muttered, “What’s wrong, Cee? This can’t keep on happening—we need to talk. Talk to me—” but before he could continue, Cat shrugged his arms off her back. Her pain balled up, stretching into the corners of her heart.

Amelie held tightly onto mukecuru’s hand. Mukecuru looked at Cat. “We’ve got to move now.”

Cat cried out in dismay. “What?! What are they?” “Wh—what’s that?” Amelie trembled. Translucent gloop began to drip from the walls. Mukecuru’s voice now sounded stretched. “Catarina, it’s too late. They’re here.” A distortion filled the air—shattering the atmosphere. Just like that, all were separated. Alone. *** Crouching in a ball, little Amelie shuddered uncontrollably. She heard the footsteps approaching her. Amelie scampered backwards. Mustering up her courage, she whispered, “Wh—who is it?” A few seconds later, she heard the faintest click, and a single flame shattered the darkness. A group of dwarves advanced upon her. Miniscule in stature, they had unkempt beards, long nails, and eyes of despair and hunger. Before Amelie could scream, one dwarf opened its mouth, and grumbled, “Let’s get her. Let’s get her.” She immediately began to run.

As she stared at her most hated memory, she knew that it was her fault they were no longer together. That she ran off with Amelie to her mother’s, leaving Ian alone, scrambling to understand what had happened to their ‘perfect life’. But she knew that it was the right thing to do. It was never her life. Through the corner of her eye, Cat saw the woman with the baby had started to dance—Cat was mesmerised. She danced freely; but just then, a new silhouette appeared in the mirror. It was the forever man, and the woman’s dancing became erratic. Cat had knelt down, shivering, finally realising who they were. The woman— herself. The forever man—her fears and hesitation about the future. Both were a connected dance—forwards and backwards in space-time. Her emotions engulfed her—a tornado of hate, sick love, disgust, despair. A torrent of tears streaked down her face, as the forever man and woman began to encircle her. Cat, breathing fast and hard, felt the figures touch her, filling her up. She needed to let go—of Ian, of their ‘perfect

life’, of the past.

stumbled towards it.

form of two words: “Mama, why?”

Before they smothered her, she yelled, “My life was meaningless with you, and it’s finally starting to become something!” She felt a phantom tether pull her out of the circle, where she was left alone on the ground, in a puddle of tears.

“Amelie!”

Mukecuru looked deeply into Cat’s eyes. “I don’t know, Catarina. I don’t have all the answers. However, I suggest that you leave soon; this house is unpredictable.”

*** Amelie sprinted blindly through the dark corridor. In the distance, she felt the dwarves begin to match her every step, wailing, “Get her! Get her!” As she looked down at her feet, she saw two mice scurrying next to her, with faeries on each of their backs. They held swords, but Amelie wasn’t afraid. “They’re here to help me,” she whispered to herself. She felt encouraged, running faster. She could hear them whispering, “Have hope, dear Amelie. Hope.” Finally reaching the front door, she tried the lock, and found herself trapped. As the dwarves approached, she rasped, “Get away!” and yet the dwarves still advanced. Out of breath, Amelie collapsed, fear overcoming her. An onslaught of emotions barrelled down—she’d been holding on to so much. She wasn’t being naïve—she knew that Mum wasn’t happy at the end, but that didn’t stop her fantastical imaginings of their life together with Daddy. She missed him so much that it crushed her. Amelie, now crouched next to the front door, saw a faerie on her right-hand side. Its electric blue eyes looked at her warmly. “It’s alright to hurt. Use that pain to love, to heal. The ugliness of life can be overcome by its hidden magical moments. You’ve just got to find them.” She missed her life together with Mum and Daddy. But she knew that she had to move on. Amelie’s eyes turned to the approaching dwarves, and again she heard them chant, “We’re coming! We’re coming!” However, this time, she yelled, “You don’t scare me! Stop! NOW!” At that moment, the home phone rang, and, with smudges of snot and tears streaming down her face, Amelie

She choked on the gasp that came out, and cried into the phone, “Daddy? Is that you?” The house had suddenly illuminated, and in front of her, Amelie saw Cat on the ground, trembling. Cat looked up from the ground, and her eyes found Amelie’s. She bolted towards her —cradling Amelie in her arms. Mukecuru emerged from the dining room, hugging them both. Amelie, overjoyed, screeched at Ian, “I love you!” She began to talk, and Ian listened, his own tears silently imitating hers. Is love human, or is it universal? Ghosts come back, warn us of misfortunes and ill-natured attacks. Isn’t this an act of love? *** Magic can be gentle, wondrous, lively, and awe-inspiring. We should be wary of the unknown and the unkind, but the beauty and wonder of magic is that, at times, it can love. In Amelie’s bedroom, mukecuru massaged beurre de karité through Amelie’s tightly coiled curls. Cat held Amelie’s hands, and asked, “Are you sure that you’re alright?” She nodded, and tentatively asked, “You’re coming to see Daddy tomorrow, right?” “Yeah,” Cat breathed. “I need to have a chat with him.” Amelie tugged Cat’s arms, whispering, “I was right! The faeries were real! And mukecuru didn’t believe me—hm!” Mukecuru playfully pinched Amelie’s cheek, before pressing Amelie’s bedsheets into the bed frame’s crevices. “Sleep well,” she whispered. Cat shut Amelie’s bedroom door. A swell of emotions finally burst out in the

“We’ll head off tomorrow—I’ll make some calls. We’ll find a place.” Before she could stop herself, Cat unexpectedly asked, “Would you like to come with us?” A weak smile appeared across mukecuru’s face. “I’ve got to stay here, child. The house needs me. It doesn’t make much sense, I know, but it chooses not to harm me.” As mukecuru walked away, she patted Cat’s shoulder. Cat laughed softly—even after all of this, she didn’t want to give her a hug. Was it worth it anymore? In the kitchen, as she heated the kettle, Cat resolved that she didn’t know what she would tell Ian, but he deserved to know the truth. She never told him why she left. She never had the chance to live her life—but it was never his fault. Holding a cup of pearl white Earl Grey tea in her hands, Cat sighed. She knew this was long overdue: she needed to start her own journey. *** As Cat went back upstairs, mukecuru made her way to the front of the house. Expressionless, she sat on the floor. “Thank you for sparing them,” she murmured. Seemingly to no one—but the house heard. As mukecuru sat there, she felt strengthened—energised. The house would never have harmed Cat and Amelie: it just wanted to suck out their joy. It always wanted more—pain, sorrow, anger. But the house let Cat and Amelie go because it had mukecuru—the faithful servant. It was mukecuru’s guilt that let the house manipulate her—the abandonment of her children wormed its way into her mind, until she had nowhere else to go. Her sacrificial love for the house led to its own rewards, she told herself. And that was what the house told her. “I will reward you kindly.” Mukecuru didn’t know this, but houses lie, just like humans. It had to lie. She was too useful.

Grave Lies Aveline Yang

CW: Death. When I die Where will I be buried? Under the topsoil of regret In the loamy embrace of things unsaid And tears unshed Nestled in the subsoil where my dear joys lie Drunk with hazy lavender The darkness blurred By cedar Bedrock nourishes With its permanence and consistency Like the unfettered fear that has frolicked free reign In the plains of my mind My whole life When I die Where will my loved ones see me buried? Within the fired synapses of people I cared for And held gently in passing thoughts that Evaporate like soft steam from morning tea Will I be swaddled In blankets woven of violent and delicate grief Delicate gossamer fused in gratitude and hate Crisscrossing around my memory An invisible cocoon for My constellations When I die I will have created my magnum opus Quietly, clumsily My death knits together all that could have been And all that never could Like a fly pulled unstuck My web ripples

Section Design: Chloe Davison Rose Dixon-Campbell Hengjia Liu Alisha Nagle Sebastiàn Ungco Cinnamone Winchester

The Art of Dying.

The Destructive Paradox of the Tragic Artist Yige Xu

CW: Mental illness, suicide, violence, and substance abuse. “No great genius has ever existed without a strain of madness.” Proffered by the wise Aristotle, these words resonate today as a truism, an indisputable fact, universally accepted. We all know that great art and tragedy are inseparable. Sylvia Plath, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Edgar Allan Poe, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain… the list is endless; artists who have broken boundaries in creative expression, but are first and foremost recognised for the inner turmoil so viscerally embodied in their art. Google the ‘tortured artist’ and you’ll find, courtesy of Wikipedia, that it has unsurprisingly emerged as a stereotype; a “stock character who is in constant torment due to frustrations with art, other people, or the world in general.” This idea that achieving something great requires suffering dates to ancient times—the Greek myth of Philoctetes is a particularly poignant example—but the popularisation of this notion in direct relation to art initially arose in the coining of the phrase poète maudit in the early 19th century. An ‘accursed poet’ living a life outside society, their biography usually consisted of drug and alcohol abuse, insanity, crime, and violence, which often resulted in an early death. Several reincarnations of this archetype exist today; think of the ‘starving artist’ trope and the ’27 Club’, a term coined to describe the phenomena of many iconic artists tragically dying at age 27. We have accepted that art and suffering

are inextricably intertwined—but does this correlation not deserve further exploration? Why is the biography of the ‘tortured artist’ often the most enduring, with their work prescribed the greatest worth? Is suffering a prerequisite for ‘greatness’? This paradox seems almost impossible to disentangle. It is true that great art is often rooted in misfortune. Creative individuals operating in conformist societies often find art which allows for uninhibited self-expression to be the best, the only avenue to escape the ‘bleak realities of existence’. Sylvia Plath’s titular persona—Lady Lazarus—embodies the poet’s desire for a better reality, unrestricted by 1960s conformist expectations of domesticity. Through Lady Lazarus, Plath poetically rebelled against patriarchal dominance, knowing that a similar rebellion in real life was an impossibility: Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. Looking at earlier lines of the same poem affords great insight: The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot— The big strip tease. The persona is the circus act, and we, the audience, the peanut-crunching

crowd; the faceless collective that has macabrely commodified the poet’s anguish, sadistically garnering enjoyment from her pain. Society is morbidly fascinated with artists’ struggles, especially the realities that are so often considered taboo. We take relish in Plath’s matter-of-fact longing for the “deep gravity” and “nobility” of death. We respond to the works of visual artists similarly—it’s difficult to look away from Frida Kahlo’s surrealist depictions of her chronic pain and miscarriages. Perhaps our fascination runs deeper. With art inherently subjective, we can find solace in the work of the ‘tragic artist’, for perhaps, they have articulated our own struggles. However, there are observable consequences of this fascination. By exalting these artists to the level of ‘genius’, mental illness is easily romanticised. Instead of a pre-existing reality that artists have creatively and cathartically represented, it is treated as a necessary ingredient for creativity. A study conducted by the University of Southampton revealed that an artwork was perceived to be superior if the observer was told that the artist was mentally ill. It’s impossible to know whether this is the result of deep-rooted human sympathy or the fact that we correlate suffering with value, especially given that artistic labour is often invisible. Perhaps it’s a mixture of both. The rise of internet culture has, in no small part, contributed to our macabre fascination with artists’ suffering. Think back, if you will, to the early 2010s—an era I’m sure a fair few of us want nothing more than to forget—where ‘sad girl’

Tumblr was at its peak. How dangerously did we glamourise depression as artistic, suicidal idealisation as beautifully sad? Not only did we reduce artists solely to their tragic arc, but we also normalised the romanticisation of their deeply personal struggles. Never before has this correlation between artistry and tragedy spread so pervasively in teenage culture. Social media popularises external expressions of inner turmoil through fashion, makeup, and music. The OG My Chemical Romance-loving, “it’s not a phase, mom” emo has since embodied various forms, from the Tumblr ‘sad girl’ wanting nothing more than to be Lana Del Rey, to the e-boys and e-girls of today, their playlists undoubtedly dominated by Lil Peep and XXXTentacion. Our formative teenage years are filled by either striving to fit in with these internet trends, or sardonically denouncing them. While some degree of productive conversation has been instigated as a result, any real awareness of the issue is grossly overshadowed by the superficial, with artists’ struggles simplified into trends and commodified as ‘cool’. A University of Balamand study found the two key factors involved in the most potent posts glorifying or misappropriating mental illness without proper context to be 1) aesthetic visuals, and 2) a person to identify with. When the same social media platforms are also complicit in “[normalising] a version of mental illness that isn’t realistic for those of us who actually have serious mental illness”, as author Natasha Tracy posits, the possibility for serious harm cannot be overlooked. Additionally, contemporary media has also subjected today’s ‘tortured artist’ to an unprecedented set of challenges. Van Gogh and Poe lived in obscurity; Plath and Kahlo were mostly granted privacy. Even so, their nuanced histories have been rewritten to conform to a single-dimensional, romanticised legacy of tragedy. Why do we remember van Gogh’s famed ‘The Starry Night’ as the embodiment of his suffering, when it was painted during his recovery? Why do we allow Plath’s eloquent and honest articulation of mental health to overshadow her viciously racist attitudes? Worse, today’s celebrity is placed under a 24/7 spotlight, pedestalled as a superhuman entity, trapped by constant media attention. The artist must contend with a chorus of unfeasible expectations at every turn, and will

inevitably feel alienated from their passion, detached from the very means of their self-expression. What is the cost of commodifying creativity? The legacies of Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain provide some semblance of an answer. We remember them for their struggles with mental illness and substance abuse, subordinating recognition of their raw talent as secondary to their tragic arc. Would they have met a different fate if we didn’t fail to consider the impact of the ‘tortured artist’ stereotype on the artist themselves? Research has proven that mental illness actually impedes one’s creativity, rather than increasing it. But with artistic fields characterised by low wages and long working hours, it’s no wonder there are disproportionate rates of poor mental health, as found by Victoria Tischler of the University of West London. But when great artists have been mythologised for their struggles, artists understandably are more reluctant to receive help, since everyone knows that suffering is a prerequisite to valued art… right? So, what now? What course of a c t i o n should we take to unseat our value systems w h i c h place the

importance on artists not for their art, but for their tragic arc? Perhaps we should look to Barthes’ Death of the Author theory for guidance. Holding that an author’s intentions and biographical facts should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their work, maybe we will finally be able to cleave the artist from their art and appreciate the work for its sheer aesthetic value. However, we mustn’t stop here, at the other extreme. We shouldn’t entirely separate the artist’s context from their work; it’s often impossible. We must instead steer these conversations away from glamourising the tragedy, and toward sparking necessary dialogue surrounding the complexities of mental illness, addiction, and trauma. These conversations are already being had at an unprecedented rate today; probably one thing we have TikTok to thank for. Only after we have re-routed the conversation will we be able to reform our expectations of suffering as a prerequisite to artistic brilliance, to reframe our conversations surrounding the notion of artistic genius, and to recognise our own susceptibility in perpetuating this

destructive paradox.

Skewed/Silenced Self-Portrait Natasha Tareen

About the Artist Natasha Tareen is a self-taught artist who uses oil paint as her main medium. She is concerned with the emotions which constitute the human condition, portraying these essential emotions across a range of human subjects. Artist's Statement When Natasha Tareen set out to create this portrait, it was intended to depict somebody else. However, as the painting developed, it turned into what seemed to be more a mirror of herself. This painting was created at a time when Tareen felt silenced due to familial pressures. The obscuration of the artist’s own face reflects the loss of identity one might incur when they are unable to express themselves due to social pressures, including those imposed by one’s family. Tareen’s painting reminds us that when our voices are silenced, we are at risk of losing ourselves.

Too Young. Too Woman. Interview by Lily Harrison

CW: Mentions of violence, sexism, institutional betrayal. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Sally Flannery, a 28-year-old community oriented activist, recently ran for local council in Lismore, a regional town in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Sally was behind the successful 2019 petition made to Australia Post that saw pricing change for sustainable packaging options. Earlier this year, she won an International Women’s Day award for contributions to our community. As a young woman from Lismore myself, I met Sally through mutual connections to the community several years ago. When I called her for this interview, we reflected on a series of messages we previously shared, in which we encouraged each other to give politics a go. I asked what caused her to move from thinking about it, to actually running for local council. I was really interested in it and started going to a lot of the meetings and reading the briefings to see if it was something that I actually wanted to be involved in. I started [going to sit in chambers] and just found it really fascinating. People would sometimes apologise at the end for how boring a meeting was and I would just say, “No, I found it weirdly fascinating!” I just felt like it was something that I could do. On 5 June 2021, a Facebook update from Sally read, “this is ... potentially the hardest [post] I’ve ever written - but I have decided to rescind my decision to stand

for election to Lismore City Council.” After weeks of being followed in the street, having rocks thrown through her windows, and facing daily defamatory posts on social media, the emotional toll of being a young female voice in the

public vitriol Sally experienced forced us both to confront the fact we are a small town nestled between very conservative farming communities, and to question whether Lismore’s progressive attitudes are, in fact, mostly superficial. Do you still love this community?

community became too much. Sally was very vocal about the harassment and abuse toward her throughout the entirety of her campaign, but the extent of it was largely unexpected. What did you expect when you started on your campaign trail? I mean, I expected there to be some negativity and I definitely expected it from [certain people] because I’d seen it for other councillors. But I didn’t expect it to start before I’d even announced who I was aligned with. I hadn’t even put out any policies when it started. And I just felt like, you don’t even know anything about me, why would you try and tear someone down when we maybe have the same views? When I returned home to visit recently, my almost 12-year-old sister greeted me eagerly. “Lismore’s really evolving,” she told me matter-of-factly, clitoris-shaped

stained glass sun-catchers hanging in the shop window behind her. “Is it, now?” I asked. Like Sally, I have always harboured a deep love for my regional hometown, and been proud of our many outwardly progressive characteristics and deeply artistic, passionate community. The extreme

I do, but I think this [experience] has tainted my perception a little bit. I’d say I like Lismore now, I don’t love it. I used to think this is where I’d like to settle down and live forever but after this experience, I don’t really know if that’s the case anymore. I think [this community] is very progressive, but I also think there are many Nationals ideals here. When the current mayor put out the news about Sacred Lands being given back to the Traditional Owners, which is something I was really proud of, people were posting that we can’t afford to give that away, and that it was wrong, and all sorts of right-wing stuff … Superficially, we may be quite progressive—the shops in the CBD really represent that—but I think when we look a bit further out it’s very different. In a political climate where the likes of Jane Caro are telling girls everywhere they “have to go into politics” because it’s “a boy’s club and we do not have enough women in power making these decisions and changing the culture”, I asked Sally about the reality of being a young woman in the political arena, and what it feels like to fall out of love with your community. Do you feel that the vitriol from certain people was happening because of your politics?

I don’t know. I feel like some of those people already had issues with me. I remember after I received an award on International Women’s Day, posts started about me back then. I did think it was partly because I was young— heaps of people would say, “you’re just too young”. There’s a constant hum at the moment that we want more young women to run, but when we do it’s so vicious. I don’t think it would have been different had I aligned differently politically. Was the negative response to your campaign widespread? It was mainly a vocal few individuals. I had one man contact my boss [at the very start of my campaign] saying that if I didn’t run on his ticket I’d be publicly humiliated. But I think those few men just had vicious supporters, and when they started sharing my address, that’s when I started having vandalism and break-ins at my house, so it’s hard to pin down and say exactly who it was, but it all felt very related. How does it feel to know that to feel safe again in your own community and home, you had to step away from something you were excited about? I felt a lot of frustration about that and, to be honest, I still don’t feel totally safe. I started seeing a therapist because I’d experienced nightmares about people breaking into my house, and she said, “it’s not irrational, it’s okay to have those fears.” Even just walking down the street —yesterday I was walking to work and [a man] called me a slut and said he’d rip the mask off my fucking face if I kept posting online about [my experience running for local council]. So, I’ve ended up just deleting my Facebook ... I still feel like I'm looking over my shoulder. Reflecting on your experience, would you ever consider running again, or

encourage other young women to do so? I was sad because so many other young women say to me that they were thinking about running, but are so glad they didn’t, and that was the one thing I didn’t want to happen. I didn’t want my experience to deter other women from running, but at the same time, I don’t think I could encourage them to. I think I'm a pretty strong person, but that almost broke me. I almost feel like you have to be a little bit hardened by life and beaten down to not have it affect you, which is sad really, because that’s not who we need in Council. We need people who can be emotional and vulnerable and positive and real. What are some of the changes we need for this experience to be more positive for other young women? I think it would be good if the councils themselves had some sort of protection for people in that situation. Because I went to the police and they said, well, you could get an AVO but then [the harassers] could take you to court, and I could’ve ended up with thousands of dollars in legal fees. That didn’t really seem like a viable option. I talked to ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) and they couldn’t do anything because [my harassers] weren't actually elected officials. But those people were still able to behave like that and then run for council, which just seems really wrong. There’s no protection for people in that situation. Like, literally no one seemed to be able to do anything meaningful about it. I don’t know what the answer is, but something needs to change. Are your experiences with local council and what’s happening in Canberra right now connected? I think it’s a culture within politics in

Australia, for sure. I think it’s partly tall poppy syndrome and partly ingrained sexism. Particularly amongst right-wing men—that was definitely the main demographic that came at me—who are maybe not wanting to see young women in power and have the entitlement … to behave like that. I put it up on a few women in politics groups when it was happening to me, asking if people knew of anything I could do or where I could go, and I just had so many women share similar experiences. Even one of the Liberal staffers who was in the news recently reached out to me and was really supportive, but also said, you know, this is just everywhere. Like, do men in parliament experience that? I just don’t think they do. How do you feel now? I feel sad. But I also feel good knowing that I made the right decision for myself and in looking after myself. I think I also feel a bit angry because I don’t know what the motive is, and this doesn’t seem to happen to everyone. It just felt like a very orchestrated plan for it to be so targeted before I even started ... It definitely wasn’t easy [to withdraw] but … what once felt exciting and inspiring, now feels exhausting and daunting. During our interview, Sally and I discussed the conflicting messages currently circulating domestic Australian politics. On one hand, we’re begging women to go into politics—but when they do, young women find the systems against them, and face significant vitriol without strong mechanisms in place to offer protection. After hanging up, I sent Sally a screenshot of a post made by Women NSW on Facebook, encouraging more women to take seats on local councils. “If you are passionate about your community” it read, “why not stand for election to local government?” Sally’s response came a few hours later: haha funny.

"You didn't think this was the end, did you?": A 'Promising Young Woman' Review Gabriella Wilcox

CW: Discussion of sexual assault and harassment, murder, trauma, mental health, misogyny, and suicide. How do we make art out of trauma? Indeed, art seems to thrive on it, but in a world that is oversaturated with depictions of violence, many of us seem to have reached a point where we no longer want to see the things that haunt us at night on the big screen; instead, we opt for fantastical escapism.

As someone who enjoys the escapism of fiction—someone who, as vacuous as it may sound, generally avoids hardhitting and confrontational movies—I was scared to watch Promising Young Woman. I don’t think I even watched the trailer. I did, however, know it was going to be an excellent movie (it had those vibes). When the credits rolled, I was speechless. I also distinctly remember proclaiming that, while it was one of the best movies I’d ever seen, I didn’t believe I would ever be able to watch it again. Suffice to say, after having watched the film several times, I was proven wrong— but it wasn’t until my third viewing that I could see the forest for the trees and began to recognise Promising Young Woman’s faults (though they are limited in comparison to its merits).

repeatedly tricks men into believing she is drunk enough to be ‘asking for it’ and confronting them when they attempt to assault her. As the movie progresses, we learn that she is motivated by the assault of her childhood best friend, Nina, who dropped out of medical school and is implied to have killed herself in the aftermath. In addition to her nightly perp hunts, Cassie has begun to work her way through a tally of revenge on those who wronged Nina. Eventually, Cassie opens herself up to her ex-classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham), and for a moment, seems to no longer be trapped in a cycle of revenge. However, the glass shatters when she learns of Ryan’s involvement in Nina’s assault.

I: Synopsis

An oversimplified understanding of the ‘female gaze’ and the ‘male gaze’ has overtaken filmic discourse: over time, the terms have become buzzwords that create a dichotomous categorisation based almost exclusively on whether or not the women being portrayed are oversexualised. However, despite the bastardisation of these concepts, they are incredibly useful when comparing movies like Promising Young Woman to many other exploitative films that are categorised as ‘R*pe Revenge Films’— RR films (e.g., I Spit on Your Grave, The Virgin Spring).

A play on the phrase ‘promising young man’—most notably used by the defence during Chanel Miller’s sexual assault trial—Promising Young Woman is a tonguein-cheek response to the institutions that are quick to defend men and quicker to not believe women. The film follows Cassie (Carey Mulligan) as she

II: RR Films

One of the key differences between typical RR films and Promising Young Woman—in absolutely essential terms—is director Emerald Fennell. More specifically, it’s Fennell’s decision to exclude the depiction of Nina’s assault from the film’s visual narrative. There is something incredibly grimy about explicit depictions of sexual assault in RR films. These scenes—which are often conceptualised by men—are gratuitous and sadistic, not only in the decision to include the scenes themselves, but in the way they are typically depicted. There is no narrative reasoning for such scenes, and we are reminded of that in the emotional response that we, as audience members, have by viewing the event and its subsequent consequences through Cassie’s eyes. We don’t need depictions of sexual assault to empathise. Categorically, however, this movie is an RR film. Superficially—at least, according to Letterboxd—it also appears to fit into the colloquial ‘Good for Her Cinematic Universe’, but every decision made in this movie, by Fennell and everyone involved, actively attacks and subverts these categories. Indeed, it is an oversimplification of both Fennell’s writing and Mulligan’s acting to place this film in the ‘Good for Her’ category because unequivocally, it is not good for her. III: Character The movie’s strong point in my opinion is the characters, particularly the lead. Something that may surprise people is that in some ways, I despise Cassie. Her revenge on Madison (Alison Brie) is far from moral—Cassie manufactures the very trauma that ultimately killed Nina—but I don’t need to like Cassie to be rooting for her, and it’s easy to be led away from her wrongdoings by getting caught up in the narrative. At the point in the story where we are presented with the heavy-handed symbolism of Cassie standing in front of a makeshift halo, we are willing to forget the awful things she’s done; after all, she’s giving up on her revenge and moving on. There is nothing we want more than a happy ending for Cassie—something that makes the ending an even more significant blow. Cassie’s duality breaks through a lot of the other twodimensional aspects of this film— such as the conventional narrative structure and the colour palette. Having the main character do problematic shit further

subverts the female revenge fantasy: we aren’t always thinking ‘good for her’. In many other reviews of Promising Young Woman, critics have expressed their confusion or surprise at the film’s decision to cast Carey Mulligan in a role that one might associate with an actor like Margot Robbie. While I think that Mulligan perhaps deserves more credit than given to her in this case, there is still a point to be made on the somewhat misleading nature of the marketing for this film. Our protagonist isn’t a femme fatale, but based on the hype surrounding this movie, much of the audience may have developed an expectation that was not necessarily fulfilled. More specifically, the empowering aspects of this movie were in some ways dampened by the more heavy-hitting realities depicted, as well as the overshadowing negative toll that Cassie’s vigilante ventures take on her. It is Cassie’s vulnerability, and the nuanced examination of trauma that her character provides, that ultimately make Mulligan the perfect fit for the role, because despite the hype, Cassie is not an empowering character. Additionally, while her vigilante ventures could be considered e m p owe r in g , these scenes l a c k

authenticity and play into a neat narrative that doesn’t really make sense. In some ways, it is deeply discomforting to watch as Cassie manages to walk away from predators unscathed after ‘teaching them a lesson’. In what reality do predators respond calmly to a woman teaching them the error of their ways? It’s an odd choice on Fennell’s part, and one I don’t necessarily agree with. I understand that there was a clear decision for Cassie’s character to avoid crossing the line into violence towards these men, but I would have personally preferred to see Cassie play into empowering revenge tropes by murdering the perpetrators than watch her gaslight Madison. Why was the worst crime that Cassie committed one that was targeted at a woman? Still, these choices imbue Cassie with a nuance that subverts the tradition dictating that a protagonist should be perfect. One of my favourite scenes in this movie is when Cassie shows up on the doorstep of Nina’s mother’s house. It’s a bittersweet moment, where we as the audience are forced to step out of our ‘girlbossification’ of Cassie to realise how trapped she is in her trauma, and how her revenge plots are doing nothing to help her— or

anyone—move on. The scene perfectly captures Cassie’s true character when Nina’s mother tells her, “don’t be such a child”. Her entire childhood and formative years were wrapped up in a person now gone: just as Nina was unable to grow, so too is Cassie. Whilst we are spoon-fed this fact through the bubblegum colour palette, costumes, and the fact that Cassie still lives at home, it is not until this moment that it is slapped in our faces. Through Cassie’s relationship with Ryan, we are finally introduced to the free Cassie who has (seemingly) broken out of her unhealthy cycle, able to move on. But that’s not how trauma works, and Emerald Fennell knows this, so the revelation that the source of her freedom (Ryan) had a role in the very thing that kept her trapped ultimately forces her to revert. While the specific blow of Ryan’s complacency was surprising, the film’s structure created some predictability— we knew that the penny was going to drop. The montage of Cassie and Ryan’s relationship was simply too happy and too early on in the movie for the audience to believe this would be the cinematic happy ending. IIII: Final Act Act III opens with a violin cover of Britney Spears' ‘Toxic’ and Cassie in your stereotypical sexy nurse outfit: two elements that would have been interesting or dramatic if they hadn’t both been heavily featured in promotional material. The audience is ready for a scene of girlboss revenge and a satisfying ending—but unexpectedly, the final arc of Cassie’s revenge plot results in the brutal murder of our main character in real time. So now Fennell doesn’t hold back. I’m still not sure how I feel about this choice. It was certainly an effective tool at forcing the audience to confront the tragedy of this scene, and one that was executed brilliantly at that. However, for the most violent scene of the film to be an act of violence against a woman is a contradiction of Fennell’s active exclusion of brutality up until this point. So rarely in cinema do we see the protagonist die, and in such a devastating way. I kept thinking she was faking it and that she would ultimately win the struggle through movie magic. Ultimately, no matter how realistic this scene may be, the inclusion of this death and the potentially triggering nature of its depiction isn’t a choice that fits neatly

into what we expect from a

movie ending. Suffice to say, it was unexpected. Fennell originally intended for the movie to end there—a lesson that we don’t always get what we want and a reminder that this would be the likely outcome in reality. Thankfully, in the interest of the audience’s morale, an epilogue was added and we are granted a satisfying ending. The fantastical ending, whilst unrealistic, does ring true in that Cassie’s death and her subsequent plan was perhaps the only way to get the perpetrators to face the consequences. It was a satisfying ending, and I am glad that the movie didn’t end immediately after Cassie’s death; however, this final act didn’t necessarily feel consistent with the rest of the film. It is ironic that despite Cassie’s rightful mistrust of the institutions that failed Nina, she ultimately relies on those very institutions to deal the final blow to her murderers. This felt like a decision tied to studio influence, and I wish that the film had instead explored methods of revenge that were consistent with the protagonist’s ideals. IIII: Conclusion Promising Young Woman isn’t perfect, and its flaws could be picked apart if necessary, but it’s pretty damn close. Ultimately, I loved this movie. The soundtrack, with the likes of Paris Hilton and Charli XCX, creates an atmosphere of childish glee and black-and-white thinking, which cleverly reflects its lead.

Carey Mulligan, armed with her experience of playing wholesome characters, surprises us with a nuanced character who is somehow loveable, pitiable, and unlikeable at the same time. Bo Burnham puts the nice guy into ‘nice guys’, embracing the likeability of his public persona to surprise us with the reveal of his character’s true nature. All in all, the actors involved, from Jennifer Coolidge to Max Greenfield and Laverne Cox, as well as a plethora of other notable names, effectively create Cassie’s world and highlight the importance of character actors by leaning into tropes that I believe benefit the overall feel of the movie. Underpinning the performances of the actors is the cinematography, set design, and costumes that masterfully coat the film’s exterior in a sweet shell, creating an atmosphere both familiar and unique to this movie. Packed with imagery, even a frame-by-frame analysis would find it difficult to capture this film in its entirety. Despite the inconsistencies and contradictions of the narrative, I personally like to focus more on the positives in films, and based on those alone, I give Promising Young Woman a five out of five. It’s up to you to ignore my inability to rate movies I loved lower than that and form your own—probably more logical—opinions.

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Alabaster Mascara on a Damaged Mannequin Lisa Pond-Keter

CW: Gender dysphoria. The fires of my mind never relent nor pass sympathy, kicked-up smog and dust coat synapses, winds roar with false epiphany. The ideology of motherhood calls to me, but I have no capacity left for impossible torments. I must be a mannequin that grew sentience; in that strange nightmare of feeling wrong and untouchable, rhythmic sins in my mind flow down like ropes of bile, unlovable, undesirable, repugnant and perverted, I reel from it, sometimes revel in it, repeat it and accuse myself of it, generous self-hatred bears a fearful prize. I’m on my back now with my heartbeat, rhythm untempered. I’m stuck and weeping at the thought of destiny. I wish I could just change myself, please. I’ll get it done—painted lips and a modelled body, stitches finally removed with scars settled in, a tainted soul yet to follow. I act as if I am pretending; the art of questioning me. An unrelenting surge of heat feels like disease with no release, previously numbed nerves convulse from an irate panic. Getting it done, practicing smiles and stirring misery, that Mannequin in her stupor and drudgery found the ability to paint herself a face. Seeming to never be perfect, full of pockmarks and plot holes; expression nevertheless came to be explored. The Mannequin painted on red lips and eyebrows, but all they had was alabaster mascara in its pale glory, so she made the most of it. Despite sacred texts, the eyes revealed a human who would wish for the world—not for power, just this simple verse; all the same, it is me in my reflection. Could I change my body in a day? Circumvent retaliation? Have children and be treated the same, live my life free from miserable separation? I have not smiled like this in months, said the Mannequin. Where do I go from here, what could I be? Painted, I count down hours until I feel my life renewed; until then, I come back here every First of June.

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Artwork by Sophie Ryan.

Self Reflection Paris Robson

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Artist’s Statement This piece explores my own insecurities and how I often view myself. I dealt with eating disorders growing up, and still, they linger. Using paint pen on mirrors, I explored the reflection of myself and the thought process behind it.

The Mason Jar Lily Iervasi

At first there was nothing. For an immeasurable amount of time, my life was cocooned by blackness, with no company but my own thoughts. I didn’t know what to make of my own existence. My days were spent pondering why I was brought here, to this vast emptiness. What did it mean for me to exist at this time, in this place? What acts of history had occurred so that I should inhabit the earth at this moment? Had one prehistoric being not ventured out of the ocean at the precise time they did, would I even be here today? It was questions such as these that occupied my time in that void. There was always a part of me that knew I was destined for something else. An ancient instinct, perhaps, that made its nest among the chaos of thoughts already at home within my soul. A golden light, a hope, a glimmer of something better, bigger, freer than anything I’d ever imagined. Only in dreams did I get an image of this world—and in the dark space, my life was one endless sleep. Until that fateful day, when my dreams reached out of the aether and pulled me into a new world. One day, the walls of my prison cracked. A piercing light broke through, illuminating the cave, and providing me a pathway to my escape. I had been waiting for this moment. I had walked this path one thousand times in my dreams. Without fear, I made my way forward.

Colours and light swirled before me. The kaleidoscope focussed, and shapes began to form. A vast expanse of green became a field surrounded by a forest. On the opposite side of the field, an array of wildflowers appeared where once was a melded canvas of colour.

Shafts of light poked through the canopy, blessing blades of grass and petals with their heavenly touch. My gaze returned to the wildflowers. I wondered, were they as soft to touch as they appeared? And their scent as beguiling from up close as it was from afar? I made my way towards them, envisioning, as I had one thousand times before, laying my cheek to rest upon the pillowy loft of an outturned petal. I cannot tell you what those wildflowers smelled like from close up. I can’t speak for the velvety softness of their petals, as I have never known their touch. At the very moment I was to begin my life in the light, a hand from above stayed my momentum. There was a brief struggle, but this unknown presence wielded otherworldly strength.

Light. Dark. Body shaken around, out of my control. Light. Need to escape, get back to the field. An invisible barrier stops me. Dark. Jolted around again. Light. Dark. Stillness. My new prison is made of glass. My thoughts return to an eventual escape, but I feel hopeless here. I cannot visualise my future. No instinct propels me forward. After an eternity of blind darkness, was I not deserving of freedom and light? I am now forever bathed in light, and can see freedom stretch eternally from me, but never touch it. How cruel, my tormentor, to choose such a cage. I am growing weaker. This prison will become my tomb. My thoughts return to the existential —how I wish that my ancient forebear had stepped out of the ocean just one day later. I imagine once more the field of my dreams, and wonder if the wildflowers are as soft as they seem. *** For a few weeks now, I have traced the path of a caterpillar as it made its way across the windowsill of my bedroom. Each morning I wake up, take my drawing pad and pencils, and sketch the creature as it stands. I charted its progress into its cocoon, which formed at the top corner of my window. I kept a mason jar at the ready, so that I could capture it when it turned into a butterfly. Today, that day arrived. My fairy pet lies still in her jar, so that I can capture her existence on my page.

My Life after Death Tisha Shah

CW: Death. I’ve always known what will happen to my body after I die. I am aware that in the hours after my passing, it will be laid to rest in my home, and that my loved ones will gather around me and pray for my soul’s peaceful passage into the next life. I know that my body will be cleansed and blessed, and inevitably, I will be cremated, and my ashes scattered back into the earth. For centuries, it has been the practise of many Indian cultures and religions to undertake cremation, and my death will be no different. But an awareness of such an otherworldly experience is truly difficult to conceptualise unless you witness it firsthand. I’ve only seen a dead body once, when I was 14, and it was a mind-numbing, bonechilling experience. It was infinitesimally difficult to comprehend that the lifeless being before me was once a living and breathing person who I loved, and that they were no longer physically present in the world in the way that I knew them. And while at that age I was unable to process my ideas about death anywhere beyond grief and sadness, I would say my understanding of passing, and the rituals that accompany it, has brought me some clarity. There are several ways in which the body can be treated after death. From the ancient mummification practises undertaken by Egyptians to the Sky burial ritual practised by some Buddhists in Tibet, cultures around the world have unique ways to mourn and pay tribute to those who have passed away. Certain innovative practises have gained popularity in the 21st century, such as the placement of ashes within fireworks for those who would like to go out with a final ‘bang’. It is intriguing, how these rites allow those who have lost a loved one to grieve, and also provide protection and prosperity to those who have passed, as they continue their

journey into whatever afterlife they believe in. I am fascinated by the way in which significant cultural, spiritual, or religious elements are woven into each practice—a celebration of the beliefs and values of the dead. In my culture, the cremation of the body itself serves dichotomously to allow for grief and mourning, but also to affirm the belief that there is hope for life after death, and to celebrate the passage of the soul into its next life. As a Jain, the concept of the soul, or jiva, is central to our funeral rituals. We believe that the body is but a vessel in which the soul resides, and that our jiva exists beyond the physically tangible concepts of life and death. In our culture, we are reborn in a new life upon the instance of our death, and the physical body of our present life is left behind as a hollow carcass, serving as a reminder and a celebration of the jiva it once housed. Burial is hence strongly discouraged in Jainism, out of fear that any residual attachment between the soul and the body will remain if the body is not destroyed, and the soul’s path into the next life will be hindered. My faith has thus, to an extent, been able to soothe my fears of the physical aspects of death. I find myself, after deep (deep) introspection, able to isolate my consciousness from my physical body, and to understand there is much more waiting beyond the bounds of life and d e a t h . While the thought of my body being burnt to ash is still undoubtedly terrifying, there is an unsettling peace in the knowledge that both my body and soul will be freed back into the universe after I die. To me, a macabre yet liberating cyclicality lies in the idea that the body is returned to the earth as the dust from

which it was created. While I am becoming increasingly comfortable with the spiritual aspects of my death, I have also begun considering it in terms of the physical world—in particular, if I will donate my organs after I die. Seeing loved ones experience health complications and become in desperate need of rarely available organs has also brought the issue to the forefront of my mind, particularly in times like these of dire health crises. In the modern world, as healthcare needs continue to evolve and change, medical communities are now more than ever pleading for members of the community to donate their organs after they pass. Personally, organ donation has always felt like the most sensible option; as morbid as it sounds, “it’s not like I’ll be needing them anyway.” The choice for me was relatively simple to make, considering its lifesaving implications and my personal lack of cultural conflict with the concept. After all, when I die, it is no longer about how my body may serve me, but how it may be of benefit to others. However, it is pertinent to acknowledge that there are numerous religious and cultural factors which often influence the decision to follow (or not follow) suit. In my eyes, the body after death, regardless of whether it is cremated, buried, or otherwise, tells a story. It may be a story of triumph, of love and happiness, or even of desolation and sadness— but it is still a celebration of a life lived, and of a soul starting its j o u r n e y onwards.

Atticus,, I'm Sorry. Atticus Alice Keane CW: Death. sometimes i imagine his place in the dirt in the wind in the lines in my eyes as that shadow fades in the mourning light and empathy deranged is forced back upon me. rarely do I think about the way his body –alight with the changing of ways– will drown in the earthly necessity that now keeps his warmth perfect unfettered by the seasons. often do I push away the knowledge that these two images are inextricably linked that – to be loose in the wind in a freedom beyond my grasp venturing into places he will not see will not feel – is to be engulfed by that indiscriminate halo of destructive intent commanded by my hand and executed by a stranger.

Artwork by Alex Wilbur.

The Bite by Clare Mason-Cox

Doors

Kiara Berriman

Murphy

Yosha Pathmaperuma

CW: Animal death. You’re a colt who is too tall for your age, With every step you trip, fall, and sway. I see your ankles aren’t the right shape, And I realise your legs are in pain. They tell me to get the bottle from the table That sits right near the door of your stable. And while I wait, bottle in hand, I look at the pills, try to understand. They are deep red, with a subtle shine, Like precious stones to this mind of mine. And in my hand, I hold these stones, Which seem to me like red-hot coals. These crimson stones are precious to me, Because they mean that you’ll be free From the endless pain that keeps you bound, And free from what makes your legs unsound. But these coals I hold in my hand, you see, Come with a price, my sweet Murphy. Their constant presence will sadly mean That your true freedom can never be seen. For they are deadly, these red, hot coals. Take one of these, your dependency grows. For then, my darling, you will always need Cold, unwelcome hands that these coals to you feed. This must be routine, and while ignorance is nice, The pain will come back, like shards of ice. And so, dear Murphy, the last thing to do Is to take you away, it'll be over soon. Don't cry, Murphy, I promise it's for the best, And I'll cry enough for me and all the rest.

For you see, Murphy, the greatest cost Of this is that your foaldom was lost. You lost it anyway, when you grew too fast, Nature's way of saying, “He cannot last.” And now, lovely Murphy, they will take you away To the back field, right by all your hay. It's a beautiful day, Murphy, but not for long, As the birds continue their incessant song. I think they want you to take solace in them, So you won’t feel alone at this moment’s end. For animals know what goes on in the world, And they do not want to see another get hurt. And so, my love, in the bright autumn air, The syringe glints wickedly, harsh and green, Against the reds of the leaves, your skin, your hair. And I, from afar, watch you fall. But now your legs can't hurt you at all. We are quite similar I think, you and I, For both of our childhoods died that night. As a girl I was foolish, never knowing death or grief, But even as a foal, you knew each one in brief. And now, special Murphy, you're off in the clouds, Galloping around, and neighing so loud! You are finally the foal you always wanted to be. And we are down here; “It'll be alright, you'll see.”

Butter Beans, Best Friends, and Big Noses Sirria Li

It’s yet another COVID-19 lockdown. I find myself lying on the bathroom floor as boredom and insanity bleed into one another. Disgusting, I know, but the cold tiles have a way of shocking life back into you at 2 in the morning. Today, I’ve done nothing but sit on my couch with Friends playing in the background as I fell in and out of slumber. In my house, Netflix is used as background noise to make up for the heavy silence lingering in the air. Right now, I’m thinking about dried butter beans. Everyone grew them in primary school. Remember the plastic cups stuffed with cotton balls; a single bean nestled in the middle? The teacher had to keep replacing my butter beans because I kept eating them. I was a very hungry child. My class grew them in third grade. Then in fifth grade. Then again in eighth grade. Every time those green sprouts pushed their way out of the bean, I was just as excited as the last. I can hear my dad pacing around the house. Why is he still awake at this hour? In family photos leading up to my early teens, we look like the standard, happy father-daughter combo. There are pictures of him piggybacking me, of us posing in front of important monuments with the classic Asian V-sign pose. My last good memory of us is conjured in slow motion like this: we’re standing

in the middle of a field. He lifts me up and throws me into the air. An excited scream escapes my throat as he catches me. But I know it’s not true. Nostalgia morphs memories the way dripping water carves stone. Things changed somewhere along the line. The conflicting values of Western individualism and filial piety estranged us so insidiously that it felt like we’d been strangers our whole lives. I wish I could create a telescope that’s trained on the past. Each time I begin to doubt if what I remember is true, or if a memory happened at all, my dad and I could stand side by side and look into the telescope together. If we can find out what went wrong, maybe we could go back in time to mend it. It’s 2:30am now. The bathroom tiles have adjusted to my body heat. My phone buzzes next to me. Teyana Th o m p s o n: So did your parents get that divorce yet? I delete the notification. For many Chinese children, the signpost of adulthood is realising that your parents are actually unhappy together. In memory, my parents loved each other. They were the stock photo couple smiling happily into the camera. But photos are posed, a fraction of a second pretending to be reality. Now, my mum points at the photos and tells me the truth behind them. “Your dad and I had a massive

argument a minute af ter t h i s photo w a s taken,” o r , “This p h o t o was from when we didn’t have a single cent left.” A funhouse mirror distorts your perception until you can no longer distinguish fact from fiction. Adulthood is realising that this perverted reflection had been the truth all along. I close my eyes. I wonder how Ryder’s parents are. Do they still love each other? Ryder was my childhood best friend. In second grade, we would spend our afternoons at the park racing each other down the slide. In the early hours of the morning, when I’m deluded by fatigue, the heat light of the bathroom warms the memory. Ryder and I were friends at a time when we had just begun to understand the physical differences between boys and girls. Curious like all children are, one day after our swimming lesson, we stood in the corner of the kid pool and showed each other. A giggle escapes my lips. Though embarrassing, it’s sweet to think about how naive and clueless we once were.

The following winter, we both moved away. I never saw him again. The more I recall these memories, the more they change. Slowly, the embellished details overshadow the person I’m trying to remember. The setting always survives in fine detail: the smell of chlorine at the pool, the dark tarmac of the road leading to his house, the eucalyptus trees dotting that park we played at. But the finest detail, his face, is long gone. I turn to look at him, but a faceless entity stares back. Some neuroscientists say that the safest memories are the ones we can’t remember. Immune to r e co ns t r uc tio n, these memories are the closest replica of actual events. My stomach rumbles. Growing butter beans in cotton was kind of disorientating. It felt almost unnatural to witness the grotesque stems intertwining together through the cotton. In the wild, dirt hides the matted roots; bugs and spiders infest plants but are hidden by the leaves. Even snakes hide in the bushes. But clear plastic reveals all that is ugly. In eighth grade, a friend made a passing comment about my nose being big. From that day on, I scrutinized how my nose appeared from each angle. I memorised which facial expressions drew attention to it and which ones made it appear slimmer. I made sure to cover my

face whenever I laughed. It seems like for many girls, hypervigilance and selfconsciousness are a package deal with adolescence.

you experience heartbreak. Though I haven’t seen Andre in years now, I still keep the love letters he wrote me in a box underneath my bed.

I hated my nose, but Andre didn’t. He said it was cute and that it was his favourite thing about my face. Andre was my first boy friend. We met in seventh grade and easily became friends because we shared all of our classes together. L i k e many things, you only learn to appreciate it in retrospect. Both of us loved canned tuna, so Andre would bring a can of tuna to school every day for us to share. Not wanting to be teased by our friends, he’d hold my hand underneath the table as we played UNO. At that time, my biggest insecurity was my hy p erhidrosis. Every time someone touches my hand, my palms sweat uncontrollably. It’s a physiological defence mechanism from having emotionally distant parents who never held me as a child. But Andre didn’t care. He’d tell me to hold my palms out, pretending to show me a magic trick, but then sneakily hold my hand. It’s cheesy, but your first love truly is unforgettable. You approach it with an innocence and openness that you can never regain once

A soft knock disturbs the silence. My dad whispers my name, asking me if I’m alright. I tell him I’ll be out in a minute. It’s almost 3am now. I feel exhausted, but sleep will only lead to tomorrow and I already know exactly how tomorrow will unfold. This lockdown is neverending. My brain itches with boredom as I feel myself teetering off the edge of sanity. I’m begging for it to be over but I know that once this Groundhog Day is over, another awaits. Childhood boredom is one full of dreams, a projection into another reality. Adult boredom is one of repetition, where we no longer expect any surprises. And so I lay here, unmoving with my eyes half closed. The world seems to be completely still, like a Sunday afternoon. The yellow light hits the ceiling perfectly and suddenly I am a child again. It’s midday and I’m pretending to be asleep. The sunlight filters in through the curtains, illuminating specks of dust that dance around in the air. In the living room, my mum laughs at something on the TV. It’s summer. A mosquito is buzzing around my head. Ryder will be coming over soon.

Exploring the Chasm Made by the Intimate Stranger 'Toritse Mojuetan

CW: Death. I don’t know what I was doing when my grandma died. Through some weird social convention, you’re meant to remember where you were and what you were doing when important people pass on; decease; expire. I wasn’t born when Diana died, and I wasn’t forming memories when the Twin Towers fell, so I haven’t been able to take part in the creation of morbid shared memories. However, we do the same thing on a much smaller scale

when it comes to our more familiar circles. We remember where we were, what we were doing, and when we knew. Some of us before we’re even told. This wasn’t the case for me; I had no otherworldly notification. For a long time, I just didn’t know.

I suppose an explanation is in order. My paternal grandmother was, and still very much is, a significant driving force in my life. I didn't have the typical childhood where you spend the night at grandma’s house or go round for afternoon tea. When I was quite young, I saw my grandparents every few months but once we moved overseas, I didn't really see them. I didn’t see her at all. I have very few memories of her that don't involve several thousand

kilometres, a bad phone connection, and my dad telling me to hurry up so his credit wouldn’t run out. She had several memories with me, from when I was a baby, from the period of time that I don't remember. From those memories, she knew me in a way that no one else in my extended family did. To them, I was another cousin or niece, the child of someone's father’s high school friend. To her, I was the first granddaughter. I was a blessing and a gift. My parents would liken me to her. People would say, “You’re definitely your father’s daughter!” More accurately, I got it from her. We were both women whose outspokenness did not match their Godgiven height. As my mum says, small but mighty. Our similarities fostered a bond between us that transcended distance. It wasn't as if our conversations tackled anything of magnitude. In fact, they were often very short. Being a first-generation immigrant, she couldn’t always understand my accent or the language I used. But there, across the barrier of communication, is the undeniable, unequivocal, and unconditional love they hold for you. Right before I was heading off to begin freshman year in Connecticut, she called me. I would say she called to wish me luck, but she doesn't believe in luck, only in God. She used to be a deaconess and was highly, highly religious. So, she called to pray for me, to tell me how much she loved me and how proud she was of me. I sat on the stairs on the way to the loft, not really being able to get a word in but listening and feeling a little overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection coming through the tinny speakers of my dad's iPhone 7. I only ever spoke to her through my dad's phone; I didn't have her number and I didn't think at the time that she had mine. After that conversation, I told my parents when I got older, when I became an adult, I'd call her all the time. In early August, I declined a call from an unknown Nigerian number. My dad told me it was probably my grandmother, but being a broke college student who was very much situated in the USA, I didn't have any credit to call back. A few days later, the same number sent me a text; a long, beautiful one, much like the conversation we had shared on the phone before I left. I couldn’t reply —again, credit—but I thought once I got back home, I’d call and thank her. Apparently, she died not long after that.

My parents decided that it was better to not tell me she had died. It would threaten my ability to focus on my exams—it’s logic that tracks with the ethnic parent stereotype. I found out in November. I hadn’t seen my family since June, so for my break, I took the long train journey from Connecticut to Baltimore. My mum told me the day she flew in. I entered a suspended moment where time seemed frozen. My face contorted in an attempt to produce something resembling socially acceptable grief. I now know I was in shock. My brain whirred, trying to comprehend what I had heard. My grandma was larger than life; she was loud, she was opinionated, she was headstrong. But that didn’t make her alive. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, the best I could decipher was that shoddy medical advice from a dilapidated medical system was the reason she wasn't here anymore. Perhaps if she had moved to the West, she would still be alive. My mother’s sister began crying as well; not because she knew my grandmother in any capacity, but because my grief had come. It surpassed socially acceptable rapidly and became hollow wails from a collapsed mass on the ground. I was grieving my loss, her passing, the hole that was painfully widening in my chest, her memory and lost time. I think I was crying not only because I was sad that she had died. I had lost the chance to create the relationship that I had planned for the future; the relationship I wanted. I knew I didn't know my grandmother very well. Through her obituary I found out her real name. In the photos of the funeral, I met her other son—an uncle I never knew. I had once thought that when I became an adult, maybe I would enter the circle of secrets. I feel like a lot of her secrets died with her. It's been about four years. I still think about our last conversation and how fervently she prayed for me and my success. In an attempt to find the delicate silver lining within my trauma, I try to identify what I have learnt. I’ve learnt that people can have a significant impact on our lives, more than we realise, even without being involved in our lives every single day. We can wrap our sense of self in our identity and family, in people that we barely talk to, for better or for worse. We can have love for people who we don't know entirely

well, people who we never really notice but when they're gone there's a hole. I learnt that the threshold of adulthood is arbitrary. Time has a funny way of moving on, and on, and on—then one day you’re old and you don't look like how you used to look. There's no one point where the enlightenment finally hits you. You’ll never know what you’re doing, and all that planning is usually in vain. I was never going to start calling my grandmother until something made me do it. I guess, ironically, she had to die for me to gain motivation. I realised that I was angry. I was tired. In my double degree in Medical Science and Development Studies, I had already cultivated a deep, seething internal fire to challenge the double standard awarded to black—specifically African—bodies. My maths teacher in high school would always tell us that we’d won the lottery of life. I don’t think the other girls understood what that meant; that life and death could really be determined through arbitrary factors such as where you live. Losing my grandmother only added to my motivation; I wasn’t going to medical school for some unrequited love of the human form, I was going to medical school because a system had let my grandmother die and I, for one, was not going to be complicit in replicating the past. I said as much in my personal statement, because why lie? I pray that it was the right choice. I don't know if I'm writing for myself with this piece. One thing that can be said for technology is it really removes the contextual factors that create the emotional context of a piece of writing. Words on a page become a piece of art in such a context. I'd like to imagine if I were writing it on a piece of paper in a coffee shop or where have you, there'd be tear marks from all the crying that I've done writing this piece. But also scribbles in the margins of where I've been thinking about life and death, about where my life is currently going and how I'm handling existing. But you can't see that, it's just printed as it is. I’m left trying to share context with you in size 12 Times New Roman, I’m left trying to give you an ending to my story. I don’t think I have one. What I do know is I hold a lot of anger in my soul. I know I'm trying to live my life how I feel she would have wanted me to. I know I’m not quite OK yet. This is where the story ends. It’s where I'm at and it’s where I am going to be for a while longer.

Of Rusted Bikes and the Dildo Under the Bed Anonymous

CW: Depression, ideation.

suicide,

suicide

I have suffered from depression from such a young age that it feels more like a character trait than a mental illness. My mother died when I was a child and my dad, although he tried hard, was unable to meet my emotional needs. The depression runs deep in me; I feel it in my chest and in my hands before I feel the mental effects. It’s monotonous, annoying, frustrating, and tiresome. Being suicidal is weird. It just is. It’s hard to convey. It’s feeling like you don’t exist and that you’re the biggest burden in the world

simultaneously. It’s scary and heavy. I have experienced suicidal ideation twice in my life, in 2016 and in 2019. I remember watching the unfolding shit storm in America in 2016 and thinking that at least I wouldn’t be alive to see Trump get elected, which shows how odd it is to place a limit on your own life. I thought at that time that I had a prognosis of weeks, it felt so certain and real. And then it didn’t.

The thing that tethered me to life was the concern of being a burden on my family. I didn’t want to live anymore, but I also felt so guilty imagining my dad having to find out about my death, imagining my sister having to mourn instead of celebrate on my birthday. After a death, mementos of life take on a different meaning. I have a box of my mother’s earrings in my room; if she were alive, they would be meaningless

to me, but now they represent a tangible connection to her. I keep my bike in a shed on campus. If I died, it would stay there. It would rust. Someone would steal the wheels and the seat. The broken aluminium body would remain chained to the rack. Nobody would know that it was the bike of a dead girl. It wouldn’t matter to anyone. Being suicidal is weird. I was concerned about my family having to come to Canberra to pack up my things after I died. I thought that would be a huge bother for them. After a death, the last thing you want to do is get on a plane to a place where you have no support system to

pack up your dead kid’s stuff. I imagined how painful it would be for my sister to take down the photos of us that surrounded my mirror. My dad would have to strip my bed— would they throw away my sheets? It would be weird to keep them, weird to donate them, weird to trash them. So I thoughtfully packed up my room, took the photos down, and packed my books and DVDs into labelled boxes. I hoped they would see that my most

worn clothes were active wear, that they would be able to tell I had been trying to keep the demons at bay with exercise. That they would note the absence of alcohol in my room and know I was sober. I made my bed. Then I remembered my dildo, neatly packed in its nice case, hygienically cleaned with batteries in a separate bag, under my bed. I imagined my dad finding it. Would that change his opinion of me? Would he be disgusted? I pictured my sister picking it up. Would she laugh? Would it be a

moment of levity in a hard day, or just make her realise how far we had drifted? No, the dildo would have to go before I did. I decided to throw it out. But if I threw it out that night, and then I didn’t kill myself, then I would have wasted my dildo. I spent $75 on that little guy. So I couldn’t bin it before I was certain. But wait, if I wasn’t certain, why was I packing up my stuff? That left me holding a hot pink dildo on my floor in tears. Maybe I didn’t want to die. Maybe I wanted to live? I wasn’t better overnight. I wasn’t better for weeks, maybe months. But that dildo saved my life. It told me I still wanted to plan for the future. As bleak as everything felt to me, as much as the walls felt like they were caving in, that life was completely meaningless, a part of me was holding out for the day I was going to be horny and regret losing my dildo. And that part of me was what convinced

me to live. If there was the potential of physical pleasure in the future then there was potential for happiness, for energy, for life. People say about mental illness that you can’t just choose to be happy and then be happy. And that’s somewhat true. I didn’t simply choose to stop being suicidal. But I did make a choice to ring Lifeline (13 11 14). I made the decision to see my friend the next day. Eventually I was able to unpack my stuff, pin the photos back up, start making plans again. The mementos of my life resumed their meaning as everyday items, including that life-saving dildo.

Section Design: Hengjia Liu Sabrina Tse Navita Wijeratne Cinnamone Winchester

What dies is reborn.

Vicarious Trauma: The Unintended Consequence of Doing Feminist Research Arushi Ganguly

CW: Description of sexual and wartime violence, mention of emotional trauma. When I started studying women within the context of international politics, it never occurred to me that I may become affected by vicarious trauma. Early last month, I reached out to ANU Counselling after noticing a number of changes in my everyday interactions. At the end of my first session, the counsellor informed me that I may be experiencing vicarious trauma. Having never heard the term before, I decided to do some reading. Preliminary research revealed that vicarious trauma is commonly associated with first responders and mental healthcare providers, but we have a limited understanding of how it affects students and scholars. “But does it really matter?” This question, or its likeness, is one of the first I’m asked when people find out I intend to specialise in feminist international relations. International relations, or any other academic field that studies politics at an international level, is assumed to be a subject of grand proportions, one that need not concern itself with something as trivial as gender studies. People often assume that scholars of international relations

only study the behaviour of states at an international level. While this is generally true, one must not overlook the people who make up the state, and, consequently, play a major role in state policy. Although feminist theories have made valuable contributions to the field of social science, the study of women within international politics is still largely insufficient. Traditionally, security studies was seen as a ‘masculine’ field. Conversations about war, diplomacy, and state politics were usually reserved for men, and are still dominated by men today. In the 1990s, as critical theories became more pronounced in social sciences, Cynthia Enloe asked: “Where are the women?”—opening the floodgates for academic research focused on women in politics. Enloe questioned the hitherto male-driven and male-focused analysis in the study of international relations. Her work influenced many other women to conduct rigorous research, who then began filling the gendered vacuum within the field. I’m pleased that today, women are studied as policymakers, citizens, bystanders, voters, economic participants, victims of war, perpetrators of crime, and in numerous other fascinating roles. Yet, the field of international relations remains largely clouded by the male narrative. Until my master’s, I was unaware of the existence of feminist research in the field of international relations. Still, during the three semesters I’ve studied at the ANU, the experiences of women have been taught as an afterthought.

I’ve realised that women are often only studied as a subject of inquiry for one session in the whole 12 weeks of a semester. Coming from a country where I was never taught about women, I’m grateful for these admittedly sparse women-centric sessions. Yet I do wonder if this is done simply to tick a box. Surely, as a national research university, professors can revise a course such that marginalised identities are investigated each week in congruence with the topic, rather than trying to fit such complex issues within a single week. The bits and crumbs of feminism offered to me became my fixation, and by the end of my first semester, I knew I wanted to specialise in feminist international relations. I met wonderful professors in the department who suggested authors and research articles, and lent me their books so I could study what I wanted. Soon, I had my eyes set on a thesis analysing women in conflict, and used every assignment to practice, incorporating feminist perspectives in all my essays. But the level of pain I’ve felt upon reading certain accounts of women in conflict was unexpected. For me, continuing in this direction of study now requires a degree of consideration about how to best manage my own mental health when delving into analysis of other women’s experiences. In writing my thesis, I plan to establish a comparative analysis of instances of Genocidal Rape. To situate myself, I’ve read survivor testimonies of Bosnian, Rwandan, Bangladeshi, Yazidi, and Rohingya women. I’ve read up extensively on the various ways women are affected by conflict. This has included research about comfort

women, communal rape, and forced marriage. I would sometimes spend more than eight hours a day reading harrowing details of some of the worst brutalities of war. In one instance, after researching forced marriages under the Khmer Rouge, I had nightmares about my own parents dragging me away from my little sharehouse in Canberra to be married to a faceless mirage of a man in India. I woke up disoriented, and felt uncomfortable speaking to my mother throughout the week. Another time, after reading about Bosnian rape camps, I had to call in sick to work. My biggest concern arose when readings began impacting the way I interacted with people in everyday scenarios. My scholarly pursuit has begun affecting the way that I interact with men on dates. I could be sitting next to a lovely man, but all I can think of are the statistics of intimate partner violence. I’m sure any political science student can attest that when people learn about your field of study, it is taken as an invitation to give their unsolicited political opinions. Every time I tell someone I’m interested in understanding women within the context of international politics, they assume I’m inviting them to inform me that “not all men” commit the aforementioned atrocities, and that even if they did, “everyone deserves a second chance.” Once, I would have responded impassively. Now, knowing what I know and having studied sexual violence in war, I cannot seem to control my disdain for such uninformed opinions. I cannot seem to ignore such blithe disregard of women’s issues. Given my visceral and bodily responses to the content of my study, I decided to consult with a therapist. When I opened up about vicarious trauma with my therapist, the first thing they asked me was whether I could change my area of interest—since the one I’d chosen was clearly impacting me mentally. I was firm in my refusal. While it’s true that reading witness and survivor accounts can be taxing on my mental health, I’ve made the personal decision that the accounts of these women are also a priority, and need to be given centre stage. In making such a decision, I have also recognised my privileged position: I

read these harrowing accounts from the comfort of my room, using technology and resources many people don’t have access to. I have supportive professors and parents, who have been my rock through my many emotional upheavals. I can afford to see a therapist, and have access to specialised healthcare, if needed. More importantly, I’m now aware of what my own subject area lacks. I have spent years learning political theories written by men for men. I have learnt plenty about the glorious inevitability of war, but not nearly enough about the devastating impact of said war. I have been in classrooms where my peers discussed the necessity of foreign intervention, and the need to ‘liberate’ people. I find that they are all too comfortable with branding civilian casualties as inevitable costs of war, and are disinterested in learning about sexual violence in conflicts. The apathy of others does not mean that such problems are issues we need not confront. Feminist thinkers have made valuable contributions in the understanding of how post-conflict reconstruction should be organised, and have shone light on issues often disregarded by international organisations. Today, laws against sexual violence in war are strong where they were once vague and inconsistent. For me to walk away from this area of study would be t h e

biggest betrayal I could take against myself. I come from a country where gendered violence is prevalent. Eightyeight sexual assault allegations are reported to law enforcement every day in India. This is just a fraction of the actual number, where many women are withheld from reporting cases due to societal stigma. I believe that with my education, my privilege, and my resources, to not speak about the women on whose shoulders I stand today would be reprehensible. With help from my therapist, I have found ways to cope. I meditate regularly, and I started doing my readings early in the day, rather than later in the evening, so that I don’t carry my thoughts to bed. I also force myself to stop reading when I realise the content is too excruciating for me to absorb. I go out and take long walks before resuming such work again. This does not always go perfectly to plan. I still sometimes spend days spiraling in my own thoughts. I still have nightmares, though fewer and far between. I firmly believe that through regular consultations with my therapist, I can overcome these issues, or at least mitigate them. I will continue studying feminist literature and research, so long as it continues invigorating me. And hopefully someday, I can use my education to help someone.

At/Of the Institution: What the Churchill Saga Represents Zenia Vasaiwalla

One of the best things I was told during my term as BIPOC (then Ethnocultural) Department Officer, was by activist and scholar Melz Uwusu: we can be at an institution, and yet not be of the institution. We, as people of colour, can choose to study at universities that are structured like shrines around white colonial legacies—but this space is not made for us. The university is littered with academic, symbolic, and physical reminders of this. And each of us who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Colour will at one point go through something at these institutions that makes it painfully clear that we are the minority, and that our perspectives will not easily be accepted as legitimate. So often, we are told that incidents of racism within classrooms aren’t enough to warrant action; we are not offered any real pastoral care for dealing with alienation and Otherness; we are met with backlash on every issue that we find important to our community. One such issue was the presence of a Churchill statue and bust on the south side of the ANU’s Acton campus,

which belongs to the Churchill Trust. The existence of physical shrines like this, which are devoid of any acknowledgement of First Nations, Black or People of Colour’s experiences, speaks to why it feels like we cannot be of this institution. It speaks to why it consistently feels like we are underrepresented, not understood, and placed second to the experiences of the (white) majority. The existence of the BIPOC Department, then, is an effort in representation for those who are impacted by these issues. It was created to provide a unique voice against instances of racism and Othering that people of colour experience on a daily basis. In 2020, the Department collective brought to light the existence of the Churchill statue and bust, and expressed their dissatisfaction with this uncritical representation of history standing on First Nations land. This led to the establishment of a petition for the removal of the statue, and alongside the Indigenous Department, we planned a proposal for what the BIPOC collective would want to see as an outcome to this issue. The petition stated our position within the context of the ANU clearly:

“The ANU must acknowledge that symbols, such as this statue, of archaic and racist systems are harmful to its culture of progress and respect. This icon does not deserve a space on our campus, which is on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land. This petition calls for removal by the ANU of non-critical representations of racist figures, starting with that of Winston Churchill.” This petition came at a time when the world was talking about the role of statues in society, history, and activism. We had just seen statues like Edward Colston’s in Bristol—which represented a history of oppression and racism— being torn down around the world and replaced with acknowledgements of the ongoing struggle of First Nations, Black, and People of Colour. For those in our Department, these actions, tucked inside a larger Black Lives Matter movement, were cause for hope. The idea that ‘winners write history’ is finally being overturned: our stories (as the ‘losers’ of history—the colonised, the murdered, the erased) are being told and told again, and more and more people are listening. Acceptance of non-critical representations of what happened in

‘history’ is dwindling. Statues—which once served as physical symbols of these representations—are no longer accepted as silent, unquestioned shrines to this ‘winner’s history’. Soon after the Churchill petition went live, three student representatives—two of us from the BIPOC Department, and one from the Indigenous Department— met with the Churchill Trust in a tense and difficult conversation about what the statue represented to us, and why our collectives were offended and asking for change. The meeting reminded me yet again that we always have to work harder for our perspective to be understood; we have to publicly work through our generational trauma and defend our identity alongside our argument. Throughout this interaction, I couldn’t shake the feeling that our being there was tokenistic—that, as usual inside these white institutions, the minorities were being thrown breadcrumbs—and I predicted we would never hear from the Trust again unless we kept knocking on their doors. I followed up at the end of 2020, but was given replies that I was used to: there were other important things that needed their attention. And so, when we met with the Trust again earlier this year, I was surprised. The steps they had taken made us feel like we had been listened to; like our suggestions had been taken on board, and that there was an effort to access a more nuanced and critical understanding of history. The statue wasn’t being removed, but a compromise had been met that satisfied all three parties (the Trust, the BIPOC Department, and the Indigenous Department): a critical plaque providing a QR code for people to learn more about the multifaceted history of Winston Churchill would be added to the statue. This outcome—while not yet representing a full stop to this issue of non-representation and critical nuance

when it comes to historical symbols— left me feeling something I had not felt in my whole year as BIPOC Officer: heard, understood, and like I had been met halfway (if not more than that). Most of my work in 2020 (like all Department Officers) was an uphill battle, a constant battering against the doors of an institution that had made space for me, but not my voice or opinion. Again, the action taken by the Churchill Trust is not the biggest of wins, nor the triumph of anti-racism against colonial legacies, but it’s a small victory that we need to recognise. This recognition is especially important in light of the palpable and observed feeling that we are not, and our interests are not, protected here. While I might be at university, I do not resonate with much of the representation and history of this academic space. I am not of the institution, and I will continue to be critical of the colonial legacies present here that make this space hostile to us. Still, perhaps this

experience of negotiating the representation of history on our campus can provide hope for other avenues to voice our needs as people of colour at this institution. Perhaps we, as First Nations, Black, and People of Colour academics can demand an active consideration of our interests through spaces like the Departments and enforce larger movements towards real, serious inclusion (the whole cake, not just the crumbs). It doesn’t escape me that the onus for change always seems to be set on the minorities, but my hope is that one day, our constant battering against the doors will lead to active listening and response to what matters to us. This will require more dialogue between us and institutions, and I encourage everyone to be critical; to ask for more representation and space. We might not be of this institution based on its history, but we still deserve to be heard, understood, and included as stakeholders in the shaping of its future.

Return to Sender Anonymous

CW: Racism, allusion to racial slurs. Dear You, You are three years old, and you often daydream about being a white kid. More than anything, you long for the acceptance that they inherit at birth and selectively impart to others. Next to them, you feel like a mismatched puzzle piece. If only you were white. Dear You, You’re 10 and you’re sitting in the playground with your friends. A girl walking by says that your friend is the prettiest person there, out of the white girls. You are confused. This is also the year that you are called the n-word for the first time. The country kids don’t see the problem, but you understand that the microcosm of your primary school is a world where your kind are not accepted. Fighting against it only deepens the divide between yourself and people with light skin. Dear You, Standing outside your classroom when you’re 12, hearing the boys rank the girls from the most to least attractive. One of them says that you are the ugliest girl in your class, and instead of rejecting that concept, you embed it so deeply within you that you don’t think you will ever be able to dig it out again. You don't realise that you are surrounded by people with internalised racism, that they are holding you to Western beauty standards you could never fit. Still, you wish you were white, because then you’d be beautiful.

Dear You, Sitting on a bench and hiding your rice under the table because you’re afraid the white kids will tease you. You’re ashamed of being different. If only you were just like them. If only you could hide being brown.

Dear You, The person I hated so much. I am sorry. You were so young, and the last thing you needed was another enemy. You thought you were ugly, different, and a waste of space. It saddens me to have hated intrinsic parts of who I am.

Dear You, You’ve just started high school and one of the pretty white girls won’t stop being mean to you. You apologise, just wanting to know why she hates you; maybe you can change. She won’t tell you. You puzzle over this for six years. Eight years later, you will realise that your personality didn’t have anything to do with it. These people hated you as soon as you entered the room, before you even opened your mouth.

Dear You, I think you would appreciate who we have become. We grew into the person you always needed. We’re slowly unlearning all the racist shit we were told; we aren’t ashamed to be a person of colour. When I was you, I wasted so much time listening to the beliefs of racist, ignorant people, and even though you are gone, I feel grief thinking of the unspoken pain you experienced for so long. You had nobody to tell, nobody who understood—but we have found community. Finally, there are others you can share your stories with, who will comfort and value you. We have learnt to raise our bar on how we are treated. Back then, you deserved so much more.

Dear You, At 16, you decide that you hate yourself. How could you not, when so many people view you with contempt? You hate this person they hate. It’s her fault that people treat you like this. You don’t realise that it isn’t your fault; this cruelty is ingrained in them. If only you weren’t this way. Dear You, You’re 19 and you realise you’re a fetish. At least you’re liked, though. All you want, after all, is to be accepted. All you want—after so many years of being told by boys that you’re ugly—is for them to finally tell you that you’re beautiful. You don’t see yourself being used; you’re just glad to finally feel validated.

Dear You, You slipped through my fingers throughout the years. Unappreciated, hated, and misunderstood. I am so grateful for what you taught me, and for being strong enough to bear all those challenges so that we could get to where we are now. Dear You, You are enough. Love, Me.

Twenty Chair Vivien Clarke and Campbell Miller

In essence, ‘Twenty Chair’ is the amalgamation of thoughts and experiences throughout 2020. Its carefully considered design reflects a contrast between maintaining structure and stability whilst caring for the human form. 'Twenty Chair’s' conception provided clarity and purpose to life when time sat still. In bringing ‘Twenty Chair’ into existence, it was important that materials used were recycled. Oxidised nail holes in the recycled Blackbutt timber frame evoke the previous lives lived by this recycled wood. Stretch and fold marks in the leather off-cuts used to upholster ‘Twenty Chair’ continue to suggest at the past lives of these abandoned resources.

'Clarke Miller and Quince' is a design collaboration between young furniture makers Vivien Clarke and Campbell Miller. Formed in an established fine furniture workshop space in Canberra, 'Clarke Miller and Quince' is a design collaboration that intends to convey the social-cultural views and experiences of two aspiring young designers.

The Freeze The Freeze takes my body so I leave it behind. I don’t want to watch a part of me die.

Neve Traynor CW: Sexual assault, trauma.

At last I come to enough to say no. The impression remains, the knowing is known.

Now I never thought this could happen with us, but they never tell you it’s the ones that you trust.

My senses are bruised, though nothing will show, I’m plagued by this hole I can’t ever close.

My faith shrivels up, my bubble has burst. Can’t you read my body? Can’t you use your words?

The Freeze will revisit me but slowly less so, and this hole, it will shrink like a waning shadow.

I see how the violence has filled up his head, while my violation lies limp on the bed.

Give me half the year and I’ll love again, when I’m finally ready to let the right one in.

My tears in the dark make a river to float, I remember this feeling, the knot in my throat

I know my own wisdom, and I won’t give my time to men who aren’t trying to fix their own kind.

when I swallow my voice and there’s no air to breathe; after all I’m a woman, I was built to please.

My body is soft, my self-worth hard-won, my healing is happening, my conditioning undone.

The Yellow Sunflower Faith Stellmaker

In collaboration with Dr Jananie William, Senior Lecturer in Actuarial Studies, this image focuses predominantly on the feminine experience of domestic violence (DV) survivors. In relation to Dr Jananie’s research into DV, this work projects a positive example of how women can thrive and be successful as they move forward after experiencing DV. Traditionally, the sunflower has been associated with the characteristics of hope, strength, and endurance. The yellow sunflower is included in the image to highlight the potential opportunities for DV women survivors. Women who experience DV often suffer physical and emotional trauma. Within these violent relationships, women can feel bare and vulnerable. The woman’s face is hidden from us and her identity remains unknown to show the universality of pain and vulnerability of DV. Her bareness is exposed to us as we see the nakedness of her back.

Faith Stellmaker is a student at the Australian National University. Her work, which involves both analog and digital photography, explores the ways in which girls present themselves and is largely focused on adolescence and youth. Faith’s previous group exhibitions include VIEW2020 at Canberra’s Photoaccess and Everyone Looking at Everyone at the ANU School of Art Gallery Foyer.

Although experiencing DV is a challenging and painful experience, there is hope for these women. The yellow in the bra, like the sunflower, shows strength as the woman moves forward by getting dressed and proceeding with her life post-DV. *** This work was originally exhibited

Instagram: faith_stellmaker on University Avenue at the ANU Portfolio: faithstellmaker.format.com as part of Insight Out by AMBUSH.

Waking Nightmares: A Feminist Critique of the Revenge Sleep Phenomenon Imogen McDonald

You don’t belong to yourself. Not really. Let’s say you’re awake for 17 hours, you probably belong to yourself for about 12 per cent of the day. Two hours. So, who do you belong to for the other 15? Well… You belong to the annual $650.1 billion of unpaid care work in Australia. You belong to the annual $132 billion of unpaid domestic labour in Australia. You belong to a $25,000 HELP debt you can only dream of paying off one day. You belong to your $500,000 mortgage for a crumbling house in the suburbs. You belong to the cries of your irritating children. You belong to the photoshopped goddesses on your Instagram feed who try to convince you to try that ‘magic diet’. Finally, you belong to your bed, in which you can recharge your energy just in time to redistribute it to everyone and everything else all over again, the next day. And what do we do with the two hours we own, you ask? How do we spend these tiny slithers of freedom, before we doze into the inevitable time portal that is sleep? We scroll and read and think and dream—and we cut further and further into our sleep. These sacrificial winks of time seem better than the alternative: entering the void that leads us to inevitable responsibility. We can sleep when we’re dead, right? In fact, the word ‘bed’ appropriately originates from the Proto-Germanic term badja, meaning grave. We’ll continue

to live like this until one day we’re lowered down into our eternal beds, where maybe we can finally get some rest. Sleep is fast becoming a necessity that we are more and more reluctant to embrace. Are beds becoming a 21st century waste of space? Derived from the Chinese expression 報復性熬夜, or ‘bàofùxìng áoyè’, ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’ was a term first popularised on Twitter by journalist Daphne K. Lee, and is now probably infiltrating your TikTok For-You page. Lee describes it as “A phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours.” Without a doubt, this ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’ or ‘sleep procrastination’ is becoming a universal experience in the perpetual race to ‘success’ that is the 21st century. Although extreme productivity isn’t exactly deemed negative or toxic in today’s world, a lack of sleep has adverse impacts on our mood, memory, and physical health. Australia’s work culture certainly affords a relative level of freedom in comparison to the strict employment regulations of other countries. Nevertheless, the revenge sleep phenomenon is gripping our lives at a rapid rate. This is not surprising, considering that half of the Australian population is working without pay, on top of paid work. Now, remember that $650.1 billion of unpaid care work and $132 billion of unpaid domestic labour I mentioned earlier? The labour that is gripping you by the hair and dragging you back from the fantasy that is your free time? Statistically, this unpaid work is much more likely to be

done by women. Every week, Australian women complete approximately 13.1 more hours of unpaid labour than men, totaling a mighty 681 additional hours per year. The largest sector of Australia’s economy is unpaid childcare, which is three times the size of the financial and insurance services industry, according to 2017 data. Yet again, women carry out twice as much of this unpaid childcare. The repercussions and emotional toll of this work are summarised in a piece by author Gemma Hartley for Harper’s Bazaar: “I find myself worrying about how the mental load bore almost exclusively by women translates into a deep gender inequality that is hard to shake on the personal level.” Our days are spent slicing up food for our children, for our elderly parents and grandparents. Nights are spent slicing into sleep, as we attempt to obtain a slither of time to ourselves. The scrutiny women face in keeping the environments of themselves and those around them clean is so excessive that it turns inwards. It seeps onto our skin, sails through our blood, and stains our minds. We become engrossed in keeping our legs cleanly shaven, our faces bare of any wrinkles, spots, or hairs, our teeth gleaming white. Clean. Tidy. Neat. Some may say this is ‘selfcare’; that this is time spent when we do belong to ourselves—we are doing all of this for ourselves, aren’t we? Ask yourself if you would still do it all if you moved through life as a ghost. Like I told you at the beginning, you are at the mercy of the enigmas who live in your Instagram feed. Whilst you may feel like you indeed belong to the cries of your irritating

children, can the requirements of childcare somehow be turned into a positive tool, reducing the insidiousness of the revenge sleep phenomenon? Ironically, the answer is yes—some companies have already made the switch to a four-day working week after conversing with experts in the field: working mums. The deadlines and responsibilities that parents have mean that they are completing a week’s worth of work in four days. School pick-up runs and childcare necessitate a strict time management framework—a framework that companies are beginning to examine in order to transition to a fourday working week. The convention of the five-day working week has become unrealistic and unfair, considering that technological advancements have meant that the amount of work people take on after hours from their laptops at home often equates to a few extra days’ work, anyway. A shortened working week results in increased staff retention, minimised sick leave, higher levels of productivity and work satisfaction, and, most importantly, allows time for people to belong to themselves. Perhaps, you are lucky enough not to have these responsibilities pressing you to engage in the revenge sleep phenomenon. But you can’t get away that fast. Look behind you, and you will find the $25,000 HELP debt I mentioned before, following you around. Actually, it isn’t just following you. It is chasing you into the nighttime, and leaving you with a few sacrificial hours to catch your breath and relax. For many students, the glow of the night is devoid of judgement, responsibility, and guilt. The epidemic swallowing our generation is the need to constantly be ‘doing’; during the minute break times deemed acceptable, you shouldn’t just be relaxing, but relaxing productively. Watching the latest documentary, playing a sport, learning French on Duolingo. When will we be able to spend a few hours sitting on a bench in a park, thinking of absolutely nothing useful or constructive? With all things considered, it is no wonder we don’t feel like we belong to ourselves anymore. It is no wonder that we cling to morsels of time during which we can finally manage to sit with ourselves in peace. To have a conversation with ourselves. To enjoy ourselves. This article has basically defined you as a puppet with your arms controlled by your children, your head bopping around attached to the

superficial pressures of your Instagram feed, and your legs moving by the strings of your study commitments. But you do not have to keep relying on the nighttime to cut the strings of your various puppeteers. As a result of increased social consciousness and mental health awareness, aided by the occasionally useful vessel of TikTok, we are beginning to question why we are having to sacrifice our sleep to feel a sense of peace. Discussions are sparking action within various companies, and the concept of genuine self-care, including having time to oneself, is embedding its roots in both education and our everyday vocabulary. The tables are slowly turning, on the way to defeating the revenge sleep phenomenon. Or should I say, the beds are turning? So, hop right in under the covers, and get some sleep instead of reading this article at 2am!

Let’s Not Get Back to Normal Scarlet Hill and Charlotte Stump

GDP. Interest rates. Stock market. Inflation.

of growth at all costs is a common sentiment for our generation.

Our eyes glaze over. Charlotte has always been dispassionate about the economic indicators that the rest of the world seemed obsessed with. She never envisioned how economics could be the solution to the many problems she viewed around her, and subconsciously shut herself off from learning more. What began as a lack of interest and education slowly developed into feeling embarrassed and excluded from maledominated conversations about these issues. By contrast, Scarlet, who studies economics at university, was ordinarily fascinated by the forces that operate the global economy. However, recently she has become more and more disillusioned by the patriarchal world and rhetoric of her studies.

When the economy came to a standstill in 2020 in the face of a global pandemic, society was afforded an opportunity to reconsider our conception of ‘normal’. On a personal level, we were no longer bored by the world’s obsession with growth, but outraged. How can our governments, businesses, and media be so obsessed with getting back to this ‘normal’? This capitalistic ‘normal’ that, by nature, entrenches inequality? Governments like that of the US have chosen to lift lockdown while still recording 50,000 new cases of COVID a day. While lifting lockdown is good for business and improves isolationrelated mental health concerns, the act leaves us sceptical about whether such prioritisation of the economy is truly for the benefit of the people, in the way a universal basic income or access to free healthcare would be. Often, people need to go back to work because they cannot afford to stay home, despite a fatal pandemic.

In discussing this dissatisfaction, the two of us discovered that we shared the same frustration. Interrogating the boredom we felt toward the economy, we realised we weren’t engaging because we felt that the system no longer made sense. Not because we didn’t understand how it worked, but because of the way that it worked. Whether you have studied economics or had little interaction with the field, frustration with the rhetoric

In 2021, we see the failures of the economy every day. Our economic system creates desperate people; people who will lower their standards and work for virtually nothing, away from their family, or in horrible conditions. Who can think about climate change when you need to pay rent? How can you think about refugees when you need to feed your family? This economy is rotten, founded on an outdated paradigm of consumption

and waste that no longer satisfies the population’s needs. As a result, the Amazon rainforest is now producing more CO2 than it consumes. Thailand imports as much chicken as it exports, travelling 10,000 kilometres each way. Not to mention mining on Indigenous land, poverty, social inequality, greenhouse gas emissions, coral bleaching, overfishing… and it goes on. The media has been saturated with rhetoric about returning to preCOVID times. During the summer before COVID-19 hit, we would spend blisteringly hot days inside as the smoke from the bushfires made the air quality too dangerous to breathe. The Prime Minister was on holiday in Hawai’i. We see the irony in the fact that the man in charge of our future avoided all responsibility by refusing to address Australia’s considerable production of greenhouse gases, which threatens islands exactly like the one to which he escaped. It is infuriating that people are demanding to return to this broken system. Instead of getting ‘back to normal’, and allowing ourselves to disconnect from discussions about the economy, it is imperative that we engage. Our generation is inheriting a world rife with inequality and crises, but it does not have to stay like this.

W e recently came across the ‘wellbeing economy’—a system that holds human and ecological wellbeing at its core, and measures success by metrics such as job security, environmental prosperity, and gender equality. Above all, a wellbeing economy is centred on universal and sustainable goals. To younger generations, the notion of a wellbeing economy seems so… obvious. Of course, you can’t measure the health of an economy with one single indicator. Economies are complex. But our current model, which entrenches inequalities and consumerist behaviour, is the root of many problems. It is fundamental that we change the narrative around what constitutes a successful economy—and we can begin by including everyone in this conversation. Women are disenchanted by the maledominated world of economics. Maybe we aren’t interested because we have internalised a misogynistic conception of our place in the economy after years of being marginalised by the dominant economic paradigm. This is no fault of ours; it is becoming increasingly clear to us that the patriarchy was built into the economy. In a recent economics tutorial, Scarlet was discussing why Adam Smith did not include women in his economic theory presented in The Wealth of Nations, the 1776 book that essentially founded free-market economics. Some responses included: “Perhaps Smith wanted to simplify his theory, and women were extraneous,” or “They weren’t participating in economic activities, so it was unnecessary to include them.” The fact that this erasure could be understood and explained away in 2021 was shocking. Excluded from the founding economic theory, it is difficult to reconcile how women were ever to achieve equality within the system. Perhaps women weren’t included in this economic theory because Smith believed that individuals are inherently

‘self-interested’—that is, they are only motivated to favour themselves— which is not true of women. Domestic work, which is fundamentally not self-interested, was therefore not recognised as actual work. Today, domestic labour is still not recognised, despite the 1995 UN Human Development Report’s estimation that the value of women’s unpaid labour amounts to $11 trillion USD per annum. It seems clear, now, why women are demanding to move the narrative away from a traditional conception of the economy that knows only self-interested individuals and gendered and racial exclusion. An economy that foregrounds the wellbeing of the entire society feels innately more appealing. We also came across the work of Dr Katherine Trebeck, an Australian economist, who is the Senior Strategic Advisor for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. She has been instrumental in creating an alliance of governments implementing new economic policies with wellbeing frameworks. Four out of five of the governments she works with are led by women. Scotland, N e w Zealand, Iceland, Wales, and Finland are at the forefront of developing transformative e conomic systems that hold human and environmental wellbeing at their hearts. While correlation does not always invoke causation, it is no coincidence that young women like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin are initiating this revolution. Female leaders are adept

at engaging with a range of interconnected issues and combatting them with innovative solutions. For example, Sanna Marin is committed to the promise that Finland will be the world’s first climate neutral welfare state. She endeavours to achieve this by foregrounding climate issues in economic policies, as well as funding innovation that will reduce the cost of green technology. In comparison to these governments implementing policies that value ecological and human wellbeing, Australia’s action, or its lack thereof, feels particularly maddening. In early July, the UN reported that Australia ranked last on action in response to climate change out of 170 UN countries. In August this year, Scott Morrison refused to sign a ‘blank cheque’ to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions. But instead of feeling dismayed at the Liberal government’s triumphing of growth at all costs rhetoric, this news can galvanise action. We have more learning to do, but we are no longer apathetic and disengaged. An economy centred upon wellbeing goals will not solve all the crises facing us, but it is a fundamental step towards a fairer, more sustainable way of living. To start, let’s change the narrative. Let’s replace this obsession with GDP, consumerism, and exponential growth with discourse about social welfare benefits, racial and gender equality, and environmental prosperity. Let’s try to birth a new normal.

The Floating Rock: Nihilism or a Rejection of Expectations? Eugenie Maynard

We’re all here on a rock floating in space, so what’s the point? It is an idea and sentiment that I’m sure everyone in our generation is familiar with, and has probably even expressed at some point. But is this just nihilism reincarnate, or something more? Nihilism has always arisen as a reaction to a rapidly changing world. In the 20th century we had the likes of Sartre and Camus reacting to societal upheaval in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and global conflict. Nihilism was born from the erasure of commonly held truths that underpinned the social fabric of life at the time. This environment of change and instability lent itself to the central concept of nihilism, that all values are baseless, and therefore moral and social constructs built around them are meaningless. This then leads people to withdraw from society, as they can no longer find a meaningful place in it. It’s no wonder that Gen Z is embracing nihilism. The world has been completely reconstructed within our lifetime: we’ve come of age in the wake of 9/11 and rapid globalisation, paired with the explosion of the information age. The way in which people communicate, connect, and receive information has drastically changed with social media and the constant access to the news. Our generation has become accustomed to a heightened awareness of social problems, contributing to a rise in anxiety. The accelerating change in the operation of society has led some of our generation to question our place in the world and the purpose of our existence, leaning into the nihilism born from earlier eras

of massive change. This embrace of nihilism is particularly seen in online spaces such as TikTok, where it is not out of place for people to joke that they want to die because of how meaningless everything is. The meaninglessness of modern life has been exacerbated by the climate crisis, and accompanying climate anxiety, prompting many to question the point of improving a world that may soon be uninhabitable. I know for me, the climate crisis is always in the back of my mind, impacting the choices I make not only now, but also for a future which may not exist. I mean, how on earth is anyone supposed to plan what their life might look like in 20, 30 years when we can’t even be sure that the planet will exist in the same way? There has also been a huge tension between the efforts of young activists and established governments that seem impervious to change. The intersection of these issues can be seen in the Extinction Rebellion movement, which highlights the futility of life in the wake of the climate crisis through its disruptive political actions. The constant struggle to achieve even the smallest amount of change contributes to the sense of pointlessness often felt by people of our generation. However, I think it would be dismissive for the ‘floating rock’ mentality to be justified as part of the sarcastic and nihilistic attitudes that Gen Z is known for. This mentality has been harnessed by young people to empower us to take risks and reject social conventions that no longer work for us. After all, if nothing matters, then why bother conforming to standards that don’t reflect who you are? For me personally, as a Queer

woman, this mantra of ‘who cares’ has been liberating, not nihilistic, as it gave me the freedom to express myself and explore my identity regardless of what was expected of me. It has allowed me to experiment with how I dress, what I share of myself with other people, and the references I make which, to people in the know, would definitely out me, as it has allowed me to reject the expectation of heterosexuality. This liberating mentality rejects conservative ideas often associated with religion and tradition, and instead reconstructs a social consciousness that embraces diversity. This rejection can be seen in the rising rates of secularism among young people, signifying a move away from institutionalised religion that has historically been an important social force in upholding more conservative morals. It is also seen in the relaxed attitude often taken by younger people towards matters that used to have a huge impact on social standing, such as sexuality or employment. It’s this kind of freedom that I often find accompanies the expression of the ‘floating rock’ idea. Sure, there is always a cynical and mildly nihilistic undertone to it, but at the core of things, the floating rock mentality is about embracing change and reshaping social expectations to align with the values of our generation. It also provides a strong motivation for positive change, and instead of cowering in the face of constant information and bad news, we can use this ‘who cares’ mantra to make our society reflective of us. And that’s what makes it so empowering.

Identity Theft Neve Traynor

CW: Drug use, hallucinations.

been a millionaire. Fuck you, universe.

When Smilk began his set, I knew I’d taken too much. In the rush of the peak, there wasn’t even time to admire fractals in the dirt, or the colours of the laser lights. I should have known it’d be hardcore when I offered to pay and the Frenchman replied, “This is holy acid, I don’t sell it.”

A lady in rags and fur bundled in front of me, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Her skin was wriggling with tattoos and beads. “I’m in love with your velvet jacket, it’s divine!”

Here I was, alone in the bush surrounded by wooks, and I couldn’t remember my own name. The dancefloor throbbed red and purple, bruised all over. The bass was dripping and bubbling and Smilk was on the decks, winding me up and down like clockwork. “Fucking Smilk, aye, he does this every time,” I yelled at the person next to me. He stared back blankly. God, didn’t he understand me? Was I speaking gibberish? I swayed in the dirt, staring ahead at Smilk. Shit shit shit, losing control. Everyone knows. It’s fine, just do your own thing. Shit. The thought loops had begun. My memory was like a mirror. If I turned to look inward, I was deflected away. Who was I, where was I, and what on earth was I doing in this grungy mudfest? Red and violet people scurried around me like Sims characters, hiding their vulnerabilities behind smiling avatars. So this was it? We were all in a video game. Obviously. And just my luck—I’d landed in the body of a girl who’d gone to a godforsaken doof by herself. I seethed at this twist of fate. Christ’s sake, I could’ve

“Thanks!” “What’s your name, darling?” she shouted into my ear. I blinked at her and chuckled. “I don’t even know. It doesn’t even matter!” She roared with laughter. “Who fucking knows!” Her eyes told me she was here in my dimension. Then she was gone. I checked my phone. 12:56 am. I looked up past the tarp marquee and saw a gaping black hole where the night should’ve been. The dancefloor spun on its axis and my brain melted into a puddle. Was I standing in the middle of the marquee, on the edge, near the stage—I couldn’t see! There was only the black hole and red and purple bodies, merging in the matrix we’d all been sucked into. I had to get out. But everyone is looking— no one is looking at you! I staggered to the edge of the marquee and stepped into the abyss of night. When everything is dark, the mind takes control. Time, I should check. My phone screen lit up. 12:55 am. What the fuck? Nope, I didn’t need that in my life. I shoved the phone back in my pocket and ran towards the forest. The bass

faded into a quiet drone as the trees parted to let me in. I sprinted along the dirt path, but the dirt seemed to run beneath me and I hardly gained a metre. My eyebrows knitted. Why don’t my legs work? I looked down to see my feet in a flood of mud, squelching and sinking. My Docs were bricks as I pulled, so I undid the laces and jumped out in my white fluffy socks. I fled further into the forest with the mire like a monster behind me. Along the path I saw white flashes every few metres, so I paused and bent over one. A crisp, dry bone. Small, like a knuckle. As I kept walking, they twinkled like stars on the dirt. Bones laid out like breadcrumbs. “Aha, a clue!” I hurried along the path following the bones as they grew in size and bloodiness. Something rustled ahead of me on the path and I froze, legs wide apart and fluffy socks now filthy. “Hello?” A figure hovered behind a tree. I squinted in the dark. It was eight feet tall, wearing a black suit, with long fingers. Slowly, its head poked out, and I saw the white, featureless face of— “Slenderman?” It popped back like a startled rabbit, and stood rectangularly against the tree. “I’ve heard about you! You’ve got quite a reputation. I was told you can even–” A stick snapped and disappeared into thin air.

Slenderman

“–teleport.” I sighed. If only I had a friend, this nightmare would end. I closed my eyes, breathing in. In the orangey blur behind my lids, perfect aesthetics hurtled into view. Digital pastel patterns slid over one another, squiggles and flowers and ombre stripes. Blobs blended in shades of peach and orchid and fawn. Straight out of Tumblr. I felt instantly calmer. I thought again of my name, and a thousand mirrors appeared, each inside the next in an infinity of glass. My face was inside the frames, growing smaller and smaller. A bony finger tapped me on the shoulder. I awakened and turned to see a hunched green man with no nose smiling at me. “Salad Fingers! Boy is it good to see you.” “Hello there, young child,” Salad Fingers croaked. “May I hang you on a rusty meat hook?”

I laughed nervously. “I’m all for getting kinky, but maybe we could get to know each other a bit first?” “Mmm.” He licked his lips and his eyelids lowered. “I like it when the red water comes out.” I gulped. I wasn’t getting across to him. “Look, my safe word can be spoons?” Salad Fingers leapt into the air and screeched, throat gurgling with pleasure. “SPOONS! SPOONS!” I gritted my teeth. Vibrations buzzed my left bum cheek. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” floated into the forest. I held up a hand to Salad Fingers. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this.” I turned away and held the phone to my ear. “Hello?” “Hello. I’m calling today on behalf of Telstra. It has come to our attention that your computer has been hacked.” I covered my mouth with a hand, then quickly removed it. “How awful! I’m so glad you called!” “Yes, madam, it’s quite serious. We have reason to believe they may have accessed your bank details and could use this to commit identity t h e f t .”

The connection crackled a little. I looked up to the night sky. “Oh my god!” “Yes, madam. So, I just need to confirm some details with you. You are currently living in Canberra, is that correct?” Canberra. That sounded familiar. “I think so!” I grinned into the phone. “Very good. Now, can I confirm that I am speaking with, er–” I gasped. Me? My name? “–um, Neve Traynor?” the voice asked. Neve. The hall of mirrors collapsed inside my head. The treetops danced and swayed with excitement for me. I clicked my heels together and squealed. “Pardon?” “You have no idea how much this means to me!” The voice on the phone paused. “That is good, madam. So next we need to confirm your payment details–” “Seriously, thank you. I was having such a rough night.” I sighed at the forest, turned around and began walking towards the colourful flashing lights of the dancefloor. “Alone and anxious. I just needed a chat.” “You are welcome. So, the card number?” “I needed someone who cared about me. And then you called, worried about my safety. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” I ripped my Docs out of the mud and swung them by the laces over my shoulder. “Madam–” “You returned me to myself! You gave me back my name.” The disconnect tone beeped in my ear. I held the blank phone up to my face, shrugged, and pushed it back in my pocket. I threw my arms out to my sides, Doc laces in hand, and ran through the grass, shrieking.

Saturn Returns, Death, and the Existential Mystery of Transgender Identity Bastian Debont

The moon had streaked its way in through the glass panels on my front door, bright enough to cast real shadows, the light with the dark contrasting sharp as a painter’s palette knife. And, next to the gaunt face of the moon; Saturn, in conjunction, glittering with enticing power. On a whim, I recited the Orphic hymn to Saturn off the screen of my phone, barely a whisper, and then returned to bed. 3am. 4am. Sobbing breathlessly, my throat raw, my pillow drenched, and the bonedeep muscle-aching heart-wrenching terror that wouldn’t subside. “Beyond all earthly help,” I repeated to myself that night, trying to stay quiet enough that he wouldn’t hear me in the next room over and turn his wrath to me, “beyond all earthly help.” *** Saturn’s a bitch. *** Historically, Saturn was heralded ‘the greater malefic’; a bad omen when in a powerful position in a chart, associated with reviled figures. Her rings, seen only faintly through early telescopes, were the shimmering scythe of Father time, Death itself, the curling horns of the Devil. Before the discovery of the outer planets, Saturn was where the buck stopped. The furthest reaches of mankind’s vision, the last mystery, the threshold where all people must pass but none can know what lies beyond.

None, of course, except for her. *** I started using she/her for Saturn, despite the traditionally masculine association with the planet, after being taught about her by a mentor, a trans woman who midwifed me through many of my own contradictions with gender. In the Orphic hymn, Saturn is hailed as “Husband of Rhea, and Prometheus wife.” Now, Rhea is the traditional wife of Cronus, of course, but Saturn as the wife of Prometheus was confusing. When my mentor told me that it was unclear whether the word was ‘wife’ or ‘wise’, it didn’t clear anything up—if it was ‘wise’, then it still said in the hymn that Saturn was wed to Prometheus; the end of humanity bound up with the beginning, the bearer of the first flame. It reminded me in that moment of a painting I’d seen years ago. A woman with a scythe leans against the wall of a farmhouse, flowers in her hair, her arms solid and sturdy from a life of hard labour. Inside, an old man takes his last breaths. She’s in no rush. She can wait. *** Trans feminist scholar Susan Stryker wrote in her 2008 book Trans History, “Trans issues touch on existential questions about what it means to be alive and takes us into areas that we rarely consciously consider with any degree of care—similar to our attitudes about gravity, for example, or breathing.” Questioning your gender tears you into pieces. It shakes apart every pre-existing assumption you had about yourself, and

the world. It kills you. Even those who come out the other side reaffirmed in their cisness have a different relationship to gender. It wakes you up, makes you recognize the frailness and mutability of gender, just as a brush with death makes you appreciate the fragility of life. What remains, when everything else is stripped away? *** Saturn, as the greater malefic, has an unusual relationship with humanity. While the sun crosses the zodiac once a year, and the orbits of the other planets vary according to distance and temperament, Saturn completes a full cycle every 30 or so years. In astrology, we call this your ‘Saturn return’: it’s a time where you begin to reflect on your life and the choices you’ve made. Three full cycles of Saturn and you’ll be about 90 years old and probably approaching your death bed. Whenever Saturn returns to the spot where it was at the start of your life, it’s a time to sit down and reflect. “Alright, what have you learned so far?” *** 30 is often a strange age for trans people. Despite only being a decade away from it myself, I’ve only begun to slowly inch out of my shell enough to start coming out to people; it feels like I’ve barely started living my life. I have no idea if I’ll have started testosterone by then, or received any of ‘the surgeries’. I don’t know if my mother will have stopped calling me by my dead-name. When Saturn comes back around, I don’t know what I’ll tell her. Before me lays a threshold, and I don’t know what lies

beyond it. But I know who’ll be there to receive me. *** Obviously, despite my terrors, on that cold night when Saturn conjoined the moon, I didn’t die. I had accidentally initiated myself into the mysteries of Saturn, stared true fear in the face, and come out of it raw and stripped of things I didn’t even realise I was holding onto. Saturn’s a funny devil like that. Without her guiding influence, that night would have been just another horror suffered, another trauma to add to the list. Instead, the next morning when I scrubbed dried snot and salt off my face, I felt like I had crossed f r o m one side to another. I haven’t been scared in the same way since. Nothing, except Saturn herself, can hold that sort of power over me anymore. *** Saturn rules my chart as the ruler of Capricorn, my ascendant sign, the sign on the horizon when I was born that changes every hour—hence ‘horoscope’. ‘Hour-watcher’. Capricorn’s a funny little goatfish, at home neither really on land or in the sea. For most of my experience with astrology, all it told me was that people find me ‘serious’ at first, ‘boring’, ‘business-like’. But there’s some wisdom to be found in the symbolism; I’m comfortable with one foot in sea and one on shore. Neither really ‘a man’ in the eyes of society, nor ‘a woman’. ‘Wise beyond my years’ in the words of my friends and yet ‘childish’ in many ways. Here,

with you, in the land of the living, and yet not as well, already having died at least once in this lifetime. Here is where I thrive, in the in-between spaces. Transcendental. Transgender. ***

Transness is a mystery. Every day I learn more about my gender and my relationship to it, every day I hear from other trans people with experiences that delight and confuse and astound me. We exist on the cutting edge of what it means to be human. We play our roles as initiators for baby trans folks, midwives for the gender confused, to receive those on the brink of death, mourning who they were. When Saturn receives me, in three turns of her elegant cycle’s time, I won’t be afraid. I’ll have already known her my whole life.

Savasana Ana Isaacs

Artist’s Statement Savasana is a Sanskrit word translating to “Corpse Pose” in English, and is the name of the yoga pose depicted in the painting. This pose is typically taken at the end of a yoga sequence to restore one’s energy after having expended it during the exercise. Therefore, despite its morbid name, Savasana facilitates a rebirth, presenting a contrast between lifeless physicality and regenerative intent. In the painting, I attempt to resurrect the physically inert body with dynamic watercolour spirals, representative of the prana (life force) which flows freely and with renewed strength during practice of the Savasana pose. I am prompted to reinterpret a recent loss as a similar process of regeneration, in keeping with the philosophy of Savasana.

About the Artist Ana Isaacs is in her third year of a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics/Master of International and Development Economics at the Australian National University. She pursues art as a hobby in her free time, as well as working on Bossy’s Art and Design team. Subject matter usually involves the female body, and she tends to work with coloured pencils in a palette of pinks and browns.

O Corpo Seco Cinnamone Winchester

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? — Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial

CW: Depictions of missing persons and murder. “O Corpo Seco.” “What?” Jonathan’s voice slices a neat wound into the heavy, afternoon air with a familiar kind of immediacy, as if the question had been poking experimentally at the loosely sewn seams of his downturned lips long before Isra even considered opening her mouth. Having returned to his seat as faithful audience member through season upon season in the pair’s lives, Emir—who has come to know the intricate choreography of their exchanges by heart—is rather unsurprised. The footpaths of the main street are nothing but dust and bleached bone until sundown during summers like this, but the nomads from the city stubbornly persevere, shielding their ice cream cones beneath what little shade the patio of the parlour has to offer in a silent, sweaty display of defiance. There is no solace in the tepid wind that blows, and as Jonathan leans forward in his seat to escape the embrace of hot plastic, Emir notices that his white shirt is soaked through in the places where it clings to his back; translucent, almost. “O Corpo Seco,” Isra repeats empha-

tically, fingers fluttering in Jonathan’s direction as if she’s reciting a spell. “The Dry Body. That’s what it’s called in Brazil. They say it used to be a man—when he died, the earth decided he had done so much harm to other people that it rejected his body from the soil. Now, it haunts highways and graveyards around São Paolo.”

sacred, unmissable rituals now that he is home—and he is well-practiced in their gestures. In front of the butcher’s, he pulls his weapon from his satchel, presses it flush against a flat surface, and discharges the ammunition. Once more, beside the grocery store. Then again. And again. And again. “Tell me it hasn’t been a year.”

“Isra,” Jonathan frowns, eyeing Emir warily. “Don’t.” “I’m just saying,” she says, shrugging. “Don’t either of you want an explanation for what’s been going on around here lately? For everything people have been seeing?” “I have an explanation,” Jonathan counters. “Multiple, actually. Laura Coffey is eighty years old and halfblind, Tom Harrell was absolutely smoking weed in that cemetery, and now you’re enabling them both.” “Alright,” Isra concedes, throwing her hands into the air with a huff, but Emir notices that the glimmer in her eye does not entirely fade, even as her attention wades into graver waters. “I’m sorry, Emir. I wasn’t trying to make it about—”

“It hasn’t been a year,” Emir says flatly, driving the lip of his stapler into the noticeboard by the mayor’s office with more force than he really needs. “It’s been three hundred and twenty-two days.” “Funny,” Jonathan remarks, sidestepping Emir and reaching into the bag at his hip to hand over another sheet of paper. Emir accepts this olive branch after a moment of weighted contemplation— but not without comment. “What are you doing here? I’m in the middle of something.” Click. “And I’m not about to stop you.” Again, Jonathan’s hand disappears into the dark fathoms of Emir’s bag. Click. “I just… I’m worried about you—about what it’s been like for you to be here all summer.”

“I know,” he says. ***

For the first time, Emir lowers the stapler. “I’m fine.”

Emir’s weekly rounds downtown are

“I definitely want you to be fine,”

Jonathan counters, granting respite to a shoulder against the edge of the noticeboard as he drills holes into Emir’s skull with his patient stare, “but I don’t think you are.” “Come on,” Emir shakes his head, making little effort to meet Jonathan’s eyes. “What do you want me to tell you? That I’ve moved on? My parents are still beside themselves; Nadia doesn’t leave her room for anything but school. The last time I spoke to— to him, I lost my temper because he’d left town without giving back Dad’s watch, the one I was supposed to take to the city with me—and two weeks later, he was just… gone. I have to be here, I have to help my family—and if this is all I can do short of kicking the mayor’s door down again and getting a jail sentence for the rest of the summer, so be it.” “No, I understand. I’m sorry. It must be horrible—not knowing.” Jonathan hesitates before his next words, pulling another poster out of Emir’s bag and contemplatively thumbing the upper corner of the page. “You must’ve printed thousands of these by now. Where did they all go?” Emir retrieves another photocopied page, staring down at the identifying details between the margins for little longer than a heartbeat before slamming it roughly against the noticeboard. “People have been taking them down—” Click. “—because I’m not from around here.” Click. “Because he’s not from around here.” Click. “It means we don’t matter.” Click. Click. Click.

“You should have told me—” “It wouldn’t make a difference,” he interrupts bitterly. “Nobody actually believes we belong here. If they did, I would know what happened to my brother.”

The noticeboard is a collage of monochrome faces. Come sunset, they, too, will disappear. Would they use the same photo for his obituary? “Where are you, Ali?” he whispers.

He’s reaching for the inner pocket of his open satchel for the umpteenth time when Jonathan snags his hand, threading their fingers together and jolting Emir out of his own mind well enough to finally look up. As Jonathan’s green eyes—ever the desperate hunters—ensnare unassuming brown, the last of Emir’s anger dies a peaceful death in his throat. “I wish I’d had the right words for you back then,” Jonathan murmurs. “I wish I had them now. But I’m here. I’m with you until the very end. We’ll find him, Emir; you, me, and Is. Okay?” Emir nods, swallowing thickly, and Jonathan’s grip tightens briefly; desperately. “Okay. Once you’re done here, I’ll drive you across the bridge— maybe someone in the next town will know something. We can pick up Isra on the way.” “Thank you,” Emir returns—but even as his attention drifts back to the noticeboard, he cannot quite shake an odd, prickling feeling that skitters up the length of his neck with thousands of unwieldy legs in the moments after Jonathan has walked away. Someone is watching him. “It was desiccated, dude,” Tom Harrell had told the three of them, as well as anyone else who had lingered by the disused swing set in the park long enough to listen. “Totally skin and bone. One second, I was alone, and the next—there was this huge skeleton, with black holes where the eyes should’ve been, just creeping around on the cemetery walls.” Heart in his throat, Emir turns his head, peering over his shoulder and into the darkening vista beyond; only the umbrageous body of a dead, dry tree, he realises, stares back. As he turns away with a low sigh, he catches sight of Jonathan’s familiar figure, still idling by his car. Just Jonathan, then: it must be.

*** “I really am sorry, you know.” “Don’t worry about it; you already apologised.” “No, I—not for that. For keeping my distance while we were at college.” “It’s fine, Is. We were days away from each other.” “You know that’s not what I mean,” Isra says reproachfully, cutting her fingertips through the water beneath her inflatable peacock to splash Emir. “Come on—I hate apologising. Don’t make this any harder than it already is.” “At least Jon isn’t here to say ‘I told you so’ while he thinks I’m not watching,” he teases lightly—rather, Jonathan’s realm of exploration for the afternoon lies within the outskirts of town, where the vehicle of a dead man awaits him. Jonathan Hawthorne I has not quite been the same since the demise of Reynold Walters; like a spectre, the man’s widow had begun to see Jonathan Sr. haunting the grounds around their property at all hours of the day, as if he were waiting to hear footsteps that would never again make a sound in this mortal realm. In the days that followed the funeral, Mrs. Walters had—rather generously— begun to accept his place among the wire fences and murderous weeds on the far reaches of her land, until he’d finally crossed over onto the right side of her kitchen window and volunteered to ease the burden that had been left upon her shoulders by his closest friend. With the help of his son, Jonathan Sr. had proposed, he could tow her husband’s old, damaged sedan to the junkyard and exchange

any useful parts that remained for a tidy sum of cash: Reynold had hit a deer twelve months prior. “He does that a lot, doesn’t he?” Isra laughs, a little wistfully. “Call me crazy, but I think I’ve missed it.” Her hand lingers in the water, tracing out lazy patterns across the surface of the lake even as her smile wastes away. “I’m just not good at… that. Being serious with people. I didn’t know how to act after Ali…” she trails off uncertainly. “It’s okay,” he says, with a little more force this time. “I know you. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Besides, you’ve had all summer to make up for it." This, he thinks, is enough. *** “Isra, I am begging you to avoid getting my interior wet.” “Yeah, yeah,” Isra retorts, rolling her eyes as she hoists herself into the back seat and adjusts the rainbow towel around her waist, coughing rather conspicuously in an attempt to avoid alerting Jonathan to the shower of sand that has just careened to the floor of the cab—Emir would wager she has forgotten that it’s her turn to vacuum the Road Runner next. As Jonathan pulls away from the parking lot and veers onto the main road, Emir reaches across the centre console to tap gently at his temple with a dark knuckle. “Penny for your thoughts? How’d the junkyard go?” “Never got around to it. It’s weird,” Jonathan reflects, lifting a hand from the steering wheel to rub the nape of his neck, “he said he’d meet me by the gate to Reynold’s property at midday, but he never showed. He could have at least let me off the hook officially so I could join you two—I must have been waiting for almost an hour…” but he trails off as his pickup truck rounds a bend, blanketed by deciduous trees on both sides, and slows to a near crawl beside a blockade that has restricted an entire lane. “What is that?”

A car accident, looks like,” Isra hedges, but Emir knows better. The skeleton of a vehicle lies stationary in the middle of the road, yes—but there is a halfshrouded body on the ground; a park ranger muttering the words ‘animal attack’ into the radio at their shoulder. Worse, still: he recognises the car. “Jonathan,” he murmurs, the grim reaper perched on his shoulders, “we should leave.” Heavy, stifling darkness presses in around the car as they approach, tumbling in through the open windows to escape what lies beyond.

out there?” he murmurs. “What could have possibly done that to him?” “An ‘animal attack’—it’s absolute garbage,” Isra says—there’s no use in pretending; they had all seen Jonathan Sr.’s dismembered body on the road. “What do they think live in these parts, mountain lions?” Miraculously, a small, affectionate smile twitches at Jonathan’s lips, and Emir sinks back into the leather seat as his eyelids surrender their will to carry on, Isra and Jonathan’s hushed conversation decelerating into the rhythm of a lullaby.

“Keep it moving, you three,” the sheriff warns, raising a hand as if to shield them all from the scene on the road behind him—but it’s already too late for Jonathan, who unbuckles his seatbelt, removes himself from the car, and pushes his way to the front of the uniformed crowd with an increasing sense of urgency; deaf to Isra and Emir’s protests behind him.

Of course, it doesn’t last long.

“Dad?”

After a moment, he tries again. “What just happened?”

“Holy shit—” Isra starts, yanking the steering wheel to the left. As she swerves off the road, apathetic to the protesting screech from the Road Runner’s brakes, Emir swears loudly— but neither Jonathan nor Isra, who immediately exit the vehicle, appear to have heard him.

*** “It was a beautiful funeral.” Still, Isra looks as if she’s moments away from throwing herself out of the driver’s seat just to avoid the silence, fingertips self-consciously tapping echoes of a melancholy hymn over the curves of the bright blue steering wheel cover in the Road Runner as the radio tiptoes in and out of sleepy, buzzing static. “He was loved, Jon. No one in this town will ever forget him—we’re with you. Today and always.” Like many young people in small towns with secrets about who and how they loved, Jonathan’s rapport with his namesake had been strained at best— it was only when Jonathan had first returned to town over the summer that his father had finally begun a relatively unrequited attempt to pick up the broken pieces of their relationship— but it remains clear to Emir that a small, childlike part of his friend still mourns this loss. Through the narrow rear-view mirror, Jonathan meets Emir’s eyes. “What’s

“Get out here,” Isra presses, peering into the dancing shadows past the Road Runner’s headlights. “No. Get back in the car,” Emir orders, leaning out of his open window and tapping at the door with the palm of his hand. “In case neither of you remember the conversation you were just having, it isn’t safe to be out here at night.” “You don’t get it. I saw it, Emir,” Isra turns on her heel, gesticulating wildly. “On the road—it was exactly how Tom described! Skin and bone, hollow eyes—” “Isra…” “I saw it too,” comes Jonathan’s confession—chest heaving, glasses askew upon his nose—and Emir hesitates. “Please,” he says. “It’s pitch-black out here—it could have been anything. Please, let’s go.” Isra’s eyes are wide in the dark. “Okay.”

*** “That’s a lot of people.” “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” “Well—maybe it isn’t such a terrible thing,” Jonathan offers, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. “Maybe we can try. To be normal, I mean.”

“Do you want to get out of here?” “Absolutely.” Emir has known that he would take a bullet for Isra since the moment she noticed he was sitting alone and offered to share her marble collection with him on his very first day of kindergarten, midway through the year—but he draws the line at parties. While Jonathan is perhaps better at hiding it (he had, after all, positioned himself on the frontlines during their preparation for Isra’s surprise celebration), Emir knows he has never been much of an extrovert, either, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the ceaseless stream of social niceties from well-meaning sympathisers have sanded his patience down into a thin, red line.

There is a gentleness about Jonathan that has always locked Emir in, craving more—and they’ve always been like this; have always pushed the boundaries of the word ‘friend’, but God, never before has he wanted so badly to be normal. His eyes flicker to Jonathan’s lips— And his phone chimes in his back pocket. Pulling away is perhaps the most difficult thing Emir has ever done in his life—but like a match striking to life and melting the shadows away, his memory of the ringtone’s owner echoes stubbornly in the recesses of his mind.

“I don’t know,” Emir replies, “but he said I’d figure it out… whatever that means.” He’s so close. So close— only a latitude and longitude away from solving Ali’s 90-letter riddle—so why is he afraid? Why, after a year of fumbling in the dark, does gaining his first piece of the puzzle feel absurdly like everything has come to an abrupt, staggering halt? Perhaps he doesn’t know what Ali means. Perhaps he’ll be standing in this godforsaken field forever. Isra catches one of his trembling hands. “We will figure it out. Let’s split up and see what we can find.”

Still, Emir will happily pretend that this lifebuoy is not for the both of them if it means they can escape—even if for a moment—and just like that, they’re out the front door, past the smoking stragglers on the porch. “You’re enabling me, you know,” he warns. “Soon enough, I’m going to lapse into full hermit mode.”

“It—” Emir swallows heavily, heart pounding in his throat as he reads the text aloud. “This is his phone number. It’s him, Jon.”

“Don’t you worry; I won’t let it get that far,” Jonathan laughs, moving beyond the boundaries of Isra’s front yard to lean against the white picket fence that lines the sidewalk by the street. “I just think we both deserve a little peace.”

A third participant in the conversation speaks from over their shoulders. “Then we have no time to lose.” Once Emir has made eye contact with the intruder over the beam of their flashlight, he expels a quiet sigh.

Emir isn’t sure if he even knows what that word means anymore—but his lips quirk all the same, his fingertips lifting the collar of his hand-me-down leather jacket to shield himself from the abnormal chill in the air. “It’s weird,” he says after a moment, “thinking about going back to campus. Student politics, library all-nighters, shitty café food—it all feels so…”

“Isra, it’s your birthday. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be fine—”

“Normal?” Jonathan replies quietly, crossing one arm over the other as he peers at Emir with a small smile.

until even the beam of Emir’s flashlight has lost sight of all that lies more than three paces ahead. As they finally slow to a standstill, the air feels like it always does before a storm: electric. “This is the Walters’ property,” Jonathan murmurs, glancing over at the unlit house in the far distance, “and it just about matches the coordinates. What would Ali want us to do here?”

“Like I’d let you two have all the fun without me,” she interrupts, pushing her light into Emir’s hand as she marches right past them. “Come on; if we go now, we’ll make it back before cake.” *** Their journey unfolds along unlocked gates and old dirt paths until dusk has thoroughly evolved into foggy dark;

None are successful in their separate searches behind the corroded, back side of the cattle shed on the outskirts of the farm, or even the abandoned hutch beside the shallow pond—but the stark-white sign that reads ‘DIG’ in thick, gnarled block lettering in the middle of the field, as well as the rusted tool lying beside it, are unmissable. As Emir glances at the ground beneath his feet, he sees four indelible chasms in the soft grass where something leaden was once moored. “I thought you never towed the car,” he says to Jonathan, who shakes his head. “I didn’t.” When neither he nor Emir move, Isra steps forward, picks up the shovel, and breaks ground. *** “Alright,” Jonathan says, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of one hand as he holds out the redhandled shovel to Emir with the other, “your turn.”

Emir nods wordlessly, and once he has traded his torch for the tool, Jonathan lowers himself into a crouch beside Isra. “Let’s think about this properly,” she begins, now that a sufficient amount of her breath has found its way back into her body. “What are we doing here?” “Finding my brother,” Emir says, though there is a degree of hesitancy in his voice that he cannot seem to shake. A year has come and gone. Where has Ali been? “Getting answers.” “From where?” she asks. “A hole in the ground? What could possibly be here? I want to find him, Emir—but something isn’t adding up.” Jonathan sighs, clearly trying to place himself in a position of neutrality. “Well, Ali wanted us to find something… But what?” As his fingers glide over one of the cavities in the grass, he stills. “I just don’t know about this,” Isra returns, eyeing the steadily deepening hole in the ground—but her attention is snared in the space between two heartbeats by a deathly grip around her upper arm. “The car,” Jonathan whispers, his face pale. “He didn’t hit a deer.” “What car?” she hisses. “What fucking car, Jon?” “Reynold’s,” he says, just as Emir exhumes a gold watch, still attached to a decomposing wrist.

She hits the call button, and beyond the fog, something rings. “Ah… you received my message.” Two dead eyes stare out at them from within the darkness; a skeletal, toolong finger lifts to silence the phone.

“Reynold,” Jonathan repeats breathlessly—but Emir pushes his way past, easily speaking over him.

“Oh, good,” Isra whispers, cell slipping from her fingertips, “it speaks.”

“What the fuck is my brother doing here?”

It walks, too: slowly, as if calculating precisely how to conserve the energy within its hide-and-bone body. The monster is paper-thin in the slivers of moonlight that cut streaks of white into its waxy flesh, and as it draws nearer, Emir sees its heart pounding beneath the skin stretched taut over its emaciated chest.

“Ah… the original sin,” it sighs, “an accident I have been paying for ever since. Still, Jonathan Sr. had some very powerful friends who buried our secret.”

“Why do you have Ali’s phone?” Jonathan—ever the rationalist—calls out, stepping in front of Emir. “I had to bring you here somehow,” the creature rasps through blackened lips. “I am sorry about your father, Jonathan. He was… a necessary casualty.” “Necessary?” Jonathan chokes on a bitter laugh. “Not a single thing about what you did to him was necessary. Call it what it is—murder.” “Murder, retribution, karma… it’s all the same, isn’t it?” it questions, letting the phone fall to the ground by its feet. “What goes around comes around, and around, and around…”

The earth is still. “Ali.”

“Not

With an awful kind of elegance, Emir straightens up, turns on his heel, and vomits. “No,” Isra says hastily, pulling out her cell and dialling a number into the keypad as an instinctual, gravitational pull carries Jonathan to Emir’s side. “He just texted you. It can’t be him. It can’t be…”

what,”

corrects,

Jonathan grows pale. “What are you talking about?” “Come now,” it laughs. “Don’t be naïve. He was in the car when it happened.”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“God, enough with the theatrics. What are you?” Isra demands, but it does not break eye contact with Jonathan and Emir to acknowledge her directly.

“This—this is my father’s watch.”

Though—you really should know. You are trespassers on my property, after all.”

“who.

Emir is beginning to feel as if he may throw up again. “The boy came out of nowhere in the dark; we didn’t know if he was still alive, but we buried him all the same. Jonathan told me that it would raise too many suspicions to send the car in for repairs or claim insurance—so we parked it here, over the body. I was able to oust the thought from my mind, for a time, and when the Reaper himself came to collect my wretched soul, I believed the whole affair had come to an end—until I returned as this.” As it sweeps a hand down the length of its torso, Emir scoffs. “And now you know—I did what I had to do. You have no idea what it’s like, boy… rejection from Heaven and Hell. An eternity in this body. My only choice now is penance—I am to walk the earth until…” “Until what?” “Until I am forgiven. I have repented for my sins—Jonathan Hawthorne I is dead; I have shown you the body. All you must do is forgive me, and I will be gone—forever.”

Silence lays its heavy burden upon their shoulders as Emir kneels back down by the body in the grave, unclasping the watch before shrugging off his jacket and arranging it into the echoes of a shroud. Finally, he stares up at the creature, cradling the golden adornment like a holy rosary in his hands. “What’s his name?”

lived! But you had to spare yourself the trouble and the consequences. You left him here for a year, guilt-free, and now you want me to forget about it, the same way you forgot about him—not for me, but for your own sake. Bullshit. You’re not sorry. You’ll never be sorry. You don’t deserve to rot in Hell—you can live with what you’ve done, old man. Forever.”

It stills. “What?” “You heard me,” he says flatly.“What’s my brother’s name?” “I…” The creature stumbles over syllable after syllable, searching for the only combination of letters that it knows will placate Emir once and for all— but he immediately holds up a hand, unwilling to impart his patience any longer. “I thought so. No.” “No?” “No,” Emir repeats firmly, lifting himself onto his feet—he holds his ground, even as the bloodless corpse stalks closer. “I don’t forgive you. You didn’t just kill Ali—you made sure my family would never have any hope of finding him. He could’ve—he could have

“Very well,” it rasps. “I will live— though I cannot say the same for you.” With a guttural snarl, the creature launches itself toward Emir—who watches in horror as Jonathan rushes forward and positions himself in harm’s way— And is thwarted by a rusted shovel with a red handle.

from Ali. As Isra idles a few footprints away, clutching her phone to her ear, Jonathan taps Emir’s temple with a gentle index finger. “Penny for your thoughts?” “I…” Emir sighs, smoothing out the creases of the jacket beside him. “It’s been a year. I stopped letting myself be unrealistic about this situation a long time ago, but… I’ll get to bring him home, at least. He gets to come home. Not every family is that lucky.” Isra seems strange in the light of the tangerine dawn; older. There are deep hollows beneath Jonathan’s eyes, and Emir knows that none of them will ever again feel normal. Still, the wind blows.

Whatever is left of Reynold Walters collapses to the ground with a weak, wet gurgle, and only when he finally goes still does Isra loosen her grip. “Right,” she breathes. “No more surprises on my birthday.” When the three of them collide, capturing one another in an awkward, tight embrace, Emir has a hard time believing he will ever be able to let go. They bury it in a shallow grave, away

*** Beneath the dead earth, the soil stirs uneasily, writhing away from the rotting poison that suffocates it from above and below with a silent, desperate cry. It pushes; breathes. Pushes, breathes. At last, the surface ruptures. O Corpo Seco will not be laid to rest so easily.

The Dark, the Twisted, and the Downright Frightening: A Defence of Horror Literature Kaila Minotti

CW: Discussions of violence, racism, sexism, gore, and self-harm. I confess, I have been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember. My fear is not debilitating—I can now sleep soundly without a nightlight—but you will not catch me watching anything that is even slightly scary before bed. Because of this fear and my predisposition to fright, it was a shock to me and my close friends when I became absolutely enamoured by horror literature over the past few years. It seems counterintuitive, I know, but if a novel is dark, creepy, or frightening, you bet that I want to read it. Not many of my friends and family seem to share this love of horror novels. Instead, I often find myself getting into heated debates in defence of the genre against accusations of it being cheap, exploitative, and written almost exclusively for (and by) men. While I agree that there are many flaws in the genre of written horror, I am also watching it evolve before my eyes into a nuanced, creative, and inclusive space for both readers and writers alike.

I should first define what I mean by ‘horror’. Unlike some genres, horror is rather vague and its parameters are often contested. For me, anything made with the intent of evoking a strong sense of fear should be defined as horror. This means that the genre may overlap with others—like thrillers and paranormal fiction—but also has several sub-genres that range from gothic fiction to psychological horror. Ultimately, it is this broadness that has allowed horror to thrive and remain a cult favourite for years. From classics like Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Dean Koontz’s newest releases, horror continues to pull in a dedicated audience. However, horror’s literary value is not always recognised, and the genre is often met with critique, many of which I disagree with. The first criticism of horror that I have heard and contest is that evoking shock or fear is much easier, and thus much cheaper, than other emotions that ‘great literature’ can

evoke. Essentially, “horror lacks depth as it relies too heavily on reactions that are easily provoked”. I can accept this criticism to an extent, but also disagree with it in two ways. First, I do not claim that a shocking or especially frightening book makes it a great novel. In fact, anybody off the street could probably say something outrageous to shock you or come up with a particularly horrifying story. To me, at least, a great horror novel has to work a little bit harder than just being frightening. It needs to create atmosphere, and a captivating plot to match its frightfulness. The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay is a great example of this. In this book, a small family is holidaying in a cabin when a group of mysterious strangers take them captive, claiming that the world will end unless this family sacrifices one of their lives. Instead of stringing together jump scares, Tremblay instils in the reader a sense of foreboding, discomfort, and suspense that builds throughout the book. It is

a tense read that mixes psychological fiction and horror, going beyond just looking at the things that go bump in the night to instead slowly and seamlessly develop a sense of all-consuming, existential fear that has a lasting effect on the reader. My second disagreement with this claim is that shock can bring great value to a story. Sometimes people cannot seem to look past the mundane to criticise their own actions or values unless they are shocked into seeing differently. Activists have long used shock in protests or art for emphasis: some animal rights groups, for instance, use graphic images of abuse in factory farms to disrupt the ‘immaculate conception’ rhetoric surrounding meat products for consumption. Performance artists can also employ shock for similar reasons, such as Piotr Pavlenski, who uses self-mutilation and violence to protest the lack of political and social freedom in Russia. In this way, while the presence of shock or fear does not inherently make a novel a great work of literature, it is sometimes a great tool to help get a point across to the reader. Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is another novel that comes to mind when I think about the power of shock. Although the book is rather scarce in terms of characterisation and detailed world-building, Bazterrica throws the reader into a downright gruesome dystopian setting that is used to criticise the way individuals can be desensitized to violence and suffering. The premise of the novel is that—due to the rampant spread of disease in all animal life—people have begun factory farming other people for food. The book follows a character who works in one of these farms, and goes into disturbing detail of the dehumanisation, violence, and inhumane conditions in which these humans are forced to survive. While the premise may seem far-fetched, the novel’s embedded criticisms of contentious practices like factory farming and animal cruelty are all the more vivid because of the shocking nature of the story. In particular, the way in which the consumers of humans in this book distinguish themselves at every opportunity from ‘human livestock’ is a direct criticism

of the dehumanisation and Othering of that I want to spend my time reading individuals who are perceived as being novels with such problematic and alienating content. different. Although I frequently defend horror to my friends, I do acknowledge that there are some prominent issues with the genre, especially its long struggle with a lack of diversity. While there are notable exceptions, horror fiction has long been, and continues to be, dominated by male writers and targeted towards a male readership. If you Google ‘horror recommendations’, lists are going to be filled with the same male authors, king among whom are Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Stephen King is an interesting case: despite his widespread and longstanding popularity, and the continuing endorsement of his works through movie and television adaptations, there are a number of serious issues with his books, including their lack of diversity and use of sexist and racist language, as well as racial stereotypes. This is evident within Pet Semetary, where King exploits Native American burial grounds and sacred sites purely to further the fantastical plot for the white main characters; and in Green Mile, which is rife with racist language. His older titles—published in the 1970s—are the worse cases for his use of discriminatory language and stereotypes. The publication of these works in a different socio-political climate does not negate their inappropriateness, nor does it justify how they continue to bypass mainstream criticism and land themselves on must-read horror lists. Just because they’re ‘classics’ does not mean

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I am not singling out Stephen King to call him a bad author or argue that we should boycott his books, but rather, to demonstrate that the issues I have brought up are so common in the horror genre that their inclusion is seen as a non-issue. Given that women and marginalised groups are more likely to be subject to real-world violence and concerned for their safety, their voices should really be better represented in the horror genre, otherwise the depictions of violence in these novels are simply cheap and exploitative. That is why I am so excited that more diverse voices are beginning to emerge within the genre and gain popularity with readers. Not only does this open the gates for a broader readership to a genre that once seemed rather inaccessible, but it makes room for creative and nuanced stories to be included within mainstream horror fiction where they had previously been largely absent.

Beyond this inclusion, diverse voices are revolutionising the genre. In the past year, I have read some wonderful and unique books that are not only frightening, but thought-provoking and full of depth. Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, is a great example. Not only is this collection unapologetically queer and feminist, but it blends fabulism, horror, comedy, and surrealist fiction to provide a fascinating exploration of the female psyche and experiences. Her use of body horror to look at women’s relationships with their own bodies and other people emphasises to me the experimental and unique directions that this genre can take when including more diverse authors. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones was another favourite of mine from last year and gained much success within the bookish community. In his Own Voices book, Jones blends the experiences of young Native American men with a captivating and terrifying story rooted in spirituality and traditions. Our ‘monster’ in this story is the reincarnation of a young elk that four friends broke tradition to kill on sacred land, and it is out for revenge. These two books, both relatively new releases, are great examples of the unique and diverse—but still perfectly frightening—books that have emerged from this genre in recent years recent years. While Stephen King and others like him continue to churn out horror novels every year, there are a number of diverse authors doing the same with much more interesting results. I recommend looking past the ‘Top Fifty Horror Books Ever’ lists dominated by white male authors, and instead reaching into the more interesting and diverse depths of the horror genre.

It is here where I seem to live, thriving on nuanced, creative, and interesting books. I know that horror is not a genre for everybody, but if you are interested in getting started, do not let the criticisms nor the ‘classics’ scare you. The way in which the horror genre is opening up for both readers and authors not only makes it a more inclusive space, but also means that, with a little bit of digging, many people are bound to find their frightening but wonderful niche. *** Books Mentioned in this Article: • • • •

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones Great Introductions to the Horror Genre:

•

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant: a creature-horror chronicling a ship’s crew as they investigate the existence of killer mermaids. Lakewood by Megan Giddings: a realistic horror that follows a young African American woman who signs up as a participant for medical research, the grim exploration of her experience echoing the real-world history of abuse against Black bodies for science. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: a modern classic documenting the ominous, twisted, and eerie stay of four visitors at a haunted mansion. My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix: a spoofy but still frightening book following two teen best friends during the ‘80s.

Here’s Why We Shouldn’t Give Up on True Crime: Hope in Intersectionality Moving Forward Heyma Nahar

CW: Discussion of murder, sexual assault, racial violence, domestic violence, and missing persons. About a year ago, I was introduced to my now-favourite pastime: listening to real-life stories of horrendous crimes that invoke the most powerful of emotions—fear. At the start, I listened to murder podcasts as a way to relax— weird, I know. But I fell in love with the enthusiasm and passion with which podcast hosts deliver their content, and I know many others feel the same towards this seemingly unconventional hobby. For me, it was a way to escape the pressures of my high school routine and allowed me to delve into a different world; one which had nothing to do with me or my life. This was before I stumbled upon RedHanded, a true crime podcast hosted by two British women who bring an intersectional feminist spin to what is traditionally a very white, cisgender, and male-dominated sphere of entertainment. Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire showed me that true crime does affect me after all, because women and girls who look like me are often victims of very specific, racialised, and gendered crimes. Growing up as a second-generation immigrant, a brown girl in a very white

neighbourhood, the differences between me and my peers were made clear to me as a young child. I was fully aware that my skin was darker than my friends, and I was conscious of the fact that people who looked like me were often treated badly by people who didn’t look like me. But that was the extent of my knowledge. I had yet to discover the nuances in how people’s identities—their race, culture, gender, sexuality, age, socioeconomic status, and disabilities—affected their susceptibility to becoming victims of violent crime. While studying Society and Culture, I researched the effect of white feminist media on the social exclusion of women of colour, and ultimately found that BIPOC women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community are often the groups in society most vulnerable to social exclusion and violence. I also learnt about the overwhelming effect that the media has on the perpetuation of white feminism; that is, how white feminism in practice is greatly influenced by media that purports itself as ‘feminist’ but neglects to take an intersectional stance, and thus ignores the compounded effects of things like race

and sexuality on experiences of discrimination. This is where I see one of the main issues within the discussion of ethics in true crime media: whose stories are being told? And further, whose stories are we silencing? In this sense, is true crime too problematic to be ethical? We, as a society, have an uncanny— but completely explainable, and even natural—obsession with stories of horror and violence. Psychologists agree that our ‘human nature’ interest in true crime and serial killers stems from our need to be able to safely explore darker and more sinister environments and incidents. In an evolutionary sense, these stories seem to provide us, as potential victims, the ability to both understand the motives of killers and learn how to get out of dangerous situations. But that brings us to another big question to unpack: why is it largely white women who are so obsessed with true crime? This white, female demographic of true crime fans is plausible when you consider that many of the most famous classic true crime stories feature white women as victims. Ted Bundy, BTK, the Golden State Killer, Fred and Rose West… do any of them sound familiar? These serial killers are household

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names, and most—if not all—of their victims were white women. Rachel Monroe, a journalist who specialises in crime, speaks of ‘missing white woman syndrome’: the term used to describe Western media’s disproportionate focus on middle-class white women who disappear or are victims of violent crimes, compared to BIPOC women; members of the LGBTQIA+ community; and women of lower socioeconomic statuses. Does the name Samuel Little ring any bells with you? Little hardly became an enduring household name upon his most recent arrest in 2012— at least, not to the extent of Bundy or BTK—despite having been linked to the largest number of proven cases for any serial killer in the history of the United States. Notably, the majority of his 60 victims were Black women. You may be familiar with some of the true crime podcasts and films that have become extremely popular in recent years: Serial, My Favourite Murder, Morbid, and True Crime Obsessed are some podcasts that fans tend to name as their favourites. American Murder (Chris Watts) and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (Ted Bundy) are some of the most-watched Netflix true crime movies. Most people have heard of Shanann Watts and Lynda Ann Healy. We know Sarah Everard. Most true crime fans have heard of Reeva Steenkamp, and rightly so. But where is the coverage on Mya Hall, for example? How much do we know about the attacks on Black transgender women? Mya Hall was a Black transgender sex worker who was killed in Baltimore in a gendered and racialised attack in 2015, but much of the media attention around her murder consisted of transphobic allegations which targeted Hall’s character and actions, rather than amplifying the need for greater public awareness about how Black transgender women find themselves at such great risk of violence. Breonna Taylor and Michelle Cusseax’s murders were not covered nearly as thoroughly as the police killings of Eric Garner and George Floyd: the difference between George Floyd’s and Breonna Taylor’s GoFundMe donations by the public were stark, with the former being at almost $14 million

and the latter at $6.8 million. Comparing the two here is not to imply that the public attention garnered by the media that resulted in such a large donation for George Floyd’s family was unwarranted—it is simply to try and bridge this gender gap. Why aren’t we talking about how anti-Black violence is experienced in gendered ways? Similarly, the overrepresentation of Indigenous women and girls within the missing and murdered population in North America and Canada obtains nowhere near the appropriate amount of public awareness. The reality that Indigenous Australian women and girls are 12 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than non-Indigenous women is not at all something that is highlighted in true crime consciousness. The fact that 41-60 per cent of Asian and Pacific Islander women have reported intimate partner violence (physical and/or sexual) has been egregiously silenced in comparison to domestic violence stories that feature white, middle-class victims. It is clear there is a vast disparity in whose stories are being told and whose are left behind. By making the repeated choice to address only one kind of story in mainstream media, we are withholding justice from women of colour, as well as many more groups in society who are disenfranchised by the overwhelming whiteness that characterises true crime narratives. We have a long way to go before true crime can become truly intersectional. Still, issues of intersectionality—such as gendered manifestations of anti-Black violence—have ample opportunity to be explored through true crime media, despite only few content creators choosing to take up the responsibility of bringing an intersectional social commentary into their dialogue. Two of RedHanded’s six Black Lives Matter episodes, for example, address the way in which police violence is specifically targeted towards Black women. More broadly, the podcast deals with issues of socioeconomics, race, gender, sexuality, and culture in a multidimensional light with the utmost compassion and candour, as opposed to many mainstream true crime podcasts which can

be prone to tone deafness and insensitivity. Serial, for instance—one of the most popular true crime podcasts—has been critiqued for stereotyping people of colour and upholding systems of white privilege through its one-dimensional take on systemic issues. While I think it is fair to say that there isn’t currently a great deal of ethical true crime media to speak of in the public eye, RedHanded has certainly proven a good place to start as we look forward, to the future of true crime. Do I think it is unethical to call yourself a true crime media fan? Not necessarily. Not when the stories you listen to encourage empathy, compassion, and thought about some of the most complex sociopolitical and cultural issues that plague the world today. Not when they can do so much for criminological education and teaching ordinary people about the ways in which people’s identities and environments can make them more vulnerable to violent crimes—because let’s face it, many crimes are inherently political. Separating wider social issues from individual instances of crimes is futile, because we are inextricably linked to the societies we live in. Broadly, I would encourage lovers of true crime to seek out content creators who dive into the social and political nuances that characterise instances of violent crimes, and are willing to discuss why certain groups in society are vulnerable. It is true that much true crime content is unethical for the reasons I have mentioned above, but I believe it is also true that with an uprise in the intersectionality movement, and with more and more content creators deliberately seeking to educate themselves and others about racial nuances, we can look forward to more ethical true crime entertainment in the future. True crime can be ethical, but only if we put in the work. If creators assume responsibility in uplifting disenfranchised voices and ensuring their content output is intersectional, I believe that true crime media is capable of evolving into the tool we have been searching for in beginning a frank discussion of intersectionality and how it relates to victims of crime.

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Section Design: Ana Isaacs Navita Wijeratne Cinnamone Winchester

MEMENTO VIVERE

Remember to live.

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The Life of the Water Strider Alisha Nagle

CW: Death, allusions to murder. “Once more the ring is complete, once more the circle turns and turns. Then when will the deliverance come? There is a legend that tells of poor souls dragged along in an endless round until the hellish charm is broken by a drop of holy water. What drop will good fortune sprinkle upon my Processionaries to dissolve their circle and bring them back to the nest?” – Jean-Henri Fabre, The Life of the Caterpillar *** This is how I fell into the charge of the condemned chateau Belcastel, whose interloper after all the weathering of forty years evermore haunts my dreams.

In 1868 I reached my twentieth year, and I was duly admitted to the lycée in Avignon, in the south of France. It was there I met my life’s mentor—later renowned as a great naturalist, beloved all over the world. But in those days, he was known simply as an invalid, who had returned from a teaching post in Ajaccio across the sea due to ill health, and carried eccentric, sacrilegious convictions. He was thirty years older than I, yet possessed a spirit awarding his countenance the hale and vigor of youth—I was immediately entranced by him, the most astute of professors. But his true passion lay with the minute and insignificant of Earth’s details: it lay with the insects. I remember vividly one of his earliest demonstrations. He brought to his workshop a selection of the Pine Processionary Caterpillar, creatures who follow a delicate path of silk in single file as if each becomes the caboose of a train. He placed a large palm-vase upon the bench, and released the caterpillars, who climbed, one by one, up to its cornice, proceeding horizontally at the summit. “Where the first goes all others follow,” said Monsieur Fabre, “not from foolishness, but from necessity. It is how they find their way back to the nest, for they are decidedly blind, I think, and have little olfactory sense— starving, they will walk past their feeding branch not nine centimetres away.” The leader had now crawled the

circumference of the vase, forming a closed circuit. At that moment, Fabre gently cut the silken rail upon which they had arrived, thereby removing the exit pathway. The caterpillars upheld their course, slowly undulating, each touching the stern of the other, around and around the earthenware cornice. “See now how they placidly continue with their instinctual task. I would scarcely believe it myself, had I not seen it.” There they marched for the whole of Fabre’s lesson, around and around, striding with solemn patience in an endless, enchanted circle. A morbid fascination overwhelmed me—I would have liked to fixate upon the caterpillars all day long, to understand what exactly was so melancholy about them, and at the same time, so wondrous. They remained in his workshop, through the night, engrossed in the ritual, and longer still—for eighty-four hours they acquiesced, sallied onwards with one soundless heartbeat, until finally the leader stopped, unable to go further, all lame and withered and soon dropping dead as a door nail. How beautiful and how sad a performance! I was entranced by the fragility of Nature’s rules, and the way my professor purported their control. I excelled under his supervision, and listened keenly to stories of his boyhood in wild Malaval, where he as urchin flitted over the coppices, searching for centipedes, and mushrooms that smoked when prodded, like strange, secluded chimneys. And as he ascribed to the inane details of Nature all the earth’s most precious secrets, I was sure

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that my future lay in entomology. At the end of the year 1870 he was to take me on as apprentice tutor, yet soon misfortune struck us both. M. Fabre divulged wisdom with the verve of an impetuous waif blind to the attentions of polite society. He took it upon himself to explain the reproductive proponents of flora to a class of ladies—a vulgarity that the Church, and French society, deemed utterly unacceptable. His position at the school was terminated. I met with him, in that humble workshop where we had once watched the Processionaries march, and there implored him to stay, certain the school would have him back within the year. “Indeed, and indulge longer their Tartuffery, all the while still distributing my own textbooks! Nay, not while the Church grips this school like an insidious vine.” He meant to depart for the countryside, and there exhaust his meagre funds to acquire small but comfortable refuge. Yet the finality of this journey anguished him terribly. He confessed a desire to send a modest sum to his family, before flying forever to settle in the south. They had always been exceptionally poor, and it grieved him to know their survival still depended upon the yielding of the lemon trees for selling at market, and on a few scrawny ducks in the paddock. But unbidden obduracy of spirit roused upon study at the Rodez lycée had, long ago, made M. Fabre an exile from his house and village. At once I proposed to deliver the donation in his stead. With no other method by which to reach them, in time M. Fabre agreed, so long as I found myself afterwards at the institute in the proximal city Rodez, where I might be taught the advanced practical sciences. I obliged him with childish alacrity, certain I would find inspiration in his beloved paysage. “Here, here—this is all I can afford to send them, heaven help me! Now, you must leave sooner than I, or else winter will make the path too hazardous.” He handed me a leather pouch. “Remember this, Monsieur”—again, I delighted childishly, this time in his christening me ‘Monsieur’; I was alive now, not pupil, not pupa; it rose a fire inside to be hailed so by my master, and I intended to follow his footsteps, owing forever to the upheaval of my murky chrysalis in the wake of his tutelage, and to the

splendorous verdure of the habitat whence he grew—“remember, it is estranged country, the land of my old village, and properly remote. You will see a great castle, but it has been crumbling since I was a lad, since my father—his father, at that! It belongs to the tawny owls, now, and to the wolves, no doubt. Don’t stay long in that province, terrible and enticing though it is—you’ll find ample company in Rodez, and in its spinneys a multitude of insects.” So, I travelled to the department of Aveyron, to offer the family of my impoverished professor a woefully meagre pouch of francs. His parents would still reside there, if neither grippe nor old age had yet sent Death to greet them—and a younger brother, Casimir was his name, who had not the verve for vagabonding about the world, as had his elder. I went as far as the town SaintLéons by the new rail line, and made the rest of the journey by carriage, absorbed in lonely countryside, the path fringed with endless mossy fens, and rolling pastures. After several days I arrived at the commune, early enough, though it was November, and dusk already advanced upon the dappled radiance of winter’s light. The carriage rattled across a Gothic bridge of cobblestone, over the river that ribboned along the village. It was not a clear evening; it seemed the snaking clouds behind the mountainside amassed wispy, urgent letters. All capitals, as if someone above were shouting, attempting to throw us a profound word that might change our lives forever. It was the kind of unnerving revelation that makes one feel lost, or not truly awake. Beneath the clouds, the horizon was swallowed by the dilapidated ruins of an enormous chateau. It loomed heavily over the village, which had been built in a vertical manner from the base of the mountain. Bèl Castèl, it was called, in the Occitan of the region. Its moat fed into the banks of the river. Above the mediaeval turrets rose a knoll of erupted limestone, with clumps here and there

of thistle and broom, such that it looked, at this distance, like the crown of a balding gentleman. It was an altogether different place at night. When I finally descended from my carriage, and looked about the street, I found the villagers were preoccupied not far off, amidst a sombre ceremony. They crossed the pavement as if bewitched, with scant awareness of my appearance. Some folk were singing hymns dolefully. It is a funeral procession, I thought. Not wishing to disturb them, I took myself away, absorbing into the shadows at the river’s edge, and there watched for creatures hidden within the boggy quagmire. In my childhood I had an unparalleled fascination with water striders. Once, when I was five years old, pottering around the cottage in Ireland wherein our family still resided, I first saw the creatures, very small, and black, skimming across a brook. I put them in a glass jar, and hid them from my brother, for I knew he would take them from me. They were wonderful. Their long, slender legs would be ungainly anywhere else, but in my jar, they strode with the ease they had in their habitat, enduring with machine-like obstinacy. And, like the machine, their bodies exhausted without reparation, and they dipped under the water, leaving me sobbing for hours. Here, by the gentle stream, I saw two bugs appear, and skitter joyously across the ripples. They lingered in a patch of light. I studied them with a smile, and would hardly have moved for hours, had they not themselves been startled by an approaching shadow. I knew at once it must be the brother of my professor. I recoiled in horror at the figure’s incongruous arrival; and because, in the gloam, I envisioned there a ghastly wraith of the man I loved—a veritable and uncanny reproduction. Except this brother, upon further inspection, was far younger— impossibly, it seemed he was barely older than I, though of course, I could not be certain in that obscuration of the

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dusk. I smiled bashfully, embarrassed by my evident fear. Attempting to rectify the blunder, in shaky Occitan I spoke, “Good evening! You are the brother of a M. Fabre, I suppose?” The apparition was still for a moment, still like death—truly, the incarnation of M. Fabre terrified me—and then it reflected my smile: yes, the very same, how fares he? It returned the greeting not in Occitan, but in a mellifluous, deep French. The wraith was very pleased to meet me, and to know the good health of its brother. It drew out a hand and took mine into it—now, at the touch, I felt certain this was no spectral shade, but true flesh and blood. “He has left me here so many years; how sorry I am that he did not return with you! Will you be taking up residence long, in Belcastel?” The young man evaded my own questions, intent on understanding my interrupted fixation upon the insects in the quagmire. He admired the small goods I carried within my portmanteau: herbal remedies I intended to sell for my own modest income. It seemed absurd, now, to offer him my professor’s donation, for he exuded such charm and equanimity, and his garments were immaculate; before me manifested M. Fabre’s very soul when, unsullied and impassioned, he had haughtily rejoiced in the pinnacle of life.

empty but for a miraculous display around the hearth. A shield, adorned with grimacing lion, hung centrally above a roaring fireplace, and the room was elsewhere lit by delicate candelabra, glinting with soft tapers. We spent many hours there, quite alone, the light flicking across his features as we talked, and talked, about many things. Would that I remembered all the words he spoke, then! They were beautiful words, impassioned and lavishly saccharine. “How long I have desired a soul so alike mine own,” he said, with eyes alight, emphatic, and darting all over my countenance, like there on the corneas pooled his vital force. It seemed this stranger with the semblance of my dear professor knew my life completely, utterly—almost shamefully so, for he surely had the answers to his questions before I made reply. Once, the conversation tempered, and he drew me closer, so that our faces near touched. A funny melancholy I felt, then. True, his face was beautiful— yet something disturbed and overtook me, as I lamented the beauty forever lost to me, that moment, in all other things. And past lovers I could barely remember now, with the appearance of this face—friends in Avignon, to my mind’s eye, were so withered, and ominous was their wretched,

All at once, he alerted me to the knowledge that we stood nearly in total darkness. He offered to take me to the family residence, and led us to a small wagon; I quickly obliged, for the wind had turned bitter cold. But, to my astonishment, his carriage led us to the castle! How now, I marveled, is this his castle? M. Fabre called it a ruin— and, indeed, it had seemed so in the waning daylight not hours ago, yet here—where the chateau drank the night into its colossal façade—here his own family, no less, pointed me into a grand foyer. I assented quietly, accepting every corner of the strange and spectacular assemblage within, for my senses told me this was certainly a great hallway, these stones untarnished by time and shining, gleaming by candlelight. The brother, Casimir, led me to the salon,

chapped skin in the cold of this night! I was ever grateful to the darkness in his eyes, for if I had seen my reflection in them, I would have cried out in misery. The skin, the skin on my body was repulsive! And the smells, the wicked odours of the flesh—thereon how passionately I detested the living, and the unremitting, pitiless march of time.

The fire waned, and cold aroused a new unease within me, as I noticed that apart from this room, all else was engulfed by an immediate and hollow blackness. There was no sound, only the hiss of the dying tongues within the hearth, and, as my apprehension grew, the beating of my heart—I had the idea he could hear it, too. A noise did disturb the stillness— which caused me to start violently at the crescendo of trepidation—but it was only the echo of a heavy moth beating its wings upon the skirting board, and arousing plumes of dust in its wake. I followed the moth as it travelled vertically, up, and down the wall, thrashing with the vitality adorned to nocturnal beasts at that hour, tracing again and again the same path. “I find this love of yours very charming,” Casimir said, “but for the one reason I cannot, myself, conjecture at the joy in harbouring so great a devotion. The creatures you study live no longer than twenty days of tedium and drudgery. They travail so earnestly, and when, at last, they pause, it is always only to wither and dry up, dead—what is such a life, I ask you?” His embrace, though gentle, admitted no warmth, yet as I remained in his arms, a narcotic sensation engaged in weaving a blanket over my consciousness. When I made no attempt to answer, he sighed. “Never mind. I believe it far more prudent, at least, the sensual life of the animal, than the feigned acquiescence of pious companies.” I had quite forgotten the true purpose of my entrance to the castle. I was now encased within a fantastical stupor. Despite the wonderful hypnosis of my mind, I was distinctly aware of my miserable body aching, and trembling

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quite bizarre, the alienation of the ephemeral body. However, I did know it to be truly forever, forever, he meant. with cold, so much that eventually he brought me to a small chamber, and I took to bed. I dreamt—not a dream so terrible as many since, though it disturbed me all the same; I awoke in sweats, and my breathing was arduous in the hours thereafter. It was the early morning when it happened. I still felt hopelessly drowsy, and yet it seemed some force had managed to rouse my slumber. Then a shape blocked out the light at the window. It was M. Fabre’s brother. I had grown, in mere hours, passionately enamoured with that startling face. This thought alone was sufficient to draw him to me, as if magnetised. All else but the face seemed invisible above my own. There was something unearthly about him. His lips, though unblemished, were very dry. They were, I imagined, like that of a cadaver, adorned and dressed and awaiting visitation. And, as he opened them, there was the glint of a thin snaggletooth, which struck me as peculiar, for I had not noticed it before. His maudlin sincerity was so utterly sad, and so alarming, that I will remember the next moment always. “Say the word,” he whispered, “and I will spill mine own blood, and write you the elegy of my adorations—I will write them upon your skin. And you will be mine forever.” It was not simply the mawkishness of the ardent lover, though it might seem so here, cast onto this vapid paper, without witness to the torridity of his visage. At least, it seemed something monstrous lay underneath. Sometimes, when one dissects the past, one cannot explicate an instinctual repulsion—it is

Then he kissed me on the neck, and down towards my breast—but oh, no ordinary embrace! It was oil and fire, it burned—and the repugnance of this gesture caused me an involuntary spasm, so that I fought to draw him away. Then—horror! Horror! The beast caught me in a grip so severe that my body failed to expel the gravity of its awful convulsions. Once more the burning erupted within, and it seemed my soul was fading, that soon I would be lost. Yet I thought—inexplicably, I thought: if I must die, let it be now, in this moment, wherein I feel so empty, and at the same time, so complete, as if I were part of the night himself. It was him, the night, that wanted everything, everything from me, and I knew my salvation lay in our union. In an instant, he was gone, and I awoke alone in the ghastly room, trembling despite the dissipation of my tormentor. He left only the feeling of emptiness— and, when I finally wrested myself from bed to douse my hot, anguished face, a grisly reflection in the mirror. Incapable of sleeping again, I quit the confines of my chamber, and found the malefactor of my abuses standing near the chateau moat, of an unassuming and resolute demeanour. He professed ignorance of my approach, for he was preoccupied, staring at something below. Staring, and staring, with dark, round eyes. I watched, and looked into one staring pupil, a small and enraptured dart, whence I thought, decidedly, I would not like to look again. But as I withdrew the man turned, and the gaze fixed upon me.

His semblance, there at the break of day, was frightening, though I knew not why; he looked by all accounts unremarkable, but for the dreaded snaggletooth, and for one other feature, that being something I have tried for years to comprehend, and to this day, I still fumble miserably for the words. Perhaps I could describe it as such: a startling normalcy, an eerie precision. Because, I noted, he was as if ageless. The two black darts of his eyes pierced me with such vivacity that matched only my dear professor—but M. Fabre was old, so old: his image was suddenly, athwart the face of this mostre, ignobly crooked, and dishevelled. At this vision then shot through my body, like lightning, an indescribable melancholy. “Good morning,” Casimir said. “There are leeches, in the moat.” I could not admit to an interest in leeches, at that moment. I recounted my nightmare, with admonishing inflection, though I mentioned naught of his particular apparition. At first, he merely smiled, in an arcane, inscrutable manner that irritated me considerably. Then, when I reproached him, he became very grave, and ardently took my hand into his. “Do not fear such dreams”—my eye dwelled upon the tooth as he spoke—“for I have known a dream far worse, a recurrent nightmare, which has gripped me many years now. It is simply the darkness. No sound, nor smell, nothing, but the inviolate nihility, and though I wish to cry I cannot do so, for I too am mere darkness—when I wake, I am thrown into a fever, and suffer an intolerable appetite, for life…” I was alarmed greatly by this tale, and because, in the first light of dawn, gazing upon this stern visage, that wicked tooth, I determined that Casimir appeared not so alike my professor, after all. The realisation induced something of a panic in me. “Where resides the rest of your family?”

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“Oh… None remain here, it seems. None but I!” And with the loneliness and strangeness of his reply, his manner, the more fervently I wished the night to pause, that we may indulge our passions endlessly—the more I wished my face to remain as charming as this creature’s I desired, or else he would surely discard me, one day, into the soil. But the sun had nearly risen, and gently, he cast my hand out of his own. “I must return to my chambers, for I did not sleep, this night,” he said. “Do not seek me out—I will meet you, again, should you stay within my realm. Adieu…” *** The sunlight thawed my melancholy somewhat, and the journey on foot down to the village certainly enlivened my spirits. There were little violet wildflowers dotted across the mountainside, and honeybees, who bounced upon the flowers, and lazily floated away in my wake, engaging dutifully in their work, and with an infectious energy, frivolous though it seemed, now. Their humming was soon surpassed by the soft bleating of sheep on the mountainside, who, alerted to my footstep, calmly watched my descent. I entered the boulangerie, which seemed alone among the stores to receive patronage. The clerk spoke only in short Occitan, though he was amenable, and did not reproach my alienage. I asked after the Fabres, and Casimir, to which he nodded. “La madama, Victoire,” he said softly, in delicate patois. “But the brother, he is dead.” I looked upon him in disbelief. “No, it cannot be,” I said. “The lord of the castle Belcastel—he is a Fabre, surely?” The clerk regarded me as though one would a madman if the penitentiary bars were to unceremoniously vanish. “There is no lord of Bèl Castèl.” He

spoke incredulously. “It is a ruin.” *** I found myself rapping upon the door of the cottage that once enclosed my old professor. I could not yet truly believe all the villagers told me, and I moved as if in a trance. Madame Victoire, stooped and languid, soon materialised within its weathered frame, wearing a dirty, black dress. “Forgive me, Mme.—I would have met you, already. But, Casimir, he took me away last night—I mean—” At once, she began to cry, and between heavy sobs she exclaimed, “What!? Let me be, awful stranger!” Such abrasiveness awoke some lost memory within me—I rummaged in my cloak pocket, and handed her the little sack of francs I had cherished so carefully, my whole journey. She looked as dumbfounded as I at the gesture. While from her I wrested no more than a nod at the name of my professor, she nevertheless admitted me into her household, assuredly out of pity—for I was a sorry sight, resulting from a most unfortunate realisation. Once, Bèl Castèl housed the lineage of Alzias de Saunhac, though his descendants had long, long abandoned the chateau. No one had inhabited there for three hundred years! “It’s the new landlord’s fault,” a villager told me, “for our misfortunes, the greedy imbecile! Last month, he sold the stones on the exterior for a few hundred francs, so that the great façade fell to ruin. He woke the revenant in its tomb, and now, we pay for it…” Casimir was maimed, so they said, by a wraith in the shape of a hideous, shadowy hell hound. He was delivered to the vampir of Bèl Castèl. And before him, so too were many of the village, until none but the eldest remained—less than one hundred people lived in the region, now, where two hundred had once endured. The village was plagued by death. Mme. Victoire allowed me to wet my

brow in the washroom. I stared at my complexion in the little mirror, and as I laboured to breathe, I felt a throbbing from my breast; under my shirt, my reflection revealed two ugly, red punctures, above my heart. I groaned with repulsion upon the discovery, feverish and horribly bewildered. So, I, too, had fallen into the insidious web. And yet, I was tortured by my everlasting complicity in the existence of this murderous fiend. He roused much sadness within me, alone so, under the crumbling turrets. Thus, I was not permitted to rest, as I knew, for the pleasure of my own selfish heart, that I must see him again, again… Blindly, I returned to the chateau, up, and up the mountainside. I soon stood before the grand mausoleum of my lover, and was met with a horrendous shock, since the fortress I had gazed upon so assuredly was now decrepit and collapsing in the light of day. I stalked among the rubble, my mouth gaping, and it was all as the villagers had told me: there was the cross of the old church, reduced miserably to ashes, and there, a mess of hearthstones—there lay the cold hearth I had spent hours curled up in front of, and shivering—no wonder, for it was in ruins! Among the decaying chambers, and deep within the grounds, I found the tomb of Alzias—it, alone, remained intact. There, indeed, the spectre lay, his black cloak furled around him, within the casket. Not horrible, was he, but so beautiful. And as he awoke, oh, to look upon those burning eyes of the devil, seething with rage! With a shriek he flung his arms around me, and there was no tenderness in that awful embrace; I was neither alive, nor permitted to beg Death liberate me—I screamed, and trembled vehemently, for I knew, now, he was detaching me from the very embraces of Nature. I screamed, yes— and, merciful God, something halted him. He shuddered, and drew backward into the corner of the room. He cast his hands over his face—perhaps the beast realised whose body he mangled, or perhaps, merely because there was no roof atop the tomb, and he dreaded the lurid daylight. I clutched at my aching breast—I understood I was not at the mercy of a dream. I was wearing and agitated at the revelation of his fakery, and yet, I still did not flee. The revenant spoke first. “I did not mean to do such a thing, to you.” His hands remained across his face, as he crouched

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there in the corner of the room. “You awoke me, from a nightmare.” And again, I felt an immeasurable pity. Slowly, I drew near the poor creature, and took him into my arms. I repelled the frightful hands, and gently coaxed his face to behold my own. “You lied to me—there is no Casimir left. The villagers call you a curse pervading the region.” “They exaggerate,” he said, and his black eyes flickered with something that seemed to me like fear. “Indeed, my old village reproaches me. They believe I am the antichrist! And perhaps, by mere coincidence, they are right. For I know their hallowed afterlife does not exist.” The face had lost all its deceptive magic—it was nothing like my professor, now, the complexion wan like death. “So, you steal the living, like an infernal beast?” “How can you speak so!” His darting eyes were at once insufferable—where before I found relief in the absence of my own image reflected within, I saw now they carried all that he had left, and I wished that they would stop searching me. With immense disdain, I spat, “Answer me, mostre,” though I still held him firmly in my arms. The vampir moaned, like one heartbroken. He cried, “Yes, yes! Condemned am I to wallow in blood, until the sun rises. But if you should stay here, I would once again take pleasure in the night— and, my love, I will show you, I promise I will show you, that there is only carrion, and the darkness, for you, where you wander far from my embrace!” “My love,” he had said—and indeed, no love compared to that of my own for this instrument of darkness, the scourge of old Bèl Castèl. I whispered, “I must take my leave, now.” “Oh—do not leave me alone here, in this forsaken place! Stay, so that you may remain for eternity, at my side—I know you desire it.” “I do not!” I said—or a thing similarly banal. He made no reply, no doubt enraged by the resolve of my insipid words. I touched his face, and swiftly withdrew, for its coldness sickened me. “Adieu, le vampir.” Then, as I turned from him and strode

away, he said, as I will always remember: “Go then, little insect! Leave me to my misery. But you’ll soon be sorry to have so carelessly betrayed the instinct of your spirit, blind creature you are! As you wither, wither, and draw closer to the darkness, I will only grow more beautiful. Leave me, but you’ll be sorry!” That evening I took flight for Rodez. I did not wish to visit my master again, for he and I had kinship anew in choosing this inferior path, and I feared seeing myself, old and enervated, reflected in those bright eyes. Nor did I remain long in the French countryside. I was near consumed by an unbearable loneliness, so haunted by the terrible seclusion of the environs in which my revenant resided, and by the revenant himself— from the very moment of sleep he had me, for it seemed his power was ever encircling me, there in the paysage of Aveyron. I soon returned to Ireland, and commenced my modest income as an entomologist, first by publishing new research on the buoyancy of water striders. My samples originated not far from where I had encountered them, for the very first time, as a child. I write this after hearing of my professor’s passing; a newspaper has, with brilliant economy, briefed me on the events following my personal absence. Having found his way south to the commune of Sérignan, he purchased a small estate, cultivating the surrounding harmas for his insects, and there spent the rest of his days, so it seems, writing, enthralled by the customs of lissome grubs, and of the gossamer midge. His fame was too late, and the poor cottage, tucked away among hedges in life, has become a museum in the short time after his passing. Death is a strange affair. As for my revenant, the languishing vampir of Aveyron—he was lost to the terror of the end— after all, a d e c aying wraith, encased in a pestilent darkness— under illusion of glamour, but no better than a

pondscummy leech. The thought of him cowering by the decrepit hearthstones causes in me a woeful sorrow even to this day. But I will never again set foot in the marshes of Belcastel, no matter how he beseeches in dreams, and no matter how putrid my countenance grows, I, like the water strider, will dance above the grave, until, sordid and kicking still, under the black water I go. *** “Ill-luck is swooping down on us, relentlessly. Hunger threatens us at home. And now, boy, put your trust in God; run about and earn your penn’orth of potatoes as best you can. Life is about to become a hideous inferno… Amid that lamentable chaos my love for the insects ought to have gone under. Not at all. It would have survived the Raft of the Medusa. I still remember a certain Pine Cockchafer met for the first time. The plumes on her antennae, her pretty pattern of white spots on a darkbrown ground were as a ray of sunshine in the gloomy wretchedness of the day.” – Jean-Henri Fabre, The Life of the Fly

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Pick Your Poison Sophie Hayles

About the Artist Sophie Hayles is a first-year STEM student with a passion for painting. Her work is largely inspired by personal experiences and inside jokes. Artist's Statement This piece is a reference to Thursday nights spent with friends during our first semester at university. It’s a celebration of newfound freedoms, specifically in relation to alcohol. These freedoms, along with many others, have resulted in some great experiences, painful lessons, and unforgettable memories. I want to remind people to make the most of their lives, and to be unafraid of trying new things.

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La Petite Mort Natasha Mills

All I want is you. Give me that thrill and delight. Take me to the edge. I am here waiting, to fall deep into myself, and deeper I fall. You have the power, to release me from torment. And there it is, bliss. Constant and flowing, in and out of consciousness: an intimate death. Over and over, aching for that final rush. Ending with just me. I burn from within, to taste that sweetness again. That is all I have. You are all I want. Meet me in the afterlife, I’ll be there waiting.

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Womanly Role Models Brontë Charles

CW: Mentions of slavery and murder.

history.

History, as a concept manufactured and framed by men, is typically presented as a series of men doing things that resulted in the deaths of other men. Often, the plights and exploits of women will be accompanied by an asterisk, used to indicate that these stories are probably exaggerated, and thus potentially ahistorical. History is written by the victors—but more than that, it is written by the people who have the access and time to commit stories to paper, resulting in a conception of history as told from the perspective of privileged men to the exclusion of everyone else. Stories from the past are frequently altered to align with contemporary morality, neatly— and inaccurately—imposed over messy lives. It is only through perseverance that the lives of both normal and extraordinary women have been remembered.

I like these specific women because they all pursued their passions and rose to the top of their fields despite the naysayers. It’s so easy to feel like an imposter, to feel unwelcome and unwanted in places dominated by the patriarchy, but these women were succeeding in male spaces long ago, and I hope that they can act as inspiration the next time you begin to doubt your place in the world. These women said fuck the patriarchy, punch your local racist, and actively decolonise your mind and institutions. There are most definitely many lessons to be learnt from their stories.

Most impressive women of history who have found a place in the public eye, however, are white women from Britain or America, women who benefitted from institutional power, or women famous for their connection to men. Look at any list of womanly role models online, and it will present queens who amassed their wealth through colonisation, #girlbosses who exploited their way to the top, and white suffragettes who wanted the vote for women at the expense of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (they also almost always list Amelia Earhart—personally, I don’t understand the obsession). In my attempt to counter this, I have always collected facts and stories about revolutionaries, writers, and activists when I come across them; below, I have assembled the stories of five particularly cool women from

1. Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (1001–1091 CE)

(You will notice that many of these women were fighters and revolutionaries. There is a good and historical reason for this: Women with Swords Are Hot. That is a true, historical fact.)

The first role model comes directly to you from the Caliphate of Córdoba, a poet and an icon, a lady who pioneered both conversations with your friends about the clitoris and dating up to spite your ex. Wallada bint al-Mustakfi operated a poetry saloon that was regarded as one of the great literary halls of the time. She offered instruction in poetry to women of all classes, including slaves, and even had her poetry embroidered on the sleeves of her robes. On one, she had embroidered: “I am, by God’s will, fit for high positions! And I walk with pride along my own road.” On her other sleeve, she had: “I let my lover touch my cheek, and gladly bestow my kiss on him who craves it.” Wallada was also

one of the great lovers of her era, and she instructed her female poet friends in the ‘arts of love’, forming a strong circle of women from diverse backgrounds and encouraging them to learn and love. Wallada took the celebrated poet Ibn Zaydún as one of her lovers, and he and Wallada wrote each other love poems that have since become classics of Arabic love poetry. Some consider their exchanges to have been the inspiration for much later European literary works such as the Canterbury Tales and Arthurian legends. Ibn Zaydún—very much the Jay Z to Wallada’s Beyoncé— eventually cheated on Wallada. He wrote endless, weeping poems begging her for forgiveness, but Wallada was a strong, independent woman who ignored his drama. Instead, she got together with Ibn Zaydún’s rival, Ibn Abdús, who exiled Ibn Zaydún when he began to write insulting poetry about Wallada. Unaffected, Wallada continued to run her literary hall, composing and teaching, and became renowned for winning poetry competitions. From her, I think we can draw some lessons: know your worth, spread love, and never go back to your cheating ex. 2. Queen Nzinga (1583–1663 CE) Queen Nzinga ruled Ndongo and Matamba in southern Africa. Nzinga was trained from childhood in both governance and war, and was a gifted politician and fighter, favouring the axe (Hot). She was so gifted that when her brother became the king, she was sent away because she was perceived to be too strong a rival. Later, due to pressure from the Portuguese, Nzinga’s brother asked her to personally negotiate with

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them. At the meeting, the Portuguese had not provided a chair for her, expecting her to supplicate herself in front of them. Instead, her attendant got down on his hands and knees, allowing Nzinga to sit on his back so she could look the Portuguese governor in the eye while parlaying. She negotiated a peace treaty and sealed it with a promise to be baptised as a Catholic—but predictably, the Portuguese reneged on the agreement and Nzinga’s brother ceded his duties to Nzinga (this was before either killing himself or being poisoned by Nzinga—who's to say?). In her new position, Nzinga sought to weaken the Portuguese and encouraged slaves on their plantations to flee and join her kingdom—which, to the Portuguese, she completely denied. Nzinga faced challenges to her rule both from the Portuguese and within her court, eventually being removed from the throne by her cousin. The Portuguese, seeing this internal weakening, declared war. In response, Nzinga mobilised the people loyal to her and raised her own personal army to fight the Portuguese. The Ndongo—faced with the choice between a weak dude who had been king for five minutes, and an expert politician, diplomat, and axe wielder— joined Nzinga’s army. At the same time, she was manoeuvring within the Ndongo court, winning the support of nobles. Nzinga sensed an opportunity when a powerful Imbangala warlord called Kasanje established a kingdom nearby, and she seduced him, marrying him and becoming a co-ruler of his kingdom. Nzinga swelled the kingdom’s population by granting freedom to slaves escaping from the Portuguese and the Ndongo, and by bestowing titles on previously exiled nobles. With an army strengthened by both Imbangala and Ndongo military strategy, Nzinga continued to lead a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonisers. Deciding she wanted to be a queen again, Nzinga invaded Matamba and resettled the land with Ndongos. In the 1630s, she shifted her focus to the economic ruin of the Portuguese. She monopolised the slave trade in Matamba, diverting the revenue away from the Portuguese and into her army. She expanded her territory north and south, establishing diplomatic relationships with the Kingdom of the Kongo, and with the Dutch. When the Kongo and the Dutch West India Company teamed up to drive the Portuguese out, Nzinga offered an

alliance with them to take back Ndongo as well. By 1644, Nzinga had reclaimed much of Ndongo, alongside new territory; controlled the slave trade; and was the most economically and politically successful leader in the region. To secure her kingdom, she opened trade with Europe, encouraged her citizens to become Western-educated, and worked to get Matamba recognised as a Christian kingdom to prevent invasion from Europeans. Nzinga also used her baptism into Catholicism to gain support from Pope Alexander VII, which she later used as a diplomatic tool against the Portuguese (Nzinga was using soft power nearly 400 years before Joseph Nye was born—what an absolute legend). A quick final note on my favourite queen: Nzinga was a legendary bisexual, and hosted a harem of men and women in her palace who were protected by female warriors. From Nzinga, we can learn to never stop fighting, and that by combining devastating violence, economic coercion, strategic marriage, and soft power, you can repel colonisers. 3. Juana Azurduy de Padilla (1780– 1862 CE) Juana Azurduy de Padilla was a guerrilla military leader who fought for Bolivian independence and Indigenous sovereignty in South America. In 1809, she joined the insurgency against the Spanish Army, where she and her husband helped recruit thousands of soldiers for the cause. Juana was able to pursue her two aims of kicking out the Spanish and establishing Indigenous sovereignty by recruiting Indigenous people—including women—to fight, and established the Loyal Battalions, a force of Indigenous men and women who were fiercely loyal to her. Juana continued to lead her battalion into battle while pregnant, leaving the battlefield only to give birth, and returning mere hours later to rally her troops. On the same day, she personally captured the flag of the defeated Spanish forces, and—having led her battalion successfully into Argentina—was rewarded with a promotion. Juana was appointed to the position of commander of the Northern Army Revolutionary Government and quickly established an independent zone. At the height of her power, she com-

manded an army of 6,000 people. This army was comprised of both women and men, as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. After Bolivian independence was achieved, Juana retired. She was permitted to return to her hometown and petitioned the newly established government to have her land—which had been stolen by the Spanish—returned. In time, due to shifting borders and bureaucratic nonsense, Juana lost her pension and was unable to reclaim the land that was owed to her. In her retirement, she was visited by Simon Bolivar (the revolutionary who led much of South America to independence), who declared that Bolivia should be named after Juana; without her, they would have never achieved independence (I quite agree, Mr. Bolivar). She died impoverished in 1862, her story largely forgotten. That is, until 2015, when the presidents of Argentina and Bolivia commissioned a statue of her to replace a statue of Columbus—we do love to see tributes to coloniser scum replaced with revolutionary legends. Juana is proof that these stories never really die: she went from being buried in a communal grave to being honoured with a statue. Tales of impressive women echo down the centuries, and we can all play our part by repeating them. 4. Noor Inayat Khan (1914–1944 CE) Allow me to present to you Noor Inayat Khan, a true legend. Noor was a member of the Special Operations Executive for the British in WWII (if you are unfamiliar with the SOE, I recommend that you do some Googling—so many impressive women). Before becoming a badass wireless operator in occupied France, Noor studied child psychology, composed music, and wrote poetry as well as children’s books in both French and English. Noor was a Sufi and a pacifist, but was nevertheless determined to defeat the Nazis. She initially joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force to contribute to the war effort, but was bored by her work, and applied for a commission to be an officer in the SOE. Noor was sent to occupied France as a wireless operator, where she became known for her incredibly fast and accurate transmissions. Upon her arrival in Paris, she discovered that the rebel network she was deployed to assist had been destroyed. Immediately, she was

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instructed to return to Britain, but Noor— now the only undetected transmitter in Paris—was determined to stay. She moved around constantly and without any contacts, incredibly vulnerable with her bulky transmitter. The transmitter equipment included heavy radio equipment and an aerial which required speed and finesse to operate undetected. She had to complete transmissions quickly, as the Nazis were able to locate the transmission site in only 30 minutes. Noor’s position was incredibly tenuous: the Nazis knew there was a young woman with Indian heritage running around Paris transmitting messages, and it is incredible that she survived as long as she did. Prior to her capture, Noor had several extremely close calls. On one occasion, she was discovered in the act of hiding her aerial in a tree. To escape persecution, Noor pretended to be a French housewife setting up a radio antenna to listen to music, and the Nazi officer who discovered her actually helped her place it. For three months, Noor escaped capture, arranging supply deliveries to the resistance hiding in the French countryside and managing the escape of Allied airmen who had been shot down. However, just days before she was to be airlifted out, she was betrayed, and captured by the Gestapo. Noor escaped not once, but twice— however, she was recaptured both times and designated a dangerous prisoner. She was detained in isolation, chained at her hands and feet, and was the first British agent to be sent to Germany as a POW during the war. She was later executed in Dachau at the age of 30. It is hard to take a positive message or lesson from a story that ends in such tragedy, except for her commitment. The British government was not particularly keen to send Noor into occupied France. She had to fight and convince them, even registering her name as Nora so as not to frighten the institution with her ‘foreign’ name. She could have airlifted out immediately upon her arrival in France. She could have never enlisted; being a pacifist and a woman, there was no expectation nor obligation on her part. But the strength of Noor’s conviction led her to enlist, train, and deploy. She constantly placed the cause above her own safety and displayed a courage that we can admire and try to emulate.

5. Faith Bandler (1918–2015 CE) A figure from recent history who deserves celebration is Faith Bandler. Faith was an activist and author involved in antiracist and peace movements in Australia. In the 1940s and ‘50s, Faith—who was vocally opposed to nuclear testing in the outback—got involved in the antiwar movement. She saw the war and missile tests on Indigenous lands as excesses of colonisation, and opposed both strongly. In 1956, Faith co-founded the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship in Sydney, and became involved with the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement. Through these bodies, Faith campaigned to abolish the Aborigines Welfare Board— which stole Indigenous children from their families. She worked closely with Aboriginal activist and Ngemba woman Pearl Gibbs. On one occasion, Faith and Pearl crashed the Liberal party conference to campaign for land return, interrupting the NSW premier’s speech to call for the rights of Aboriginal people. Faith also led the campaign for a referendum to remove sanctioned discrimination against Indigenous people from the Australian constitution, organising hundreds of meetings and getting thousands to sign petitions. These efforts ultimately led to the 91 per cent Yes vote on the 1967 referendum, which demanded a change in the law to include Indigenous people in the census and make laws regarding Aboriginal people federally consistent. Faith also campaigned for the rights of South Sea Islanders, organising the community to respond to health, wage, and education disparities. She confronted the sanitised historical narrative that blackbirding was not slavery (it very much was) through her writing, and published a biography of her father, who was abducted and forced to work on sugar plantations, as part of her work to expose the dark history of Australia. Faith published five other books, including one detailing her activism and a biography of her brother. In 1976, Faith was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, but declined it, because she was an icon who hated colonialism.

There are many ways to be a leader and many ways to create social change. Revolutionaries who fight and leaders of political movements are certainly inspiring, but for those who do not have the ability to lead in these ways, Faith—who created social change and argued for her beliefs through her writing and campaigning—can serve as your inspiration. Faith used the power of stories to create change, and we should learn from her example by critically challenging the narratives that are fed to us. *** This list introduces you to five women I find inspirational. I would now encourage you to research these women, as well as others like them. The stories of strong women are out there—find them and share them. The men who have shaped our understanding and vision of history wanted to make it beige and masculine, but we know it to be rainbow and filled with dynamic souls.

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Derby Girls Reema Hindi

CW: Mention of domestic violence and eating disorders. Big and butch. That was what I thought when I first heard about roller derby. Hardcore, tough girls with shaved heads and tattoos running down their thick arms, viciously tackling each other. All while on roller skates. I could feel the adrenaline from outside, blending with the distant sound of ‘80s pop rock anthems. I stood in my purposely sought-out edgy outfit, though I had accepted that I would appear visibly terrified upon entering the rink. Roller derby seemed to be all the things I wished I could be: tough, cool, and coordinated. In reality, I was far from an adrenaline junkie, and I didn’t think I would fit in amongst the badass, unapologetic athletes who dominated the rink. However, to my surprise, roller derby wasn't t h e

exclusive, intimidating environment I expected it to be. Instead, the Sydney Inner West League welcomed me with open arms into what seemed like a feminist paradise. Mustering up my confidence, I stepped into a euphoric circus of spandex, wheels, and glitter face paint on grinning faces. There’s a strong element of ‘dress-up’ in derby, but it didn’t seem to take away from the seriousness of the game. Rather, the players were empowered by their costumes, as if they were embodying their own superheroes. There were women of all shapes and sizes; from tough girls, big and buzzed, to girly girls in pigtails wearing tutus, and everything in between. All walks of life laughing together one minute and elbowing each other in the face the next. The game commenced and the girls were ruthless and quick—it was hard to keep up with what was happening. A roller derby bout is played around an oval track; each team has a ‘jammer’ who laps around the members of the opposing team to score points. The teams must attempt to block the opposing jammer while assisting their own, making it a fast contact sport that requires offence and defence simultaneously. “I came from, I guess you could say, a really dark place and roller derby really changed my life, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” ‘Luce Cannon’ was bubbling with delight before she played her first game after a lengthy recovery

from bruising her coccyx. “I’m nervous as hell, but excited as hell.” Reinvention is a defining part of roller derby: real names are replaced for a fresh start in the rink. With their costuming and derby names, the girls take on a whole new persona: ‘Velvet Whiplash’, ‘Crushie’, ‘Lyoness’. These alter egos are seen in the game's theatrical side— undoubtedly this is what makes it so fascinating. ‘Lyoness’ told me, “I am a lot more confident in myself, who I am as a person, and what I want to do because of having these two, kind of, personalities.” This escapism might account for the sport’s appeal to mainly women. For many, adopting these self-made assertive personas is an outlet far removed from gender stereotypes. This is facilitated by the refreshingly female-created space, where women are not only accepted, but valued, regardless of body type.

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‘Luce Cannon’ summed it up perfectly: “Roller derby offers a safe space. It’s a great opportunity for women that don’t necessarily fit into any athletic body stereotype to come in and find a space they can be involved in.” However, it’s certainly not a girls-only club, with volunteer male referees and coaches, and male leagues around the country. The girls worked to push down the opposition and fly their jammer to the front, and after the second half they won the first game of the season. Sweat, glitter, and mascara were dripping down their faces. A blend of both aggression and an undeniable respect. A kind of aesthetic performative femininity, sparkly tutus and all, with an assertive ferocity. I came to understand that roller

derby is about blurring the boundaries; to a lot of players, it’s so much more than a sport. ‘Brimful of Smasha’ opened up to me about her experiences with bulimia, and how derby improved how she perceives her body. On the rink, the body subverts any stereotypical notion of femininity by being mechanical, instrumental, and powerful. “I am a survivor of domestic violence and there is something really empowering about going into a situation where you can be really strong and hit people in a positive way. Reclaim your body and reclaim your strength and reclaim what people do to it. Resetting boundaries and saying, well, if someone hits me in derby, it's because I am there and I can hit them back. It’s really

empowering, and I love that about it.” I was completely engrossed in the bout, the women showing a level of skill and strategy I didn’t expect to see. There was so much resilience—even after vicious falls, the girls took no time to rest before they kept skating. The roughness of the game may seem far from feminine, but what a beautiful way to portray womanhood: we get knocked down but get back up, time and time again. The team took their well-deserved win. “Sex Bomb” was playing over the loudspeakers, while the crowd went wild. The girls were glowing in glitter, sweat, and smiles, celebrating their win as they glided around the rink. They were flying.

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An Ode to My Garments and the Machines that Alter Them 'Toritse Mojuetan

I'd like to raise a thimble to my stretch fit skinny jeans, the only pants that stretch and pull and fit my curves by any means. I’m eternally grateful to the self-love these pants set free, this strength and power to adore my curves when all I could see was a wave of people who look nothing like me – but damn, my ass looks good in those jeans. I'd like to unwind a bobbin in honour of my sewing machine. Little did I know, in textiles with Ms La Grange where I sat at sixteen, my life would change, and like Danny Phantom I began to view a world unseen, one which spoke of draping, darts, picked and unpicked seams. I began to create the clothes of my dreams because that was where they existed, in my mind, far removed from reality. I'd like to push a presser foot in thanks to the body contour dress, where my hips and my curves could be celebrated no less than the people on TV who didn’t look like me, who said curves were a fetter, but for once I could say that I wore it better. You see – the point was to show, there was nothing I could hide, in my face, in my body, in my being, I found my pride. I wasn't hidden behind boxy shirts and ill-fitting skirts, I was on display on my own terms. And I wore it well. I want to rip a seam for the good ol’ crop top; my friends, they tease; they say I crop nonstop. I know my shape differs from those the clothes are intended for, that “one size fits all” includes few, and excludes more, and makes us wonder, Who Are We?

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So, I cropped my tops, and I will crop nonstop. Thus, I ensure my dimensions are displayed, so people know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made in inches, in centimetres, in distances judged by eye, each line, each nook, each cranny tells the story of I, my flesh bears my story, and my clothes are the cover to the book that I am. Finally, I'd like to unfurl a tape measure for my pair of scissors, where superglue and tape were only the charge d’affaires. The greatest example of how those that giveth also taketh away, because before I had the vocabulary to convey who I was, I would cut and pull and stretch to let myself breathe, snipping and snapping and ripping while complex identities seethe through the constriction of what I was expected to be. I wonder what it would be like to go through the racks, to find my perfect size in a pair of pea-green slacks, to be represented in the stores, the mannequins and the ads, to be like everyone else and take part in new fads. What would it have been like to wear what other girls wore? Would I have felt like I fit, that I was not an eyesore to them and the rest of the world? I'm glad I had my scissors, crop tops and sewing machine, My bodycon dresses and favourite skinny jeans. Through them I could see that clothes simply adorned the already beautiful, and love-deserving body in which I was born. That these trinkets and materials are ways to tell the world I love what I see – that when I look in the mirror, with a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, I set myself free.

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Gothic Garments Yi Zhang

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About the Artist Yi Zhang is studying a Bachelor of I.T. at the ANU. She runs an Instagram account, @casualfashionpolice, based in the ACT, 2600. She collaborates with Leu Liu, Selma Dauda, Tanya George, and Gabrielle Loom to express the theme Memento Mori.

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The Final Boarding Call: Identity Loss at the Airport Xiao Marshall-Taylor

Missed connections. Delayed flights. Lost luggage. Despite these mishaps, I love airports. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to loom large and international travel seems a distant memory, I can’t be the only one who yearns for the time when we can return to airports and embark on adventures abroad. Airports are liminal spaces: while we’ve temporarily left the daily grind, we haven’t yet reached our destination. There is beauty in finding ourselves in transit: in a non-place in between spaces. For this brief time, we assume the identity of a traveller while suspending our everyday selves and responsibilities. The time waiting to board is spent watching strangers, doing uniquely airport things, and feeling a mixture of emotions in a short space of time. Love them or hate them, airports are fascinating spaces of human activity. Passport and ticket please? Once we pass through the check-in desk and security clearance area, we adopt the faceless identity of

a traveller. French anthropologist, Marc Augé, describes travellers as undergoing a social contract: after disclosing our passport, visas, or other identification documents, we are then afforded a form of anonymity. We become temporarily relieved from our usual determinants. It’s not that the usual determinants such as yesterday’s troubles or tomorrow’s worries are completely forgotten, it’s that we slip into what Augé calls “the passive joys of identity-loss”. Whether I’m sitting at Sydney Kingsford Smith, LAX, or Roissy Airport, nobody knows who I am. I could be going anywhere. I could be flying to visit family, embark on a backpacking trip, or seal a business deal. In that moment, a sense of comfort and relief washes over me that everyone in this nonplace shares my goal of going somewhere, and thus a shared identity of the traveller emerges. If Ms Elizabeth Jones for flight QF787 to New York is in the airport, please report

to Gate 51 immediately. Your flight is ready to depart. Airports create a space where staring at others has never been more socially acceptable. It is with curiosity that we watch large families trying to keep themselves together while navigating the airport’s maze, couples arguing which direction their boarding gate is in, or those dressed in business attire typing away furiously or making their way to the club lounges. Where are they all flying to? Why are they flying? What’s their backstory? We observe others, but we also become the observed, and, in this way, the airport becomes both a fishbowl and an intriguing paradox. We may feel a certain level of anonymity; however, this is disrupted as we observe, speculate, and imagine the lives of others, and they do the same to us. One of the joys of the traveller identity, and the airport itself, is a liberation from the usual frugalities or hesitancies of everyday living. Passengers are spontaneous in their actions because,

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according to British philosopher Alain de Botton, the airport “offers us an alternative … to the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world”. This could explain why I’ll buy the latest bestseller from WHSmith with every intention to have it finished by the time I return but knowing I probably won’t. Or why I’ll eat the overpriced salad or sandwich even though I’ll soon be served an on-board meal. For others, it might be drinking a glass of champagne at 6am, splurging on duty-free items before a flight, or wearing pyjama-like clothing in public. Whatever i t may be, there is a sense of airport liberation to surrender from our normal restrictions and look forward to the journey ahead. Boarding for flight BA182 to London will commence shortly. Please proceed to Gate 14. The feeling of anticipation is one of many emotions we experience as passengers in the airport. First-time flyers certainly encounter anticipation mixed with unease and curiosity as they board the plane. For me, when I travelled alone for the first time, I felt a sense of joy and glee because the airport scene contributed to a growing sense of independence. But we can also feel frustrated and angered when plans go awry and we’re powerless to do anything. As we gaze out of the grand windows of the boarding gate, it’s not just planes that are running high, but emotions: everyone around experiences this space differently. Of course, there are also the displays of human connection as loved ones are reunited in Love Actually style, where “fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends” all greet and embrace one another at the arrival gates of Heathrow.

Why are you flying today? What’s your occupation? Do you have anything to declare? The customs desk, situated at the airport’s exit, is where we finally regain our responsibilities associated with work, school, and family life. We step back into the respective roles we previously occupied before entering the airport and our everyday life continues. This is not to say that we haven’t changed or we are the same person as we were when we left. Travel exposes us to new experiences, e m o t i o n s , foreign cultures, and languages. And it is the airport, the nexus between our identity as a traveller and our everyday life, that facilitates this exposure.

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What We See Holly Ma

February wafts in the air: fresh linen, mangoes, and grilled cheese, punctuating conversations between cicada and kookaburra, jokers of suburban summer. A poolside breeze seeps along weedy pavement cracks, ones the sun tore with his morning yawn and exclaim. Satiated laze has chained us all at home, digesting stifled heat that pushes hunched shoulders along dust-bitten streets. We squint over exhausted posters clinging to travel stalls, holiday boutiques, tropicana anchoring us way out past the bleached seas, but the horizon is still too far to see, like the image plastered to the upper corner, plastered into my mind and if I prise your eyes you’ll see: two girls, giggling in the slurry outside a pancake parlour in Glasgow, bundled together and struck with maple syrup glowmellow, unlike the blue-tongued lizard blistering in the sun.

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Water Lilies Sophie Ryan

About the Artist Sophie Ryan is a young artist who grew up outside of Bathurst, New South Wales. Sophie is currently studying Art History and Curatorship and Visual Arts majoring in Painting at the ANU School of Art and Design. Sophie looks to the current social and political climate, and feels called to join the dialogue for gender equality.

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To the Shore Lucy Sorensen

I take a deep breath, Shhhh. My lungs draw in, pulling the salt, sand, and shells with me. Shhhhhhh I release, spilling forwards with a poignant purpose. I like the way it feels, drawing in, drawing out. Over and over again. I allow my breath to deepen, creeping down, down, down. Shhhhhhhhh I exhale, stronger, more forceful. My waves kick, curl, crumble, erupting past the previous sets. Crashing against the rocks, the shallows, sometimes the shore. But only sometimes. It feels good, go on, further… Fill the shore, the wind whistles. My eyes flutter shut, as I lustfully dream, of pouring onto the soft sand, brushing past the blunt grass, towards the cool cement, to finally slip through the streets… Stop. I sigh, silencing the whispers in the breeze. I know I can’t transcend the shore. Shhhhhhh. I sink back, falling further, further, into the darkness, the cool, the deep. Shhhhh, Inhale. Shhhhh, Exhale.

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Do We Outgrow Joy? Lily Harrison

My mum has these absurd green sunglasses that bring her copious amounts of joy—and my sister and I a muted feeling of mortification. They give off Edna from The Incredibles vibes—except that they’re semi-opaque emerald green, with diamantes the size of a thumb on each side. In the mornings and evenings, if the light catches these beetle-looking crystals just right, they throw rainbows across the driver-side door of the car, and make us smile. And I think that’s the crux of it. The reason Mum is so steadfast in her love of these sunnies: everywhere she goes, people stop to ask where they’re from, or remark on how joyful they are. They bring people joy. But why? I remember learning about joy in early high school science, and about what makes certain things universally joyful. Designer Ingrid Fetell Lee discovered that round shapes, saturated colours, symmetrical shapes, a sense of abundance and multiplicity, natural textures, and a feeling of lightness or elevation are all elements of design that bring joy across lines of age, gender, and ethnicity—“They weren’t joyful for just a few people. They were joyful for nearly everyone”. It befuddles me, then: if we know joy can be stimulated by the

imposition of bubbles, colour, shape, and texture, why aren’t more cities, offices, and lived-in spaces designed like a kindergarten classroom? Do we outgrow the pursuit of joy? In her book, See What You Made Me Do, Jess Hill speaks of children as ‘sensory sponges’ who absorb an unregulated flow of the sights, sounds, and movement around them. I’m sure you’ve seen the way babies put absolutely everything in their mouths, or had a small child stare at you so intently you worried something dreadful had happened to your face. I am perhaps a little envious of children in their ability to take pleasure, and find joy, in the smallest and most obvious of places, but I don’t think they necessarily experience more joy than us big people. I think that joy is unproductive. And I don’t mean that negatively. I just mean that in this fast-paced, success-driven society where productivity is at the forefront, joy is not considered to be a worthwhile pursuit. And therefore, it is not allowed. It does not help us reach our next goal, to take notice of flowers growing wild in the street cracks. But I think we yearn for it. I asked my grandmother, nearly 82 years old, what her life’s greatest joys are, and she responded almost instantly,

“Making my babies, then welcoming their babies.” I wonder if it’s because by being close to children, we vicariously experience more joy… Children, for the most part, are not yet aware that everything they do and give time to should, by society’s standards, help them reach their tiny fingers up and up and up until they wrap around the next rung of the ladder. So they have time for joy. Children aren’t any more neurologically equipped to be joyful than adults are—even if they do appear happier—rather, their environment, and the external expectations upon them, more easily allow for the expression of joy. Nancy Etcoff, clinical instructor in psychology, explains that: “Joy … is not all about me—joy is connection.” So, we didn’t evolve the capacity for joy out of purely individual desires—we evolved it for group survival, and it makes complete sense to me that children experience more joy-feeding connection. Because society still encourages children to collaborate and play; they have not yet been separated from the herd, and set on their own individual trajectory to success and ‘happiness’. If you looked around a child’s room, or classroom, you would likely see colour and symmetry— shapes that specifically trigger joy. And

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again, I take pause to ask: why don’t we learn to account for the gradual loss of time for joy as we age into clocks and schedules, and all wear ridiculous beetle sunglasses? Unfortunately, while a child’s daily life is usually one of stability and safety, in which their only concern— fulfilling their basic human evolutionary needs—is taken care of by someone else, adults have assumed a supposedly higher plane of existence, conspiring to create rules and goals and needs for ourselves beyond those necessary to sustain life. And we, as adults, gravitate toward children because, as American psychiatrist George Vaillant explains, “Developmentally, the child’s smile, the kitten’s purr, and the puppy’s wagging tail emerge at the same time. These social responses are elicited by, and in turn elicit, positive emotion.” So, if children and adults have equal capacity for joy, why do so many people feel less joyful than they remember being in those blissful, idyllic days of childhood? In the article “How Happiness Changes with Age”, Heidi Grant Halvorson writes that as we age, we experience a shift from ‘promotion motivation’—where we see our goals in relation to what we can gain—to ‘prevention motivation’—where our goals become viewed in terms of how best to avoid loss. Research from Northwestern University suggests ‘promotion motivation’ is more common in young people due to the way youth frames ideas about the future: more hopeful, idealistic, and less clouded by responsibility. Following this theory, young people—who are promotion-focused—see their goals as opportunities for advancement, and respond better to optimism, take risks, and excel in fields of creativity. Young people are more likely to try new hobbies, move away for university, travel, and imagine it’s possible to one day compete in the Olympics. All of these things innately hold a high chance of creating circumstances for joy. Conversely, prevention-focused people—who we become as we age—see their goals as opportunities to meet responsibilities, and to stay safe. In their ultimate pursuit of security, they are more conservative decision-makers, and more thorough in their planning. As such, they are likely to be less creative, subsequently limiting opportunities for accidental joy. Your motivational focus affects what you pay attention to in everyday life, and

what you value. We can expect that over time, joy will change from feelings of elation, exhilaration, and glee, to be better reflected in moments of peace, relaxation, and tranquillity. I went to the small children in my life, and posted on Facebook, to test this theory, posing the question, “What are life’s joys?” Children tripped over their words: laughter, learning, yummy food, people I love, tiny carrots, playful puppies, Easter egg hunts, and opening presents! Comments poured in on my Facebook post, too, but they were more composed: old couples holding hands, sinking your feet into soft, warm beach sand, a midday shower, chocolate cake smells from the oven, sunrises, a kind gesture from a stranger, afternoon sun, and newly-shaved legs in freshly-made sheets. So, then, we do not outgrow joy—the way we experience it merely changes.

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A Love Letter to the Little Things Avan Daruwalla

Whether it’s an Instagram infographic, angry Facebook post, critical op-ed, or message from a traumatised friend, I often find myself in a constant race to chew, swallow, and digest a lot of really troubling content. My bubble is full of the type of subject matter that has the subconscious effect of guilting activists, allies, and woke youth for experiencing joy. The world is terrible. Everyone is sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted, ableist, fatphobic, and classist. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. We are all being crushed by the capitalist machine. Paedophilic billionaires control everything. The privileged elite will never relinquish power. White supremacy is running rampant. The patriarchy is in control and continues to oppress. On, and on, and on it goes: an endless array of social ills that all need acknowledgement and redressing, all the time. It’s crushing sometimes, that feeling of helplessness, b e c a u s e everything needs to be fixed, overhauled, restarted—but our individual actions aren’t enough. Worse still, we constantly

receive conflicting information about how to be a good person: in the left ear, we can only address climate change through deconstructing capitalism; in the right ear, buying single-use plastics means you don’t care enough. I find myself falling down wormholes, dragged into a spiral of fear that all the things I enjoy have negative repercussions. I enjoy beauty and feeling good about myself—but that just endorses consumption culture and discriminatory beauty standards. I delight in the treat of my favourite comfort food— but that probably contributes to farm fishing, the exploitation of farmers by global business, plastic waste, and a huge carbon footprint. It’s not only exhausting to feel guilty for joy; I’ve also come to the conclusion that it’s not productive. When all the messaging you receive is so heavy, it’s imperative

to let yourself relish and revel in the things that make you grateful to be alive. If you are grateful, happy, and warm, you are also more likely to be kind, generous, and loving. It’s okay to be focused on the bigpicture things that feel significant to your greater existence, but without the little things, our lives would be full of gaping holes. When little things we do and experience feel good to us and those around us, we find a way to meaningfully fill our lives. Little things make life worth living in a way that big-picture things cannot: when we attribute gratitude to little things, they accumulate in a powerful way that connects us to reality and prevents apathy. In reflecting on the myriad of little things that make my life feel big, I have begun to formulate a list. Some things on the list make me think that God is real, some make me feel safe in the belonging of mutual experience, and others just feel good—which I believe is also enough and worth celebration. If I were a less inhibited person, this list would mostly consist of those people whose presences or existences bring me comfort, security, and cheer. I hope that even without their names or explicit

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references, it is obvious that my love letter would be incomplete without those who make my life full. Here is a list of little things that make me feel lucky to experience life. The feeling of a cold glass window against your back when a room is full of heat. Nestling your head on a loved one’s chest and feeling entirely held. Heat flowing through your chest from a warm cup of tea. The way sunlight melts dark irises into honey. Seeing anyone pick a flower in suburbia. Sunlight filtering through east-facing windows, dancing across freckled skin in the morning. The elderly wearing wide-brimmed sun hats as they tend to their gardens. Small children gifting strangers miscellaneous objects. When people are beaming with pride about something they made, grew, or produced from scratch. People who are willing to be inconvenienced by you. Going on walks while playing music at full volume, letting it reverberate through your skull and chest, leaving no space for anything else. The scent of gardenias in late spring. Thinking of the perfect gift for a friend. Picnics on soft grass. Women in nightclub bathrooms. Experiencing an animal’s unconditional love. Photos of friends. Girls in red sunglasses. Double decker buses. The sound of a heavy downpour from inside your bedroom. The feeling of having your skin drawn on. The sensory satisfaction of a perfect snack. The smell of warm bread. Drinking something cold from a mug. Watching ducklings waddle across roads as cars sit in traffic. Seeing cows in the countryside. Sitting on swings. Being picked up from work. Giving your dog the belly rub they crave. Revolving doors. Fairy lights. Banana bread. Little pastries. Generous laughter. Disco balls. Back rubs. Fortune cookies. Small talk. Recycled fashion. Party tricks. Angry art.

Lava cakes. Idle touches. Gold stars. Shoulder kisses. Loud thunderstorms. Ferris wheels. Hammocks. Trains. Sunflowers. Celebrations. Pasta. Lazing. Frolicking. Bouncing. Lollipops. Water when you’re thirsty. Food when you’re hungry. Finding something that was lost. Sunsets and sunrises. A stomach full of dinner. Contributing to something. Warm smiles from passers-by. Full moons. Walking for pleasure. Having your hand held. Being surrounded by trees. Showering a tired body. Feeling the sun on your back. Being thought of. Sometimes, even breathing feels life-affirmingly good. Whether you’re an active advocate, someone experiencing unrelenting oppression, or just generally concerned by the state of the world—it is 100 per cent worth your while to take note of the little things that make your life feel lovely. You have everything to gain from imbuing your daily experiences with joy and reflection. You don’t have to live, laugh, and love, or keep calm and carry on, or even romanticise your life. Just give yourself the space to feel and share goodness. Give yourself the space to live.

Bossy accepts contributions from ANU students, staff members, and alumni who are women, non-binary, femme-aligned, or genderqueer. E: anubossymag@gmail.com W: www.bossymag.com F: www.facebook.com/bossymag I: www.instagram.com/bossy.magazine T: www.twitter.com/anubossymag

Bossy

Memento Mori

content editor: Cinnamone Winchester art editor: Ana Isaacs managing editor: Faith Stellmaker senior content sub-editor: Alisha Nagle senior content sub-editor: Neve Traynor senior design sub-editor: Hengjia Liu content sub-editor: Lily Harrison interview sub-editor: Shannon Napier memoir sub-editor: Brontë Charles opinion sub-editor: Reema Hindi opinion sub-editor: Grace Holt opinion sub-editor: Marieke Lechner-Scott opinion sub-editor: Imogen McDonald review sub-editor: Alice Keane review sub-editor: Kaila Minotti design sub-editor: Chloe Davison design sub-editor: Rose Dixon-Campbell design sub-editor: Paris Robson design sub-editor: Sebastiàn Ungco design sub-editor: Navita Wijeratne art sub-editor: Emily Ryan art sub-editor: Sabrina Tse

Edition 7