Judy's Punch 2020: Chrysalis

Disembodied spider legs lined up With military precision above my upper lip, A curtain called down to end the performance Of a lifetime; me, meeting your standards?

Hah! Now that’s a comedy.

And here’s the tragedy.

Crispy hairs creeping out from the abyss Of my pit, haunting and taunting.

A sea urchin jabbing holes through My underarm and bursting forth Alien-style.

I shear the beast, thinking I’ve felled it But by fortnight’s dawn, it is back.

Collapsed, I cry

Acknowledgement of Country Are five blades and aloe extract not enough to defeat you?

The Judy’s Punch team acknowledges that this year’s magazine was created on land that the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations always have and always will be the custodians of. Moreover, in this year’s context of online learning, it means that many students were working from outside Narrm. Thus, we also acknowledge that a lot of Judy’s Punch content was created in wider ‘Australia’ which is stolen land and sovereignty has never been ceded.

We pay respect to Wurundjeri elders past, present, and future, and extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have been sharing stories for thousands and thousands of years.

We also want to express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and remind our non-Indigenous and Black readers that the racial issues being discussed abroad are very much present within our own backyard.

We urge you to continually seek out the stories of, and listen to, the people whose land you are living on as well.

Front and Back Cover by Kiara Allis

Contents 04 Editorial 05 A Note from the Women’s Officers 06 The Team 08 i know a place by Joanne Zou 09 night-traveller through foreign country by

Meredith Tyler 10 The Mother in My Quick by Meredith Tyler 11 Reflection on 12:30am Nights and Zoom Calls by Aleksandra Markovic 12 Internet Overwhelm: Drowning in a sea

of digital chaos by Zoe McLeod Covid Bodies by Cam Hurst 14 18 Lovina by Pavani Ambagahawattha 20 Cocksure in Aisle 2 by Siobhan Lewis 23 Period Politics by Meredith Tyler 24 Injustice by Jamisyn Gleeson lasgirlypops by Janvi Sikand 25 26 The Master Builder by Esmé James

Heroine by Tharidi Walimunige 52 53 A Dream Tour by Kiara Allis 54 Symphony by Rosann Anthony 55 Overgrown by Tharidi Walimunige 56 Essentially Priceless by Celia Schild 58 Whispered Secrets of the Matriarchy by

Srishti Chatterjee 60 Of White and Black by Anoushka Singh 61 Keep Walking by Anannya Musale 63 An Artificial Landscape by Kiara Allis 64 Our Lullaby by Esmé James (Dis)enchanting by Tharidi Walimunige 70 74 The Problem of Compassion by Donna Burroughs 76 Hungry Eyes by Mickhaella Ermita

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25 27 5 things that kept me sane by

Rosann Anthony 28 Xomzm by Jean Baulch 30 There is no I in Woman by Kate Flemming 34 Dawning by Natasha Bay 35 let’s redefine self-care by Catherine Pahljina 38 Jade Cuttings by Sarah Peters 39 The Mad Woman by Elyssia Koulouris 40 Music as Empowerment in the Face of a

Pandemic: Chloe x Halle’s ‘Ungodly Hour’ by Sabrina Caires 42 Women Leaders During COVID-19 by

Lindsay Wong 45 Lockdown & Quiet Voices by

Noa Abrahams 46 Womanhood? (1) by Clitopatra 47 Womanhood? (2) by Clitopatra 48 Chrysalis by Rosann Anthony 49 My Nan Plays the Piano by Esmé James 50 Focus by A. R. Craftier

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Hey all! It’s Amal, Jamisyn and Kiara here, and at risk of sounding cliché, what a year! ‘What a year’ is a great phrase because it removes the burden of finding the right word. You simply say the phrase, and people know what you mean. But this year, a lot of words have been thrown around, as though everyone is searching for the perfect one: Changing. Unprecedented. Uncertain. Chaotic. Bewildering. Fucked. These have been some of the top contenders. But finding the perfect word that describes the essence of 2020? That’s pretty difficult. This is because when so much change happens so rapidly, people’s lives are impacted in extremely different ways. In a sense, that’s what ties 2020 together; this incoherence.

This is what we’re expressing in this year’s edition of Judy’s Punch. We know that the current historic events we’re experiencing are messy, but we also know that final accounts of historic events are too neat and leave people out. That’s why we want to lean into the chaos – into this time of transformation. We’re doing this because we know that if we skip the part where people are experiencing change, then society will never know how to reach long lasting political, social, economic and cultural outcomes. As a magazine that grounds itself in a positive progressive change, creating and sustaining this understanding is crucial.

This brings us to our edition title, ‘Chrysalis’, which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as a ‘the hard outer case enclosing a chrysalis’, or alternatively, ‘a transitional state’. In a way, the historic events of this year, such as the Australian bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the US election, and everything else, creates an outer shell – something we’re all exposed to. However, none of us experience these things in the same way. This brings us to the second definition; transformation. What will come out of this on both an individual and societal scale is unknown, but as we are faced with the opportunity to invent a new future, we have the responsibility to ensure the present reflects your present. Whatever it may be.

Working on the magazine this year has truly been an honour and an amazing experience. We want to thank our passionate contributors, diligent sub-editors and supportive Women’s Officers who have played an immeasurable role in making the magazine what it is this year. Most importantly, we want to thank you, the reader, for picking up this magazine and witnessing a slice of history.

Happy reading!

Judith (Amal, Jamisyn, and Kiara)

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CW: brief mention of sexual harassment in fourth paragraph, no explicit detail

A Note from the 2020 Women’s Officers

To be challenged with creating a magazine, without ever meeting the editors, sub-editors or contributors in person was certainly not something we expected. But we could not be prouder of what has been created. 2020 is a year that will go down in history, and we are so thankful that Judy’s Punch: Chrysalis is part of that.

We are most proud of our editors Amal, Kiara, and Jamisyn who have worked in incredibly difficult situations to bring this magazine together. Face-to-face communication was certainly sorely missed, but you three really made the best of a crappy situation, and synthesised the art and words of many students into something truly beautiful.

Judy’s Punch: Chrysalis in all its splendour has emerged out of the chaotic moment of 2020, and we would like to thank every contributor, subeditor and collective member who brought it out of its cocoon. We hope that it has done you and your experience justice, and that it gives you solace within this year’s havoc.

It has been an honour and a privilege to be your Women’s Officers in 2020, to represent a department that is candid in its intersectional feminist activism. Our main project this year has been to further the campaign against sexual harassment on campus - without actually being on campus itself. Nevertheless, we are proud of the work we have been empowered to do this year, in establishing the UMSU Sexual Assault and Harassment Working Group, in contributing to the UMSU Report to the Respect Taskforce, in writing an open letter to Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell demanding progress in preventing and responding to sexual harassment iin the University community in a therapeutic and survivor-centric manner. None of this would have been possible without our collectives: the Women of Colour Collective, the Women’s Collective, Feminist Action Collective and finally, the Judy’s Punch Collective.

This year we have been forced apart and the isolation and distance has revealed the cruciality of collectives in such difficult times. We express our utmost gratitude and humility in allowing us to be your Women’s Officers this year.

With love, Aria & Naomi 2020 Women’s Officers.

Judy’s Punch is a student magazine of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), produced by the Women’s Department. Judy’s Punch is published by the General Secretary of UMSU, Jack Buksh. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the printers or the editors. Judy’s Punch is printed by Half Price Printing, care of Elie Zabaneh.

All writing and artwork remain the property of the creators.

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The Team Hi, I’m Rosann. I am currently doing my Master of Global Media Comms. My sense of humour is impeccable, by which I mean I laugh at my own jokes. I whip up poetry, vibe to the likes of Billie Eilish and Jaymes Young, paint florals and belt out Adele and Rihanna. I was always fascinated by the art of illustrations and it was exciting to create graphics for JP’s. I also love to freeze moments, which is a fancy way of saying ‘I take photos’, but anyway, you can find my photos on Instagram @essentially_picturesque and my art at @essentially_artsy.

Rosann Graphics

Hi, I’m Annabelle! I’m a third-year Bachelor of Arts student (Criminology & Gender Studies major), who is low-key obsessed with indoor plants and can make a mean espresso martini. I have spent lockdown reading Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, eating too many entire DOC Margarita pizza’s, getting into a healthy sleep routine (you best believe I now wake up at 7am naturally), and propagating my Devil’s Ivy. I’m so excited for you to read this years Judy’s Punch, it’s been an absolute pleasure being involved in the making of this edition!

Annabelle Commentary

Hey y’all! I’m Pavani, a second-year Arts student (yikes where did the time go?) who is slowly but surely returning to all the things the patriarchy convinced me not to like when I was younger, like Taylor Swift, fuchsia pink, and myself.

Pavani

Commentary Hey I’m Poppy Willis! I’m a Melbourne-based writer and editor. I’m currently studying the Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at The University of Melbourne. In my spare time, I enjoy binge-watching science-fiction television shows.

Hey I’m Lindsay! I’m an aspiring writer who is passionate about elevating marginalised voices. In my free time, I enjoys K-pop, anime and trying different kinds of bubble tea.

Poppy Creative

Lindsay Commentary

Brunch and cheese lover. I’m currently obsessed with Lauren DiCioccio and as soon as everything returns to normal I’m spending my entire bank account on travelling!

Hi, I’m Amy! I’m an undergrad Creative Writing student with a passion for short fiction, prose, and poetry. My other hobbies include knitting, hoarding tea, and trying to grow plants.

Mia

Amy Creative

Graphics Hello, I’m Joanne and I’m in my second year majoring in Graphic Design but I also love fashion design. I love everything that’s colorful and inspiring, especially works of David Hockney! It feels so great to be able to share my ideas and illustrations with more people through becoming a graphic subbie!

Everyone calls me Geegee, but my actual name is Pantira (don’t even ask lol).

I’m just your typical biracial girl (Thai/ New Zealand) who loves her monster energy drink and who can’t wait for everything to reopen again so she can go back to good old Thurs(g)ays at Yah Yahs and festivals.

Joanne 6

Graphics

Geegee Graphics

Hey I’m Mickhaella Ermita (20) and I’m a Melbourne-based, second-generation Filipina New Zealander non-fiction writer and performer. I’m currently completing a Bachelor’s in English & Theatre Studies and Criminology at the University of Melbourne.

My interests include consuming stories of all forms (especially video games and D&D), cutting my hair short, watching the sun melt into still bodies of water, the intersection of culture and politics, and, unfortunately, anime.

Mickhaella Commentary

Hey I’m Olivia! I love painting and my favourite book is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It has been a pleasure subediting for Judy’s Punch 2020!

Olivia Creative

Hi I’m Kelsey! I’m waiting for 2020 to end so I can return to staying indoors out of preference alone. If I were to go outside, you can count on me to be intimidated by children who play downball, and easily lured into bookstores.

Hey I’m Joanne! I’m a third-year Arts student who likes pop music, magical realism, and bubble tea.

Joanne

Kelsey

Creative

Creative

Hi I’m Jessica and I’m a second-year Bachelor of Design student, majoring in Graphic Design. I spend time by binge watching shows, listening to music and drinking lots of coffee! I enjoy spending too much time on the internet and looking at memes.

Hello hello! I’m a second-year Arts student, majoring in History and Philosophy of Science, with a Diploma of Languages in Russian. I’m passionate about things like iced coffee, my dog, and in-depth analyses of Taylor Swift lyrics.

Follow me on Spotify at donna.ftz for chaos.

Jessica

Donna

Graphics

Commentary Hi, I’m Mehar. I’m a first-year Science student. I read, write, and go on long walks. I adore women, literature, and the colour blue. I’m glad for this opportunity to work with like-minded individuals, to build an inclusive environment for sharing art and experiences. Instagram: @mjaitel

Hi I’m Jacey and I’m a second-year Arts student majoring in History, with a passion for amplifying the voices of WoC through my writing. I also love frothy matcha lattes, old documentaries, and creating oddly specific Spotify playlists.

Jacey

Mehar

Commentary

Charlotte Creative

Creative

Hello I’m Charlotte! I’m a third-year Literature and Ancient World Studies major, although I sppend most of my time daydreaming, accidentally humming too loudly, and – at regular intervals throughout the day – eating chunks of cheese cut haphazardly from the block. On the side, I tutor, write poetry, subedit, and fangirl over beautiful words.

Hey I’m Chantal! I’m a second-year in Urban Planning and Graphic Design. It’s honestly been such a wild year of TikTok, Zoom and everything being cake. Didn’t make it to the banana bread phase of iso but definitely made some dalgona coffee and binged some Community. Looking forward to camping on a beach (outside of ACNH…) once I’m allowed outside of my lil’ 5km bubble.

Chantal Graphics

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i know a place

By Joanne Zou| Graphics by Kiara Allis

You’re gonna fall in love With a girl, which you were not expecting You’re gonna start a band It’s just her, another friend, and you And then you get freaked out You say something about how you just can’t commit And you move into your aunt’s house Yeah, and all your dreams come true I’m gonna figure it out ‘Cause I’m already here, and I won’t leave now So put a pot of coffee on I’m just having a time But the good news is, if you don’t like life They say it pink light so long But I took hope in half-desire You are wildfire, and I in the right surroundings hope in the rain And I can tell When you get nervous You think being yourself Means being unworthy And it’s hard to love With a heart that’s hurting But if you want to go out dancing Oh, baby I think we both know This is the love that we won’t get right Still if you said that you wanted I know I’ll always have one more try Oh, baby, I think we both know This is the love that we won’t get right Still if you said that you wanted I know I’ll always have one more try It’s gonna be okay, baby

Original words and lyrics by MUNA. 8

night-traveller through foreign country

By Meredith Tyler | Graphics by Mia Dugandzic

o, women! who rode waves armed with words & weapons now white sea foam washed on beaches!

I think of you seeking safety in the old or the new – your veil against cold sandstorms & shining spears, washing slanted mountain ranges clean with tears. women of jahiliyya! poets, warriors, widows, wives, foes who lit fires in chill desert nights under star shadows – how did you find safety within erosion’s changes?

I ask your quiet wombs but they gape back slack-jawed, toothless. and so I turn to Petra, mountain-cradled, whose desert dust sits quietly on garden temples & Aaron’s tomb – one day our dust will settle too.

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By Meredith Tyler | Graphics by Joanne Guo

the mother in my quick – thread a needle pull it tight pricked finger bloody nick snap the string knot bright white puckered fabric – frown out of sight.

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Reflection on 12:30am nights and Zoom calls

By Aleksandra Markovic |Graphics by Kiara Allis I’ve always been fascinated by movies where characters live the same day over and over and over again before I fall asleep that one Suite Life on Deck episode pushes through my memory, demanding attention like the 8:30am alarm I keep snoozing the ship crosses the International Date Line straddling the mistakes of yesterday and the promises of tomorrow a time loop, like ragged clothing spinning in a washing machine living the same day once felt out of reach safely tucked away in a cigar box but now a cloaked figure, perfumed in uncertainty presses a button which drags me towards a fruitless existence of the following: wake up and write a to-do list ignore your to-do list and cry about it later in the week realise you wasted your day surfing YouTube and now it’s 6pm and you should probably do some work is it possible to both miss your friends and be sick of Zoom calls? at least I had my one hour of sunlight today the rays on my soft skin remind me of warm hugs and precedented times.

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Internet Overwhelm: Drowning in a sea of digital chaos

By Zoe Mcleod | Graphics by Chantal Zhao

by Zoe McLeod| Graphics by Chantal My head is swimming. Even as I write this, in a moment which is usually clear for me, thoughts compete to exit from my fingers. Which one will crawl to the surface quickly enough to be acknowledged? Because, god, this is what I want to do forever and somehow denying myself that moment of clarity which usually comes from typing away is a terrible cruelty.

Why is the world so freaking loud? I should probably turn off the playlist in the background.

Lyrics mix with the words swirling around my brain, but the chaos seems fitting somehow.

Okay, too much. I need to breathe.

It’s been kind of a shitty year. Extremely unoriginal statement, but also very true. Somehow we’re in September now and I’m looking back to see what I can remember, but there’s not much. The last few years have also passed by in blurs, but there is something different about this particular blur. Yes, it has felt like one realllyyyyy long March/April, but it’s not just that. When I look back, it’s a specific kind of blur. An internet-soaked, digital haze. My eyes strain from looking at it all.

I’ve spent the year in my hometown, on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland. That means I’ve been out of lockdown since early June, or maybe even earlier. I can’t remember.

Now if you walk into a café and ignore the 1.5m social distancing signs (without actually ignoring them of course), you wouldn’t really know there was a global pandemic, or that we’d even had one in the first place.

Honestly though, even during Australia’s scariest moments earlier this year, when I was checking the curve every few days, my hometown didn’t change much. And now it’s really like nothing has changed. Even though everything has. The Sunshine Coast is like that though. A happy, mostly oblivious little bubble. The outside world never seems to affect it all that much.

Now, there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. Hell, being able to hold onto your sense of normality at a time like this feels like an accomplishment. And I think I might be jealous.

I’m angry, because I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all.

Have they not been seeing the same things as me? The articles predict that COVID will last another three years. The reports indicate that the global lockdown has done nothing to change the inevitable climate change apocalypse. The toxic Facebook comments spewing hate on everyone from BLM protesters to refugees still trying to find their way out of detention. How is everyone around me still managing regular social lives and 5am runs and Saturday morning coffee dates? How are they all holding together so well when it feels like the world is falling apart?

I can’t understand why I’m thinking more and more like an angry nihilist. Even though that’s never been me, or at least never someone I’ve wanted to be. And I think it has something to do with the internet.

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To be clear, I don’t think the internet is evil, or represents the declining presence of our humanity, etc. etc. But really, if you spend any amount of time online, it’s an easy impression to get. Too easy. Spend too much time there and the world becomes a cesspool of leaching humans with empty souls. Hollow shells who are so full of hate, their only desire is to pull each other down. Sad, lonely and mean.

I’ve noticed a direct correlation between time spent on Facebook and time on the verge of a politics-inspired panic attack. I deleted Instagram permanently a few months ago because too often after logging off, even after deleting it from my phone each time, my thoughts were still racing faster than I could keep up with. I had watched myself spiral into anxiety or despair or both too many times before.

So, if I 1) am no longer in lockdown, and 2) feel terrible when I use the internet too much, why am I still doing it? Pure force of habit and procrastination is one explanation. Distraction and comfort is the other.

I don’t understand why, but it’s somehow reassuring to retreat into a world full of people I’ve never met. Watch other people’s lives, worry about things I can’t control, rather than focus on my own life and what I can do about it. Act as if Facebook comments really tell me anything about the way the world is.

Because when I go out to the ‘real world’ again, when I drive to the shops or call a friend or just go for a walk, I’m reminded that people are usually much better than we think they are, and the world actually isn’t on fire. We’re all just trying to do our best. Just a bunch of weird creatures trying to move through life and connect with each other. Find somewhere we feel safe and protect ourselves and those we love. It’s just in trying to do those things, it can get pretty messy. Change is a reality of life. But we happen to be living through a pretty fucking big change.

It’s okay to be scared by that. And in times like this, it’s sometimes easier to avoid dealing with ourselves and what we need. That’s okay, too. As long as we remember that there’s so much more out there than we can currently see. And a lot of it is wonderful.

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Covid Bodies.

By Cameron

by Cameron Hurst| Hurst Graphics | Graphics

by Chantal

by Chantal Zhao

When Boris gets to the podium, he looks sick as fuck. Pallid. He is sweating. Hard. I scan my body again. Top to toe. I strain my lungs. Unhhhhhhhh. Push out a wheeze. My forehead is cool. I can barely believe that I’ve tested positive. His hair, almost translucent, appears magnetised towards his damp scalp. I move my index finger and thumb across the mouse pad and magnify the Prime Minister’s swollen eye sockets and grey cheeks. Jesus Christ.

You can practically see the Grim Reaper hovering behind the podium. His government has presided over extraordinarily gross negligence in the management of COVID-19, running borders like unchecked viral superhighways. It’s an international disgrace, the worst excesses of neoliberal globalisation writ hysteric. Personally, thanks be to Boz. This world is full of spiritual transactions, metaphysical checks and balances where we can only halfsense the shape. Staring into his feverish visage, it’s obvious that he had to get it so I could get home safe. Think about it. It just makes sense. I manifest for him a speedy physical recovery and a quick political death.

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I press my laptop shut and pick up the TV remote. Shit, shit, shit. I hold my hand to the nubbin in my chest: I’m ‘experiencing difficulty breathing’, but that’s a pre-Covid condition. What if when I’m breathing the virus gets out? What if when I’m on the apartment balcony, droplets float down in a sweet autumnal shower and land on the below-people’s deck chairs? It’s not difficult to imagine them lounging there for some afternoon sun, then wiping their mouth with a hand that has grazed the corona-sprinkled arm of the chair. You’ve got to think about these things. The TV lights up. It’s a fancy Samsung one. I search using voice control.

‘Yoga! With! Adriene!’

Pressing play, I lower my knees to the ground. The carpet in the apartment is a mass of grey fibrous knots. It’s the calming size of a family tent base, and firm but soft. When I rest my face on my hands in child’s pose, little tufts of white fluff stick out of the weave and brush against my nose. Adriene is indomitably perky. Every time, I suppress the critical panic that rises within me, directed towards her excruciating stock music and Disney references and complete dislocation of yoga from its original context, because when she speaks it’s like a sedative.

‘And melt your heart down. Forward fold. Place your palms to the floor, then step one leg back, then the other. Now, move through a vinyasa, open up your chest, and we meet in downward-facing dog.’

Blood rushes to the top of my head.

‘Now take the biggest breath you’ve taken all day.’

When the air moves through my sinuses, it sounds like a blade being sharpened between my ears. I slice my anxiety out of my chest and push my calves back.

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Nikia sends me a video of Rihanna. It’s titled ‘Rihanna thrusts her crotch on a glass bridge for fans at her Anti World Tour concert in Glasgow,’ which is weird and creepy but the video itself is profound. It’s our favourite song to dance to while mopping the floors at work and reminds me when my body was a site of pleasure, not paranoia. Title: ‘Sex With Me,’ subject: ‘so amazing.’ I believe it. Thrust is far too crude a word for Rihanna’s fluid motions. She twists, slides, grinds, rolls, flicks. She definitely fucks. Her smirk has a mysterious opacity. You get the sense that her body is an effortless extension of her desires, with no mind-body split. ‘You know I got the sauce, you know I’m saucy/And it’s always wet, you know a bitch never had to use lipgloss on it.’ The Department of Health texts me again. Do I have symptoms? No. My immune system is working. Powerful ANTIbodied magic is at play. I hop up off the couch and spin my head around like a wind-whipped blow up figure at a car dealership. I’ve got some sauce! I’m saucy!

There are two ads that play over and over on SBS. One is for the lottery. The other is for yoghurt. Both are antagonising – filled with happy people wantonly rubbing themselves up against each other in communal spaces – but the latter is the worst. Yia yias and nonnas and grannies wearing saris gallivant around spraying garlic and cumin and honey on the Greek shit. It’s an orgy of dairy-induced frottage. The fantasy of multicultural utopia is hard to watch given the racism, always rotting under the facade of White Australia, that covid has unleashed. I remember my friend Grace’s Facebook post: ‘My home is now a place where statements like “I hope the virus does as much damage in China as possible” and “the Chinese deserve this” are openly supported and celebrated in public discourse … I have been made aware that the suffering of people like me does not matter and should perhaps even be celebrated.’ The triangle of absolute disjunction between her experience, mine and the yoghurt utopia sticks. Suddenly the hours I’ve spent reading abstractly on ‘bodies,’ how ‘bodies are constituted within the specific nexus of culture or discourse/ power relations’ and how ‘whiteness ... orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they “take up” space,’ begin to itch underneath my infectious skin. Theorists would call it ‘embodied knowledge,’ I’d call it: realising no one is going to spit on me in the hallway of this apartment building. The brutal efficiency of slipping through four countries in a week without challenge because of a grubby little passport that says ‘Australia.’ The sheer lack of impediment I faced getting into isolation and staying here strikes me as obscene. Manus.

Mantra. (And later, after I’m released, Black Lives Matter. Standing on the lawn outside Parliament House thinking – again – about the curdled unthinkableness of having a family member murdered by custody). I finally feel sick; it’s not my sick to feel.

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‘The body.’ What a curt, disconnected word for the freckles on a person’s forearm, the soft wetness in the corner of a mouth, the way a foot sole can thump onto hot bitumen in summer. Or what gets hurt by the impenetrable translucence of a border. Or an implacable cop.

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Content Warning:ofmentions racism, colonialism, rape (non-explicit).

CW: mentions racism,of colonialism, and rape (non-explicit)

Lovina

By Pavani Ambagahawattha | Graphics by Kiara Allis

By Pavani Ambagahawattha | Graphics by Kiara Allis Picture a cliff by the ocean. It is tall, and waves splatter against its jagged edges in a frenzy of salt and sea foam.

The water churns, betraying hints of submerged rock that could smash your brains into pulp, but the surface is such a clear, jewel-bright blue that it fools you into forgetting its treachery. High on the cliff stands a manor built along straight colonial lines – it is imposing, and not despite its simplicity. On fair-weathered days, which in this Sri Lankan town tends to be most days, the glaring blue of the sea and sky against the white house is such that it all hurts to look at.

This is Mount Lavinia, one of my most beloved spots back home. Now a seaside hotel catering to tourists and welloff locals, it was built in 1805 by one Sir Thomas Maitland, governor of British Ceylon. Today, the hotel’s history is a powerful marketing tool: the original structure has been preserved, and staff sometimes don period-appropriate clothing – for a whiff of colonial charm, I suppose.

Its name, and that of the town it is situated in – Lavinia – is part of that history. The story goes that Maitland often threw masquerade balls at his manor. At these events, white people – the upper echelons of colonial society – would dance, and drink, and flit about gaily in wisps of glittering silk. Brown people, I imagine, would serve. Wait on their white masters and mistresses, observe them quietly from the sidelines. They say that it was at one of these balls that Maitland ‘fell in love’ with Sinhalese-Portugese girl named Lovina. Little of substance is known of this girl.

Her story is scuffed at the edges by one scandalised retelling after another, warped by the currents of colonial racial and sexual politics. Maitland was in his forties when they met, with much wealth and an illustrious career behind him. Lovina would have been a child – half his age, poor and of low caste. Generally though, the affair is presented as a rather sweet, consensual one. After being recalled to England, Maitland ensured the girl was financially provided for, and brought the tale to its neat conclusion by dying a bachelor, allegedly pining for his lost love.

As a wee girl visiting the hotel with family, I’d read placards bearing this cloying narrative, and for reasons I could not then articulate, felt in equal parts troubled and fascinated by this image of a May-December Romeo and Juliet, divided by race but united by love. For you see, Lovina is also always a promiscuous figure in these descriptions.

Take for instance these (female, Sri Lankan) authors’ description of her: ‘As she danced before him, enticing him with her long flowing jet-black tresses and fixing his attention with her large, expressive hazel brown eyes, [Maitland] was mesmerised.’

The accompanying image juxtaposes a curvy, scantily clad Lovina against Maitland, who is literally buttoned up to the throat in his lieutenant’s uniform.

Ah, now this, this is a narrative with which we are familiar – the sexually suggestive yet available Oriental woman.

She is a mix of innocent submission (her youth, her lower class) and eroticism (her dark body, her physicality as a dancer). She is to be conquered, and if conquered, will reveal unanticipated delights – a none-too-subtle allegory for the colonised land itself.

Stories like Lovina’s are not uncommon. In countries like mine, where the legacy of a violent colonial past bubbles beneath the surface, they are a dime a dozen. Even so, I’ve found hers to have powerful personal resonance, and have thought about her frequently since.

I am ashamed. We have treated her unfairly, sanitising and selling her memory to foreign tourists who seek out Mount Lavinia because it allows them to live out a modern colonial fantasy while keeping their consciences lilywhite. I am angry at us for our complicity. We have framed her story as a romance because the other narrative is 18

simply too uncomfortable, too unpalatable, and too ugly for a hotel to market. Spend the night in a mansion built off exploited colonial labour, where a young girl was possibly sexually assaulted, or at the very least coerced into a relationship where the unequal power dynamic made consent a virtual impossibility!!!

That doesn’t look great on a travel brochure, I suppose.

I hate that as a brown woman of low caste, disadvantaged triply by intersecting networks of oppression, this was the only way in which Lovina could have made her way into a historical record authored by the powerful. Even in the rare occasions when stories like hers are not hastily hushed up, they continue to be framed by the systems of oppression that enabled them in the first place. Myth and memory and history, too tightly twisted to unwind with ease. I think of her mother, her sisters, and her friends – all the forgotten brown women bubbling with thoughts and words history did not consider significant enough to preserve for posterity. I wonder if she would hate us for remembering her solely in relation to her abuser, or wish she wasn’t remembered at all, but these are questions I will never have answers to, because the historical record did not much care about her opinions. It did not consider her a person on her own terms – a cycle of careless and racist misogyny that we continue to perpetuate today.

A few weeks ago, my family took me out and somehow, we ended up at Mount Lavinia again. The sky burned a bright blue, as did the ocean, and the manor was as lovely an edifice to ugliness and injustice as ever. I imagined her, a girl walking up to it with a match in her hand, sitting on the lawns and watching it and all it symbolised become ash. Or maybe that’s the wrong picture. Maybe I should picture her on the surf with briny water swilling about her ankles and the wind tangling in her hair, smiling and living and liking the feel of the sun against her brown cheek – a person in her own right, in relation to nothing and no one else.

Like Lovina, I am but one brown girl against the weight of history. I cannot burn mansions or tear down systems with my bare hands, but what I can do is remember her in that way. I can tell her story, and do so with as much honesty as I can. That is perhaps an act of quiet and profound rebellion in itself, and that perhaps, is enough.

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byBySiobhan Graphics by

by Geegee GeegeeAbernethy Abernethy SiobhanLewis Lewis | Graphics I picked him up in Aisle 2 of Coles Some sour peach hearts peering from his cart Now back at his place; ‘he’s got ten-year goals’ He shows off all of his expensive art.

I bit the tip; a heart so full of zing His game of hide-and-seek is hit-and-miss At first so peachy; now here comes the sting He could not seem to find the clitoris.

His pickup line so forward; I was charmed ‘As you are here, groceries are no chore’ But once we’re in bed, I become alarmed When lights are out this suave suit guy’s a bore.

O’ you think you’re so special; grind & grunt You’re just a casualty; killed by my cu—

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bloodstain under bedsheets – a haunting of life’s futility Period Politics by Meredith Tyler | Graphics by Kiara Allis

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Injustice

By Jamisyn Gleeson | Graphics by Mia Dugandzic Why do you have to be so political?

Your beliefs – and they are political – are so unsound what do you have to support them with, other than essays, statistics and passion?

You lack a man’s voice.

That’s what you need; a voice of reason to teach you how to be dignified, proper.

Don’t play the victim when you have never experienced oppression – ­ you don’t live in a Third World country.

Why must you open your mouth

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and ruin everything we – us men – have conceived?

You don’t know your place in the world.

Let me do the honours of helping you find it.

Listen to me – I’m your Patriarch.

I know what beliefs and behaviours pave the way to success, to freedom.

I’m not a feminist, but I care about women.

Stop protesting and sit still for me.

You know I love it when you smile.

lasgirlypops by Janvi Sikand

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The Master Builder

By Esmé James| Graphics by Chantal Zhao cement gathers in the cracks of roughened hands paving pathways forming mounds – the first signs of the new world wearied body scrubbing dirt from pores long ago stained by it put down the soap now come into bed A new day is broken. you watch the world waking from your scaffolding in the sky seeing the sun rising – knowing you will rise just that bit higher they say that Gatsby was a great man but you knew how to love harder. blessed with that extraordinary gift for hope, but you furnished with an incandescent strength that no book could hope to capture. you did this all for her. sun-kissed palms pressing down the foundations for this world of your creation – you did this because of her years laid staggered upon a bed freshly made together you secure it with mortar and promises — no wall made without precious irregularities A night has fallen.

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now there is waiting holding her as she traces those hardened networks with her soft fingers – these are the moments you have toiled for. now there is nurturing smoothing stones making brick into home watching life form from materials you have fostered lay down your hammer come inside look at all you have created. finding rest here she pours your tea – teaching you this home will return your loving embrace A new time is beginning. tools are replaced with books and a guitar watching the world that has formed around you. you sing to it ask nothing of it content to know that with bared hands and soul you have built this world – laid the foundations for every laugh and smile for every moment of joy for every songbird that has learned to fly higher than they were ever told they could fly We owe this all to you.

5 things that kept me sane by Rosann Anthony

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Xomzm

By Jean Baulch | Graphics by Kiara Allis Womxn – sometimes I feel lost on what it is…

But I’m lost on woman as well, a word other people dressed me in, and I have never been sure how I’m supposed to move with it on. It wants me to hold myself in certain ways, semantic fashion gone wrong, expecting things of me that I don’t understand. I thought everyone felt that way, that it was an all-encompassing game of make believe that everyone was in on, and putting up with. In the same way that Tooth Fairy and Santa style revelations flipped my sense of existence in my childhood, the idea that Woman (and her counterpart Man) were real has flipped my world as an adult. That Woman might genuinely line up with people’s innate sense of self is something beyond my wildest imagination.

Does Womxn fit more comfortably? Have more room to move?

But what does it mean?

Does x mark the spot?

Why is the spot in the middle of the man and the men? The wo is always disconnected. What if women and woman kept their vowels while men and man give up theirs instead? Mxn. Reminds me of BMX. What if we all gave up our vowels and began again?! Wymxn and mxn, perhaps wqmwn and mzn, all of us out there roaming the world with glorious new consonant clusters from which to build our own social constructions.

If their spelling is never unsettled, can man and men ever change?

Maybe X does mark a spot, maybe it works as a convergence point of the gender extremes, of the woman and the man. A point from which you can branch out and reach any destination m womXn n Better still, perhaps X marks a portal to the world in-between, the place you step to reach beyond the ideas of binaries as the center of the world, a world welcoming to everyone who sees themselves belonging. But for such a portal to exist it feels like it should be right in the centre of the word – woxen. It’s foxier that way, and wilder, and more beautiful I’d love to be woxen, whatever it might be.

Maybe it isn’t the vowels that are the problem, but the consonants.

What if the W was an X as well? – xomxn.

Somehow both futuristic and something folklore all mixed into a beautiful existence. Or how about xoxxn? Or what about woxex?

X has always had an exotic feel for me, along with Z and Y, and the other oddities QV, all of them a strange collection of quivering lines, curious English symbols. Men and man get standard letters, common constants from the everyday malaise. Is that one more reason to replace their vowels with something more exciting? To try and expand their realm of possibilities? What if the world weren’t filled with womxn and men, but xomzm and mxn?

Wom n. Okay, but why is it a cross instead of a tick? Why mark it as something incorrect, when it’s supposed to be a correction of sorts?

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Wom n.

No I hate it! It looks like something of a how-to-vote card. Pretend I never wrote that one down.

I like the cross as a way of saying back off! I’m here doing womxn any way I want, when it feels comfortable and fitting, and it isn’t all the time, and sometimes it’s insufficient and I need more of the strange letters that I love to find my place and become wxmzn, xowen, wymwm. A word with no expectation of consistency, able to shift with my mood and the moment, that’s what I need. All the weirdness and wildness and wonder I can get, because the more complex womxn becomes, the more comfortable it feels to put it on, to wrap it around me, and wear it out into the world.

Photography by Jean Baulch 29

There is no I in Woman

By Kate Flemming | Graphics by Chantal Zhao ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.’

(Austen, 267) ‘… when [women] came to set their thoughts to paper … they had no tradition behind them …’ (Woolf, 65)

It is difficult to see myself in the letter I. It is tall and thin, lacking any curves or shape – Freud might have described it as somewhat phallic. It resembles the male form far more than the female. Hardly surprising when we consider that women were mostly illiterate until a few centuries ago (Woolf 36). There is no objective reason why this personal pronoun should be indicated with a single vertical line. ‘I’ is independent in function and form. When it comes to using this confident, singular line as a woman though, we are forced to borrow from a tradition of writing that has been historically reserved for the purposes of men. It was not designed for us. It was designed by the Ancient Romans and Greeks – the great thinkers of the ancient world – who were all men of course. Nevertheless, I have used it in my writing because I have no choice.

It has been forced upon me, handed down through generations of quills and pens and typewriters and keyboards, and it is something which I must reclaim as my own.

What you are about to read is my attempt to write as a woman, in the most authentic way possible, using a language that was not designed for me. I have

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more questions than answers, as is usually the way in arts faculties. While I am still undecided how I can reconcile my sex with my chosen field of study, I have decided that there is more to me than an I. A Room of My Own I do not own my room, but it feels like my own.

It contains my bed, my guitars, my collection of Penguin Classics and my miscellaneous vases filled with dried, dead flowers. My stepdad says I should have moved out by now – I think he would have liked me gone years ago – but this room is where I write, and where I study the words of Woolf, Wollstonecraft and Butler. I burn candles that remind me of my former love and listen to nostalgic John Mayer songs. These walls comfort me, protect me and witness me at my best and worst. I have filled my notebook with lyrics and chords here. My poems and my essays have emerged on this very laptop at this very desk which was designed by men for my manmade room. My ex and I – we – spent our first week together in this room. On my notepad, on my desk, in my room, this poem emerges from me. A woman:

Do you ever feel like a shell of a person?

I don’t remember feeling this vacant before.

Like my time is filled with tasks and bookmarks But I’m not learning anymore.

My body felt more like mine when it was yours.

I wanted it to be seen and touched and held By you and to be loved in your eyes On your phone at night, by moonlight We existed in air, drifting from the west.

Did we lose control in our search for land?

I think I let go before you were ready To but now when I reach out there’s no hand.

Distraction and pills only take me so far.

I’d rather drown in you than drink Myself to sleep each night. The tea we bought Has run out now so I make a pool in the sink.

To feel the water between my fingers Takes me back to you. To the droplets On your eyelashes in clouds of steam, Our bodies locked as I take breath from your lips.

When the steam lifts and the glass clears I know where I am again. In my room alone.

With my thoughts which turn to water On my cheeks you used to own.

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There is no I in Academia ‘Western epistemology, [Alison Jagger] argued, is shaped by the belief that emotion should be excluded from the process of attaining knowledge. Because women in our culture are not simply encouraged but required to be the bearers of emotion, when men are culturally conditioned to repress, an epistemology which excludes emotions from the process of attaining knowledge radically undercuts women’s epistemic authority.’ (Tompkins 170) To be valued in academic discourse, Jane Tompkins claims that women must adopt a tone which is alien from their instinctive prose. She describes this act as akin to ‘wearing men’s jeans’ (170) – a statement which echoes the sentiments of Woolf and Austen. Tompkins argues that adhering to this masculine prose ‘uphold[s] a male standard of rationality that militates against women being recognised as culturally legitimate sources of knowledge’ (171). The whole purpose of the arts – whether they be visual, audio, sensory or otherwise – is to impact human emotions. Therefore, by disregarding these emotions as evidence in literary and artistic analysis, we are unable to fully understand both the artform and its effect. If women are the bearers of emotions, then we need to be included in academic discourse for a balanced attainment of knowledge. Only then can the human experience truly be analysed in an academic setting.

As a student, I have been discouraged by male and female educators alike, to use personal pronouns in my work. Expressing emotion has also been on the blacklist.

However, I agree with Tompkins that ‘how one gets one’s knowledge, in no way determines the particular knowledge that one has’ (172). So I will continue to use ‘I’ so that I am heard as an individual who thinks and feels, and writes in her own voice when demonstrating knowledge.

Academia needs feminism, in practice and in theory, but feminism also needs academia. But on a more personal note, I need academia. Academia has given me a platform to voice and reinforce my own theories.

It has empowered me with the voices of other women – women I wouldn’t have been exposed to had I not been a student. I need academia to reinforce my feminist values. And I need it to be there when those values are neglected in my personal relationships.

Writing Through My Body I went to bed one evening questioning my poem. I couldn’t figure out why I was so fixated on my 32

body being owned.

Had I mistaken love for submission? I couldn’t understand why it felt so right to tell you I was yours, and for you to call me yours.

My politics and education had always told me I was the ruler of my own body. My poem said otherwise.

Hélène Cixous tells me to ‘write [my] self. [My] body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth’ (880). Was my poem the result of my body then, rather than my mind? The product of my unconscious physical desires, rather than my ideological ones? Cixous states ‘Women must write through their bodies,’(886) (my italics), so perhaps I can only write freely through my body.

Woolf argues that the greatest writers, namely Shakespeare, were uninhibited by the ‘severances and oppositions in the mind’ (83). To write, one must be free of inhibitions and restrictions; echoing Cixous’s sentiment, it seems Woolf is also suggesting that the words must flow from the body. My poem was not planned or considered. It emerged from me as a soul emerges from a body after death – unhindered and unnoticed. I had turned my light on and the poem was there on the page before my eyes had time to adjust.

It was like my hand knew what to write before my mind had time to think it through. To borrow from Jane Tompkins, it felt like I had unconsciously ‘removed the straightjacket’ (178) of masculine language and discourse and let my body write itself. But how can the desires of my body be inconsistent with the desires of my mind? How can I have intellectual freedom when there is conflict within my own self? I want to be independent, proud and defiant, while being loving, affectionate and protected, but these states feel incompatible.

The Marianne Complex Marianne is the troubled but inspiring protagonist in Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, who dominates academically, but is submissive in her relationships.

The novel follows Marianne and her on-again-offagain relationship with Connell from the end of high school to the end of college. She embodies the conflict I’ve been feeling between my feminist values and my desires in relationships.

Over the course of the narrative she progressively shows signs of masochism: self-deprecating humour; smoking and drinking, sexual submissiveness, and

eventually a relationship where she asks her partner to dominate her sexually and tell her she’s worthless.

She doesn’t feel ‘loveable’ (101) and claims to have a coldness about her which is ‘difficult to like’ (101).

Marianne proves herself through her scholarship to Trinity College in Dublin for politics and history, which she describes as being ‘a matter of personal feeling, rather than economic fact’ (173), but she submits to things she doesn’t want to do in relationships. When Marianne and Connell’s friend Peggy suggests they have a threesome, Connell is adamant he couldn’t do it, and Marianne insists she ‘wouldn’t have enjoyed it either’ but ‘would have done it if [he’d] wanted to’ (105). Later, when Marianne describes to Connell what her relationship with her sadist boyfriend Jamie is like, she states ‘it’s like I’m acting a part, I just pretend to feel that way, like I’m in his power’ (134). She takes this treatment further with her next partner Lukas, where she ‘experiences no more ownership over her own body than if it were a piece of litter’ (191). Marianne seems to find emotional validation in her desire to be controlled by men, while she seeks intellectual validation in her academic achievements.

a feminist. I am a lover.

I am a woman.

References Austen, Jane. Persuasion. Vintage, 2014.

Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of Medusa.” Signs, vol. 1, no.4, 1974, pp.

875-893.

Rooney, Sally. Normal People. Faber & Faber, 2018.

Tompkins, Jane. “Me and My Shadow.” New Literary History, vol.19, no.1, 1987, pp.169-178.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Vintage, 2001.

I can’t help but feel an affinity with Marianne. While I don’t share her physical abuse and masochistic tendencies, I do find emotional comfort in a kind of romantic submission and intellectual gratification in scholarly achievements. Marianne demonstrates a splitting of the self, where the body and the mind are used as means to achieving different ends. Intellect manifests in the exercising of the mind, emotions manifest in the submission of the body. Whether this divide is necessary, I can’t be sure. I’m not certain whether this kind of emotional and bodily submission is compatible with feminist ideology. Surely to be a feminist, one needs to own their entire self, and not just their mind.

But I wonder if I can own myself in academia and be owned outside of it. Like a kind of conditional contract which divides ownership of assets. If I can reconcile this fission of my body and mind, then maybe I can own that choice. There is a kind of power in that. I can think with my mind and feel through my body, and draw on both to inform what I write.

The straight little line used to indicate my first-person perspective feels too narrow to encapsulate my voice and experience. I am more than a mere letter ascribed to me by ancient Romans and Greeks. I am a writer. I am 33

Dawning

By Natasha Bay | Graphics by Jessica Motet

There’s a shark on my desk Smooth grey body curling around candles Exposed porcelain tailing at the end, A razor sharp fin protrudes

Ectoplasmic memories cling to me Deleted songs and blacklisted movies, Seeing Owen Wilson walk through Paris Should not make me so emotional

Acrylic apparitions blur in the corner of my eye Dancing around my room with glee, A midnight carousel And tonight I have two left feet

Reading your poems To the drips and heaves of the sun, There’s a ritual typing of words Muddled letters in unforgiving search boxes

12:12PM Craquelure: a network of fine cracks in the paint or varnish of a painting

5:50AM Helminths: worm-like parasites that survive by feeding on a living host to gain nourishment and protection, sometimes resulting in illness of the host.

In my dreams I see a version of you, Light blue jeans, shoulder-length hair Purple tinge dancing in fake sunlight Cerebral handprints on collegiate walls I dive in my drawers to find bleeding polaroids Chromatic swirls of tainted flowers, I rewind the tape until it tangles And scratch my records pressing on the needle 3:35AM Viscera: the internal organs in the main cavities of the body, especially those in the abdomen, e.g. the intestines.

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5:52AM Aubade: a morning love song, or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn 5:55AM Pyramus: a legendary youth of Babylon who dies for love of Thisbe

let’s redefine self-care

By Catherine Pahljina | Graphics by Kiara Allis It’s interesting how the words quarantine, isolation and social distancing have now become part of our everyday vocabulary. The most confronting aspect of quarantine? My anxiety and I getting locked away together, without any real distractions. I thought we were well-acquainted with one another but turns out there was so much I was yet to understand, and I didn’t always have control over it. It took a global pandemic for me to realise that anxiety wasn’t going anywhere, and I needed to take my well being more seriously.

Here is where the concept of ‘self-care’ began to echo in my head. A concept you see all over Instagram stories and one I’ve been grappling with for many years. I spent most of my teenage years believing self-care to be futile. I didn’t feel any less anxious having applied a face mask, even though it’s what all the beauty gurus were doing. Admittedly, most of these products sat on my shelf unused. It’s easier to just buy a Frank Body package and say you gave it a try.

By the way, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a face mask. If it makes you feel relaxed or boosts your mood in the slightest, it’s valid. And I love my Frank Body scrub, but the practice of self-care shouldn’t be commodified.

There is so much more to nurturing yourself.

Thankfully, the discourse around self-care is changing for the better. For example, it shouldn’t just be a reward for yourself after finishing a two-thousand-word essay. It is something you do consistently to make the writing process easier, so you don’t mentally collapse in a stressed heap. It might seem like there’s no time but making time to look after your wellbeing is just as productive as writing that essay.

Now that we’ve established what self-care isn’t, here’s what it can be. I’ve compiled a list of practices I’ve tried and tested during the lockdown. The best part? They don’t cost you anything.

yoga It’s taken me a very long time to realise that yoga isn’t just a trend circulating social media. It has deep rooted historical and religious meaning going back to at least the 5th century in the Indian region. I was aware that the benefits of yoga were unmatched, but the thought of being so intimately connected with my body and breath seemed overwhelming. It was only when I discovered a fantastic teacher during a trip to the UK, that I found a deep appreciation for yoga practice. And with plenty of yoga studios offering online classes now, there’s not been a better time to connect with the peace and benefits of yoga.

A recommendation would be ‘Yoga with Adriene’ on YouTube, who has been my hero during the lockdown. meditation People had been telling me for months to try meditation. As my relationship with yoga, the idea of being still and alone with my thoughts was uncomfortable. And although the hardest part is sitting for that first meditation session, once you start, you will wonder why it took you so long to try. When doom scrolling gets the better of me, a quick five-minute meditation lowers my heart rate and focuses my mind. There are plenty of guided meditation videos on YouTube (again, Adriene is my personal favourite!), but even just taking a few minutes to breathe will leave you feeling more centred.

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shower Okay, hear me out. Whenever I am feeling super anxious during the day, a shower is incredibly healing. You can visualise washing away any worries or stress if it helps. Or you can appreciate the clean, relaxed post-shower feeling. It definitely calms me, so give it a try.

walking Or running if that’s more your vibe. After sitting stagnant for hours at a time on Zoom, there is nothing your body needs more than movement. You don’t necessarily need to do a Chloe Ting workout every day, but just walking around your neighbourhood is often enough to lift your spirits.

crying The world right now is plagued with uncertainty, and it can get overwhelming, and not being able to see friends or hug someone, can feel isolating. In times like these, it is important to let out those lockdown frustrations and anxieties. Sometimes all you need is a big cry. And did I mention it’s also free?

dancing to throwback music Not going to lie, I’ve recently discovered that dancing around my room listening to nostalgic tunes makes me feel a hundred times more optimistic. Hello to One Direction and old-school Taylor Swift albums. Let your inner child out to play.

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setting boundaries This can be incredibly difficult, particularly during lockdown where you might be confined to a space with family, housemates, or a partner.

No matter how much you appreciate the people around you, intense ongoing interaction can be draining. This self-care practise means spending more time alone instead of in communal spaces, stepping back from family activities in favour of reading a book in your room, or any other means of recharging your social batteries. Giving yourself this time to refresh allows you to be more generous with others.

digital detox This is so important. I know I’m not the only one who finds themselves continuously scrolling through Facebook, reading the endless cycle of bad news and conspiracy theories. Otherwise referred to as ‘doom scrolling,’ this habit can leave us feeling anxious and defeated, not to mention the FOMO we feel when watching Instagram stories of friends in other states who are just living their lives. Protect your mental health by switching off social media (and news channels) for at least a day, if not more. If you’re worried about staying informed, allocate half an hour per day to check the news. There is a fine line between remaining informed and getting lost in the doom and gloom of the media world.

Although I am not a professional by any means, I believe it is imperative, now more than ever, to attend to your mental and physical health. For me, finding self-care activities that I enjoy and can implement daily has been life changing and I hope you too find the joy in nurturing yourself.

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CW: subtle mentions of self-harm

Jade Cuttings

By Sarah Peters | Graphics by Geegee Abernethy I took a cutting off my friend’s Jade last autumn her birthday was in February.

Ticking calendars haven’t made either of us feel like living and honestly? I’m not even sure we are.

Are we as lucky as I hoped? Standing in Bunnings with her ex, My friend, first, both of us screaming and looking for things that could survive?

But hey, I haven’t taped the cuttings to my wrist or begun propagation of my pain even though my writing hasn’t been strong lately and I haven’t been able to believe in a plant waking up a room.

She keeps sleeping on the delivery, and by she I mean isolation and by isolation, I mean the cutting sitting in a blue teacup on my window sill watching a world we aren’t entering right now and I’m not sure whether I am the blue teacup or whether I should be drinking from it.

This sounds like something out of an Alex Lahey song I heard on campus when I felt like a student more than a soundboard for people’s poetry, Not that I dislike the pain but, I’m just tired of waiting for things to not grow.

EasyCare on the label doesn’t mean that I’m not picturing another day without green, Just that someone else ascribed a label to grief I think I planted myself.

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The Mad Woman

By Elyssia Koulouris | Graphics by Jessica Motet

Her skin was stained terra cotta Heart under her coat, tarnished by cherry juice My skin is olive stained with kisses from ancestors Beauty spots as small as chamomile seeds She wore my flesh as a cape of righteousness Her lemon tears Mask my sweetness with sour Turning your comfort to a shattered ego I cup your pieces in my palms and fail To fix you Twisted my stomach like the Great Ocean Road I stared as she painted your heart with her cherry juice Drip Drop Drip You taste that last drop.

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Chloe × ‘Ungodl Music as Empowerment in the Face of a Pandemic

By Sabrina Caires | Graphics by Jessica Motet

It is impossible to talk about Chloe x Halle without first talking about their online performances. Currently being recorded from their backyard tennis courts, their performances let their songs live a hundred lives, transforming the track with each rendition. These two sisters have been turning heads with their harmonies since 2013 when they first caught the attention of Beyonce’s record label, Parkwood Entertainment, with a YouTube cover of “Pretty Hurts”. Now, two EPs, two albums, and two grammy nominations later, the duo continue to prove themselves as a force to be reckoned with in R&B music. It’s in the way their confidence visibly grows with each performance - you know you’re witnessing the early stages of something great. The online performances which have come about as a result of the pandemic have been messy, glitchy, and awkward at worst, but Chloe x Halle exemplify their successes.

I rediscovered the duo on YouTube when they performed their lead single Do It as part of the Dear Class of 2020 online event. Having enjoyed their 2018 debut The Kids Are Alright, I instantly recognised Ungodly Hour as a continuation of the growing up journey that their music explores. Songs like Everywhere and Grown from their debut positively glow with the duo’s strive to uplift themselves and others, all whilst treading the unfamiliar territory of young adolescence. This album 40

certainly draws on those same themes, albeit with a new perspective that’s a little older, and a little wiser.

All the while, though, Chloe and Halle are still learning themselves. Baby Girl explores how young women in the spotlight are a magnified reflection of the standards women are held to every day. The song affirms the importance of dealing with mental health whilst pursuing your ambitions; “Every day I gotta please ‘em, while I’m picking up the pieces.” In a year like 2020, this sentiment rings clearer than ever.

When Chloe laments that during hard times she might, “even try to call my Romeo,” the girls call into question the ‘bad feminist’ dilemma; are we ‘bad feminists’ for sometimes wishing for someone to share the hardship with? Well if you ask this fierce duo, the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Baby Girl ends on a note of power (“this is all your world now”) and effortlessly transitions into Do It, a shameless proclamation of finding joy in being present with yourself and your friends. This sharp R&B cut boasts 90s influences in its beat, but to call Do It derivative in any sense would be a cruel misrepresentation. The song glitters with the duo’s flair and fireceness. It has all the makings of a modern popR&B radio hit - punchy verses that tell a story, and an utterly danceable hook. Do It is that song.

× Halle’s ly Hour’

The production diverges from poppy R&B at times, experimenting with jazz (Don’t Make It Harder On Me) to becoming uncategorisable on Tipsy. This track incorporates unconventional vocal and synth elements to create a unique yet still identifiable sound, akin to the effect of the wacky production on Ariana Grande’s song make up off of thank u, next.

I like to think of Tipsy’s lyrical content as a messy portrait of the archetypal “mad woman” (Taylor Swift’s recent track of that exact name has received recent attention for its exploration of this concept). Here, the girls adopt a more playful tone than Swift, matching flippant lyrics with an equally quirky beat. As is always the case with Chloe x Halle tracks, the outro is the icing on the cake.

On Tipsy it’s almost like they’re saying, “If you didn’t get it yet, we’re joking… but not really.”

The album’s most soulful moments come in the form of Prince-tinged Don’t Make It Harder On Me as well as the title track, Ungodly Hour. The almost melancholy, dreamy synths in the latter’s opening made it my favourite track from the very first listen. It draws you in, just like the feeling the song describes - feeling inexplicably drawn to someone yet knowing they can’t yet meet your expectations. This song delivers some of the most selfassured lyrics of the album; “When you decide you like

yourself, holler at me.”

The weak link in the album is certainly Catch Up, a collaboration with Mike WiLL Made-It and Swae Lee. The girls’ vocals don’t seem to be at the forefront here, but the production isn’t anything spectacular either. Having said that, with the right promo this could have been a radio hit; Swae Lee’s feature along with pop melodies and a heavy bass combine to form a concoction perfect for today’s pop radio.

Lonely forms the most personal moment of the album.

The entire song is delivered by both the girls in harmony, over a dreamy, comforting instrumental. This song wasn’t written during quarantine, yet the lyrics seem so timely; “Who are you when no one’s watching? You close the door to your apartment. Are you afraid of the silence?”

This song washes over you like musical therapy.

Thanks to the pandemic, my first experience living away from home didn’t quite go to plan. But it felt as though this album, Lonely most pertinently, was written for me. “It don’t have to be lonely being alone,” the lyrics insist. And I believed every word they said. Now that’s empowerment if I’ve ever heard it.

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Women Leaders During COVID-19

By Lindsay Wong | Graphics by Geegee Abernethy

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken up 2020, challenging world leaders and highlighting major differences in political leadership by gender. New Zealand, Germany and Taiwan, among a few other countries, have stood out during this crisis because of their effective leadership and efficient implementation of policies – what these countries all have in common is a woman at the helm of government. In contrast to some of the worst performing countries with hyper-masculine leadership, such as the US, UK and Brazil, countries led by women have seen a decrease in the number of cases, and the beginning of life returning to normal. There are currently only 19 countries with leaders that are women. Most of them have seen success when dealing with the pandemic, particularly during the initial wave; they locked down their countries early and enacted policies to curb the spread of the virus, such as mandatory face coverings and social distancing. Consequently, their countries have less cases compared to countries with male leaders. This is no coincidence - women in power have been shown to have certain characteristics that result in more effective leadership during times of crisis.

Scientists have identified qualities associated with woman-led leadership that make them more effective at dealing with crises. Women tend to show more empathy and care in their leadership, demonstrating a genuine sense of concern for the publics’ well being.

For example, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern went live on Facebook from her own living room and carried out mundane tasks in front of the camera, such as putting her child to sleep. With these actions, she emphasised that every person has an important role to play in containing the spread of the virus, and reiterated her governments’ message that everyone should stay home and only go out when necessary. By depicting the realities of her daily life under lockdown, Ardern portrayed herself as an approachable, relatable leader, thus gaining the trust of the public. These actions contributed to the compliance of New Zealanders with following the government’s policies, and after a few gruelling months, the country was declared ‘COVID-free’ in the beginning of June. Although they experienced a second wave, which was promptly responded to, there is no doubt that New Zealand did well compared to other states.

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Women in power also communicate effectively and take immediate action for their country. Sint Marteen’s Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs has been praised for her no-nonsense attitude towards the pandemic, speaking firmly and concisely when she was addressing the public, urging them to stay home. Her manner of speaking conveyed her sense of reason, allowing her to justify the government’s policies to her audience, thus increasing compliance. Women leaders also communicate with the public by providing frequent updates, which builds trust in the government and provides hope that there is a way out of the crisis. The clear communication creates a perception of their government as transparent and accountable, which is crucial during times of crisis, to alleviate confusion and uncertainty among the public. Women leaders generally seen as nurturing mothers, who work collaboratively and display compassion in their policies. During the pandemic, women in power have been working closely with trusted professionals in the medical sector when developing and enacting policies related to the virus.

For example, Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg allowed scientists to spearhead the country’s response to the spread of the virus. Similarly, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen responded quickly to the initial outbreak in February, holding daily briefings with health officials to discuss the steps needed to contain the virus. As a result, Taiwan is faring relatively well with a small outbreak compared to other countries.

When examining leadership styles in response to COVID-19, there is a damning reflection of gender stereotypes. As mentioned earlier, the US, UK, India and Brazil are some of the worst performing countries which have leaders that lead with hyper-masculine tendencies, reflecting in their aggressive rhetoric. They seek to assert power and reject the traditionally feminine traits of collaboration and empathy that have led to success in other countries. The leaders of these countries have demonstrated that their primary concern is for the economic well-being of their country instead of public health, by delaying lockdowns and ending them earlier than medical experts recommended. Instead of listening to professionals, male leaders consulted their close confidantes and political allies, and as a result, many countries with male leaders have failed to contain the virus and are still dealing with a high daily number of cases.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has proved that women leaders are more effective in turbulent times due to the ‘feminine’ characteristics of their governing styles. They adopt a caretaking role to ensure that most lives can be saved, which builds trust among the public, leading to greater compliance with respect to safety measures, and success in containing the spread of the virus. In contrast, men tend to lead with hyper-masculine tendencies, and prioritise the economy over public health, resulting in higher numbers of confirmed cases and casualties. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed and revealed much about the world, has caused mass disruption and confusion across the globe, but it has made one thing clear; women leaders are demonstrating girl power at its max as they lead their countries to success against the virus.

References: Women leaders and coronavirus: look beyond stereotypes to find the secret to their success: The Conversation https://theconversation.com/women-leaders-and-coronavirus-look-beyond-stereotypes-to-find-the-secret-to-their-success-141414 Female Leaders are Responding Better to COVID-19: The Myriad https://www.themyriad.news/female-leaders-are-responding-better-to-covid-19/ https://fortune.com/2020/08/20/women-female-leaders-vs-wartime-president-trump-jacinda-ardern-angela-merkel-covid-19coronavirus/ Women leaders are better at fighting the pandemic: VoxEU https://voxeu.org/article/women-leaders-are-better-fighting-pandemic https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniefillion/2020/08/05/the-science-behind-women-leaders-success-in-fighting-covid19/#25729b14749b

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Lockdown & Quiet Voices

By Noa Abrahams | Graphics by Chantal I may have been among a minority that was relieved, more than anything else, by the notion of online learning.

March feels like years ago, and last year seems like yesterday. But I was quite content with the messiness of time if it meant I didn’t have to be in an almost constant state of overwhelmed anxiety by the unfamiliar world of university. In that brief stunt of daily tram commutes, frantic logins to the lagging uni app to find where my classes were, and hours getting lost in the maze that is the Old Maths building, I was also trying to work out if what I was doing was really what I had spent the past three years hoping it would be.

All this cramming in my brain, of content created by and for dead white men. Content now delivered (as I was pleasantly surprised) to roughly equal parts young men and women and others. I’d never been in such a diverse setting. And yet, I still wondered if this was my place.

Like everyone else, I’ve had to find my way around Zoom tutorials and an entirely online education. Its been frustrating at times, but for me, has been a much more accessible introduction to the way uni works in terms of study, assessment, and class structure. From my limited comparison with in-person learning, over these months I’ve become increasingly aware of how this new type of space impacts my interactions – student to student, student to tutor, and tutor to class. While many of these experiences have been – fine – they have also highlighted the ways in which gender norms continue to permeate the fabric of our society.

I continue to wonder whether my search for the words to articulate my experience is something I’m proud of, or wish I didn’t need. Perhaps it’s both. We can’t break down systems until we understand how they work.

and ‘everyone will listen to me in silence, because what I have to say is worth listening to’. I wonder whether this added layer makes it that much harder for women, who have broadly been conditioned to believe that their voices are less important, or at least, less valued.

As a response to this I have been trying to encourage more safe spaces – a Facebook chat with two female students I met in a breakout room, or staying on to ask questions so that the one other student left feels comfortable to turn on their camera, and ask questions too. Simultaneously, I have felt the need to apologise, stay quiet or say something like ‘if that’s okay’ a lot. I think taking up space and taking up people’s time has a lot more implications in this online world.

This contradiction reflects the world that now only exists in my feed; one second filled with bold, inspiring women, the next, a plea for freedom, or safety, or the need to just be seen. How, as young people, can we cultivate a culture of equality and social justice, when we are inheriting a world crippled by discriminatory systems? How do we raise our voices time and again, when they are so often met with indifference?

The world online is certainly an evolving space, and I hope that as I continue to speak into the void, and absorb content from worlds before, that I, and other women and non-binary people, continue on the journey to empowerment and the confidence that what we have to say is both important, and valued.

In one class, five men discussed female stereotypes and tropes, without asking the eight or so female-identifying students in the class how they thought or felt. When one (bravely) spoke up and disagreed, she was both cut off and mansplained to in the Zoom comments. In most others, female voices are vocal only in breakout rooms or when called on personally. It’s hard for me to compare this to pre-Covid classes, but I wonder whether the situation would be the same. The mute button makes contributions so explicitly active now, one must be so confident, as though proclaiming, ‘here is my voice’ 45

CW: alludes to transphobia, racism, and homophobia

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Womanhood? by Clitopatra

CW: alludes to transphobia, racism, and homophobia

Womanhood? by Clitopatra

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Chrysalis

By Rosann Anthony| Graphics by Rosann Anthony ‘Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow, Bloom and grow, forever ...’

Captain von Trapp and Maria iterate empathetically to me as they sing the well-known tune from The Sound of Music. I recall the night my parents performed their duet at the annual colony day, a day we celebrated the unity and fellowship of our small community, hoping for blessings to fall upon our homeland. Now here I am, scrunched up in a weird position on the couch, laptop hoisted and typing away.

Bloom and grow, I really want to. Trust me I do.

I say this with all the affirmation I can muster – I want to bloom and grow. I am waiting for metamorphosis.

I am waiting for the day I emerge as an adult with all her priorities sorted. On the precipice of the new decade, I believed (nay I dared) it to be a good one. Contrary to my expectations, I found myself in my chrysalis rather than emerging as that ‘got-my-shit-sorted-out’ adult. I spent the first half of the year wallowing in my misery, but the second half has been enlightening. I realised that the chrysalis phase could only mean that metamorphosis was to follow.

That does not necessarily translate to its timely occurrence, but it just might be a sign from the universe that good things are yet to come.

As the music ends, I miss that cold evening when my parents sang into the dewy night, gently wishing for blessings. There was warmth and love in the air. Amidst all this chaos, I wish for the same gentle and gradual metamorphosis.

‘May we bloom and grow, forever ...’

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My Nan Plays the Piano

By Esmé James | Graphics by Jessica Motet The keys are stones to touch. They graze her scarred skin, opening up the past.

She had dreamt that one day they would soften. She had dreamt that one day they would turn to silk.

Tiny notes hammer down. Tiny keys unlocking. Tiny notes escaping. Isolated notes, not yet a song; connected by nothing but the board from which they are born. She presses down hard. She tries to make them touch. They almost do. They scrape each other, pouring sand into her lap. It gathers as she forgets to sweep it. Her cotton dress is covered in a beach of the night. No waves can touch her here.

Grandad knows the song she is trying to sing. He is silent and says they have sung it together before. He wishes he could soften the keys for her. He wishes he could turn each staff to stalks and weave them into a coastal garden. He wishes he could conceal her within those purple petals and wait for her fingers to heal.

Her nails chip at a song she has played since her youth but she is not a girl in a flowing white dress anymore.

She is a baby taking her first steps on legs she thought were for flying. If she falls, she will pick herself back up. She has been falling for years. And he has served only to steady her, for she has always had a strong will to rise. She is a magnetic pull, reaching to the skies.

Tiny specks of blackened sand, no water to cleanse them, isolated from the ocean, abandoned by the shore, sure to abound if they are not swept.

It is the sand that is holding her down.

Sweep them to the floor.

The waves cannot hear above the strained music.

She cannot hear above her strained music.

Her weight presses the stool into the ground. She’s tried to grow but the roots have not followed; they are hidden in the curls of the legs by a wooden splinter.

Her weight presses down harder and leaves its indentation on eternity; on a time when all will become lavender and rise from the coastal sand.

She looks at the obscured pages, trying to picture lessons from the childhood she never had. She sweeps the sand to the ground. Roots search for sustenance amongst the dust and stale air. There is no nourishment for them here. There is only the sand which spills from her fingertips and paints the carpet with seeds of lavender. They will not bloom for her.

It’s no matter – she loves to see the buds. They make her brave and she hammers with two hands. The seed of a tune is there; she pulls it with all her might from the ground. A speck of purple.

Free her and let her fly.

A noise escapes. Tiny fingers cease to hammer. A tiny note unlocked. A tiny voice is escaping. It shakes her and holds her suspended. She lets it sing and hears nothing else. He watches her sing and sees nothing else.

Now the sand has shifted and she is again grounded.

Fingers again hammer down tiny notes unlocking.

It submerges itself back under the ground.

Let the keys soften.

The keys are dirt beneath her touch. They seep into her bloodstream and grow gardens in her lungs. She sighs with the voice of ten songbirds.

They will all hear their song.

But Grandad can hear her pain.

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By A. R. Craftier | Graphics by Joanne Guo It is 10:01am on Sunday, the 30th of August. It is windy outside, and I am still in bed. Four minutes have passed.

I have checked my social media, replied to all that I needed to, and have begun writing the creative nonfiction I promised a friend I would write.

clock tick-tock through the long, agonising seminars.

The days are blending, the minutes stretching and coalescing, my world shrinking into this little room, in this little house, in this quiet, lonely neighbourhood. When we turn on the news at 12, we either cheer at the good I did not do it yesterday, on account of some drama news or groan at bad – perhaps both. And then we ask: occurring, and the other assignment I had due, as well as some revision for another subject. The day before ‘What’s for dinner?’ that, I was finishing my three-day grind to translate and proofread a 60-page long monster of a manga chapter. My mum leaves for the shops by herself, and I head back to my room, either staring at the half-written work on my I do not remember what I was doing the week before, desk or the messages upon my screens or the distant but it likely included rushing lectures and watching the world outside my window. I do not really think about 50

what I am missing this year. Well, the first year of university was meant to be that year, the year I got off my ass, and put effort into getting my life sorted. I planned to find a job, find an apartment, and find friends; find a place for myself in the world. A step into adulthood.

But here I am, still in bed at 10:37am on a Sunday, hunger gnawing holes in my chest, wondering if I care enough to write something good. I have reached the stage where I close my eyes and put my thoughts on paper, loosely related to a topic but not quite there.

do all these things matter?

There are so many things I could be doing, but instead, I check the calendar, noting how many weeks I have left to procrastinate all my university work.

It is 2:47pm now. I just spent the last two hours playing a Monopoly game and lost miserably. It was fun when I was not losing, but the game is over now. I checked my social media. Opened my laptop. Started writing again.

I still do not know what I am writing. I sit at the dining Perhaps my writing this piece comes at the right time. I table, listening to dinner plans and typing a few words a feel like I am going crazy. minute. I check the COVID cases in Victoria. Google tells me it is 99. Thanks, Google.

I am not an outdoor person, no, and I am not particularly unhappy about staying inside, but god, it is truly That’s the extent I give to it. I move on with my day. beginning to grate me. I wake up, check my phone, stay in bed for maybe an hour or less, and then pretend to be There’s nothing else to say about it. I have not left the productive by staring at my computer screen. house in weeks, and all I do is talk to equally bored and healthy friends in a world separate from mine. My world I eat, I shit, I sleep. I stare at screens until a little ball of is massive, yet so small. I feel alone in a way different pain forms in the front of my head, and I wait for the sun to all other times. It is so close, yet so far. I am there, but to move across the sky, hidden in the clouds. This is not not. A world in turmoil exists, but I do not know of it. I what I wanted for my first year of university. am just here, in this chair, writing a piece for people I do not know.

It feels like the dragged-out high school months spent on assignments, with no solid friendships, no reason to Here I sit, alone. step out of my room. The house feels cold and haunted.

It feels like limbo. There’s an emptiness lingering It is 3:13pm. Why does my time pass this way? just outside my peripheral. A sense of nothingness.

Pessimism. Existentialism. Stress. A descent into silence, I am tired. peeling away from reality.

I have an assignment to do.

I have two folios due by the end of Week 6. I do not know exactly when they are due, but instead, they just loom over me. The thought of them makes me tired.

It is 11:29am. I am eating a delicious breakfast – brunch?

– and there are three silent people in the kitchen with me.

All of us on our devices. Once I finish my food, we will harvest the potatoes we have been growing for the last few months. We do not have much hope in them. I have yet to finish this piece. What point was I trying to make here? What am I even writing? This is not a diary, so why am I treating it like one?

I still have those folios. For one of them, I need to collect nine news articles, do an interview, and make a TV series review. I want to rewrite the assignment I did yesterday. I want to finish the fanfiction I told a friend I was going to write; I want to start writing a book. I am not doing any of them. I do not know exactly when they are due. Why 51

Heroine

By Tharidi Walimunige | Graphics by Jessica Motet I thick thighs, map lines of withered bone-white scarring back meat, curling upwards in reverence of freckles and folds – sun dotting the i’s of cheeks – and crown: scalp of fire. broad to fit all that curiosity. muscle for a heart, her sturdy frame must have had so much love stored inside. father says safety is in the circle of his arms but Eep only lived, truly lived, apart from the dark, cloying cave stacked with the bricks of family limbs, no solar seams along the walls. salvation crested on magma wings and sooty cries of new dawn, no-turning-back dawn.

V she felt her mother’s fingers weave through locks of light and thought it was a crown she made with those aged talons, singing her reign in the heart of the melodically maternal. but Rapunzel’s hair parted not for the lustrous frame of unconditional love. no, against those petal-kissed strands her mother had fashioned a collar, squeezing her mind in premature pruning. for what need was there for the daughter to know, if mother knew best?

II sword-through-flesh scents of honour. sword-through-hair promises mercy. ruby gliding over lips, sealing them tight; warrior swallowed down. Mulan bisected herself – sleeve stained by the shackle of duty – to expose the raw, late-blooming saviour.

III child raised at the breast of war, nursed on the vengeance-warmed milk of preservation.

Astrid was born into adulthood too early, tongue soured by the greasy blood of an inherited hate. but then she touched the sky, mingled her fingers in the dewy cloud mist, and knew all at once that softness could be her beauty too. palm lines soaking the warmth from inky scales, she greeted the wind, relished its caress upon her nape and chose the whispers of peace.

IV Miriam watched the river take her brother, basket of hope near plundered by the snapping jaws of fate and the oars of oppression.

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A Dream Tour by Kiara Allis 53

Symphony

By Rosann Anthony| Graphics by Rosann Anthony

They shine and blur, playing hide-and-seek behind my lids.

Do you hear that soft music interlaced with comforting silence?

In the depths of these moments, do you hear the rhythm of our heartbeats? It is a symphony, chaotic beautiful.

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Overgrown

By Tharidi Walimunige| Graphics by Kiara Allis Spider legs line up With military precision above my upper lip.

Silken strands cast shadows around My mouth, the hills and canyons of my face Darkening into lush fields.

Strokes of ink address you – You’re staring.

A curtain is called down to end the performance Of a lifetime.

Me, meeting your standards?

Hah! Now that’s a comedy.

Crispy hairs creep out from the abyss Of my pit, haunting and taunting.

A sea urchin jabs holes through My underarm and bursts forth Alien-style.

And here’s the tragedy.

I shear the beast, thinking I’ve felled it But by fortnight’s dawn, it’s back.

Collapsed, I cry.

Ego and Expectation, They are the angel and devil coaxing Seductively atop my shoulders.

Armed with five blades and aloe extract, I ride To battle myself once more.

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Essentially Priceless

By Celia Schild | Graphics by Mia Dugandzic In our capitalist society, professions are assessed by their prestige. Engineers, surgeons, and lawyers are regarded as exemplars of career success. These jobs are traditionally male-dominated, and until relatively recently in western societies, were closed off to women. In contrast, traditionally female-dominated jobs include nursing, teaching, aged-care and grocery work. These are classified as ‘feminine’ positions because they require stereotypically female qualities, such as being nurturing, caring and patient. These professions do not share the same connotations of prestige and success, which is reflected by their low salaries and status.

One of the pandemic’s many ironies is the shift in the way we perceive occupational status thanks to the introduction of the term ‘essential worker.’ As Victorians, the gradual shut down of non-essential services such as mainstream entertainment has left us with only the absolute essentials. Often-ignored, disparaged female-dominated professions have suddenly been cast in a whole new light, gaining renewed prominence due to being rebranded as ‘essential’.

In Australia, teaching is an undervalued profession, and the low status of teachers is not at all commensurate with the level of responsibility they bear. Teaching also tends to attract women much more than men, because of its associations with nurturing and motherhood. Across Australia, the mark required for entrance into a teaching degree is notably low. The prevailing societal view is that this low mark reflects the occupation’s value, rather than being representative of demand. Teachers, once hired, report commonly unmanageable workloads and low pay. A study in New South Wales found full-time teachers working 50 hours per week, relative to the 38-hour average of standard full-time workers.[1] Despite this, teachers have a lower chance of earning a high income than professions which do not require a university degree.[2] Teachers also report feeling undervalued by students, parents and the community. The pandemic has changed this. With schooling becoming confined to homes during lockdown, parents have realized the sheer effort teaching demands as they attempt to help their children with schoolwork, filling in for a role that requires a high degree of specialised knowledge and skills.

As such, the recasting of teaching as ‘essential’ work has afforded it a more favourable standing.

Shopping is one of the four reasons Victorians are currently allowed to leave home.

Grocery stores have become fundamental, staying open long after other businesses have closed to provide us with the supplies needed to sustain ourselves at home.

As a result, grocery staff have transformed into ‘essential workers.’ The social interactions between us and grocery staff have also gained renewed importance. Previously automatic exchanges with ‘checkout chicks’ have become moments of genuine social interaction, meeting needs that friends, family and colleagues can no longer provide. Grocery workers are not merely meeting our

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needs for nutritional sustenance, but are also performing an essential social service by providing customers with connection and conversation. Both Coles and Woolworths have provided staff with ‘pandemic payments’, demonstrating a societal shift in the perceived importance of these previously undervalued workers.[3] The formerly invisible world of aged care has also risen to prominence. This sector works with elderly members of the community, and because it requires qualities of patience and care, women again form the majority of its workers. As the pandemic presents a particular threat to this section of the community, with elderly patients facing a high probability of death upon contraction of the virus, aged care workers have taken on a protective role: they are now in charge of safeguarding the most vulnerable members of our communities. The Fair Work Commission has recently secured paid pandemic leave for aged care workers, allowing staff with symptoms to stay home with financial support, thus keeping vulnerable residents safe. An increase in funding for this sector also reflects a growing respect for these workers, who were unexpectedly pushed to the frontlines during this period.[4] Nurses are yet another example. Despite being the largest group of healthcare workers globally, nurses are often viewed in a submissive position, relative to the doctors they work for. During the pandemic, nurses have worked on the frontlines day and night, placing their own lives at risk as they assess potentially contagious patients. They are also responsible for managing medical supplies, and enforcing strict hygiene and health protocols. Due to demand exceeding the current supply of nurses, many are working overtime. They are going above and beyond the ‘call of duty’, making personal sacrifices to ensure their patients’ wellbeing.[5] The ‘essential’ work they have performed during this period has thus highlighted the critical role they play in our community.

Female-dominated professions such as teaching, grocery work, aged care and nursing have always been ‘essential’, which COVID-19 has made abundantly clear. These workers have been fundamental to Australia’s response to the pandemic, and women continue to be in critical positions on the frontlines. Consequently, previously derided, ‘feminine’ jobs have been elevated to new prominence. They are finally being seen as occupations of great social responsibility, protection, and importance. This, however, is not enough. For sustained social change, it is important that we don’t revert to our previous ill-informed perceptions of their value once the pandemic ends, but instead continue to see them for their worth as indispensable positions within our society.

References Lucas Walsh, 2020: https://lens.monash.edu/@a-different-lens/2020/02/03/1379495/teaching-an-undervaluedprofession Julie Sonnemann and Jonathan Nolan, 2019: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/here-s-what-a-teacher-s-payreally-looks-like Benedict Brook, 2020: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/coronavirus-australia-coles-joinswoolworths-in-giving-staff-pandemic-bonus/news-story/1ddf04910621d3643b69c576deeec7fe Rachel Clayton and Yara Murray-Atfield, 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-27/agedcare-workers-get-paid-pandemic-leave-fair-work-commission/124963424.

The Lamp Editorial Team, 2020: https://thelamp.com.au/professional-issues/covid19/hasthe-pandemic-put-an-end-to-nursing-as-we-know-it/

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Whispered Secrets of the Matriarchy

By Srishti Chatterjee

(they/them)| Graphics by Rosann Anthony

I think my biggest achievement since I moved out of my parents’ house is that I can flip a roti on my pan, using my bare hands. I have touched hellfire. I have inherited the invincibility of my mother, and her mother, and her mother, the wanton abandon that comes with the instinct of sprinkling powders and grabbing rotis and stirring until the right colour. However, I have what the matriarchs of my life didn’t, an Instagram story highlight for the food I make – and an appreciation for the food that is not a segue into my preparedness for marriage.

In my family, when we discuss recipes, we don’t talk about measurements. How much turmeric powder? ‘A little bit.’

How much chilli powder? ‘One pinch.’ Colourful powders are measured in how much you want your forehead to glisten with sweat. Food is a feeling, and recipes are whispered hand-me-downs of the healing powers of cumin and the fine line between spiciness and hellfire. I have heard these whispers, when dimta would stir something in obnoxious amounts of oil and my mother would stare at her with disdain. Unhealthy, but no one cooks shutki machh (dried fish) as well as dimta did.

Women, for ages, have been ‘confined’ to the kitchen. Dabhai was in the military and would be away for months.

Dimta would spend all her time in the kitchen, frying and stirring and marinating love to be tucked into Ma’s lunchbox, with some to be posted for dabhai to receive after months. A lonely woman raising an only daughter in a small village in India, dimta, I believe, put her spirit into cooking. Admittedly, I don’t remember much of her. Ma and I have rebuilt our memories in our stories, of how she made the best shorshe chingri, and how she could knit with her eyes closed. Some of her memories are wrapped into the sarees I raided from her cupboard and brought with me to Narrm, smelling of naphthalene balls, and love.

I saw a joke on Tumblr a while ago, about how living alone as an adult is just cleaning your kitchen ALL the time.

I look at the severed onion heads that have made me cry, empty spice packets, the insides of a tomato – all signs of my battle with time that has produced tonight’s dinner. I think of my grandmother, and my mother, cleaning the kitchen day after day, without Tumblr memes to unite them with the international community of lonely adults.

In stirring pots and pans, in the right amount of red in a curry, I notice the battleground of the women that have raised each other. I think of my grandmother cooking while my mother, the first in her family to study in English, reads Shakespeare. I think of how every woman before me has been a ‘first’, and yet, has carried centuries of strength, grief and resilience, tucked into sarees, photo journals, and recipe books.

After dimta passed away, Ma and I spent a lot of holidays rummaging through her stuff, archiving her life, picking what to keep and what to donate. We came across the recipe books, magazine cutouts, handwritten notes, an eclectic melting pot of copybook chef’s recipes and her own expertise. Ma has a similar way of documenting, with her recipes handwritten in a notebook sourced from an indie boutique in Dhaka, my grandmother’s ancestral hometown before the Partition of India. With Ma, the recipes turn bilingual and multicultural. They’re reflections and memories from the afternoons we’ve spent watching Masterchef Australia reruns, hoping to someday access such big pantries.

In my early stages of misinformed feminism, I avoided cooking in a paranoid assertion that I wasn’t ‘like other girls’.

Patriarchy treats being a self-sustaining human as an option, as long as you have a job and earn enough money to excuse yourself. It’s disappointing, yet unsurprising, that most acts of feminist revolution are about having ‘women on top’, rather than questioning the structures that decide top and bottom and in between and beyond. Almost as if my rebellion was their organised pet project, my parents taught me only basic cooking – rice, dahl, fish curry.

Chicken stew. Sustenance, and nothing more. Not the emotion, not the gender role.

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I’ve never tried to be a good cook. I’ve focused on the sustenance aspect of it, the idea that food should be enough for survival. Juggling multiple jobs and a full time degree gave me very little time to give to cooking. In six months of quarantine, however, I’ve really delved into it. I’ve spent hours nagging my mother for recipes, experimenting with powders and sauces and herbs, getting the marinade right. Knowing when to flip the fish without getting it flaky.

And yes, exactly where to grab the roti to flip it without burning my hand.

I live alone, I’m my own family. I don’t have the expectant stomachs of husbands and children, just have my famished body after a full day of work. I have recently realised that walking through grocery store aisles looking for the perfect chilli powder for just myself is an act of revolution. I’m beginning to archive in my taste buds and cognitive skill, the stories that my grandmother wrote and whispered to Ma, – the ones I tried to throw away in a frantic rejection of femininity and now desperately cling to as an idea of home.

I’ve often made fun of how Ma thinks honey and lemon water can heal any pain, or how our grandmothers think turmeric can solve all problems. What I don’t think about is how they didn’t have a chance to sit and write about whether or not their kitchen is a battleground, because the survival of their families depended on their warfare.

Dimta didn’t have an intricate knowledge of the world, didn’t know that women succeed less because men own our skills or that the voice in her head that made her wonder why the people she loved hurt her the most was actually depression. Ma doesn’t romanticise warmth and freeze it in op-eds. They just knew honey and lemon felt warm together, and they were right.

I have a separate chat with my mother to share my recipes, which I routinely forget to do. The internet archives it all, anyway. Recently, I’ve started journaling what I cook. Pictures, vague instructions – ‘little powder’, ‘sprinkle salt’ without any actual instructions, just like Ma and Dimta. The ‘how much’ of it all is a secret, earned when you cook, day after day, saving little bits of yourself and the matriarchy before you.

My recipes are archived in bits and pieces. The world is no longer a pile of naphthalene-smelling magazine cutouts and frantically scribbled notes with curry stains on them. I archive the food I make on Instagram stories, in conversations with my best friends on what’s for dinner. One of my friends I haven’t seen in months replied to my story on buying a whole lot of coriander, and that’s the story of how I learnt how to make coriander stay fresh for longer. I am surrounded by passionate feminists who share with me pictures of gourmet sushi and leftover stir fry, all with equal love. My friends are all witnesses to my taste revolution, from survival rice and curry to the craft of spices that the perfect shorshe chingri is.

I cling to memories of Dimta like an idea of home. I cook her favourite food (with much less oil). I dress in her sarees, desperately clinging to the matriarchy with my non-binary identity because when the world is so boxed into binaries, not belonging anywhere can feel a bit confusing. It feels like I’m a lonely child, drenched in the rain, with nowhere to go, no shelter, no one to tell me how to get this right.

Then I think of my grandmother, a lonely woman, raising her only child with pride and fear. I think of the matriarchs of my life. It rains a lot in Narrm, and every time Ma calls when it’s raining, she reminds me of how Dimta was afraid of storms.

I remember how much I survived, and I look at my mother and think of how much she has survived, and loved through it at all. Dimta was terrified of storms, but she has given us, in whispered secrets of the matriarchy, the strength to walk through them all.

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Of White and Black

By Anouksha Singh | Graphics by Rosann Anthony CW: descriptions of violence and killing

This week, I woke up to a different trend on social media.

My Instagram feed was filled with my girlfriends posting monochrome photos of themselves. Some looked natural, others like supermodels. Meh. I didn’t think too much of it until my roomie-slash-bestie informed me that it was to raise awareness about the Turkish ‘honour killings’ against women. That hit home.

I’ve lived in Delhi, India for the better part of my life.

When you stay in North India, the phrase ‘honour killing’ is thrown around every once in a while. Or a month.

In India, there’s a caste system in place. Marrying outside your region or caste isn’t just frowned upon – it’s downright forbidden. You can’t do it unless you have a death wish. It’s like Romeo and Juliet, or in our case, Laila and Majnu. Yet there are dozens of couples out there who do get married by eloping, and then are subsequently hunted down by those they’ve ‘shamed’ (a.k.a. their family). It’s a concept practiced more in the rural areas, but I wouldn’t put it past certain traditionalists living in the city.

There are various NGO’s in India that work towards helping the victims of such ‘hate and honour crimes’.

One named Evidence released a report stating that over 190 known killings had taken place in the last five years in the southern state of Tamil Nadu alone. But the issue with these numbers is that India’s National Bureau of Crime doesn’t accurately represent the figures on such crimes. The reason: they’re often committed by local village councilmen.

When we talk about the missing women in Turkey, we have proof of their disappearances or murders. We have the photos to serve as proof that these women died of violence, of abuse; that they were subjected to feticide. The victims of ‘honour killings’ in India do not get that privilege. But it’s not the journalists; rather, it’s the local government hiding the truth. In most cases, it’s the women who bear the brunt of daring to fall in love.

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Being lit on fire, murdered by hitmen; even by their own brothers and fathers. In some cases, it’s both: the husband and the wife. In the worst cases, it’s like a torture scene in a movie, where the wife is forced to watch her husband die mercilessly at the hands of her family.

There was a Bollywood movie named Dhadak (2018) that represented these themes well. I remember the ending well – it was of impending doom as the hero and the love child of the main protagonists are pushed down the balcony of their house by the heroine’s brother. It’s shocking, graphic and when the screen pans out to show the lifeless bodies of the female lead’s family, it reproduced the terror and fear that countless women face in reality. It was talked about for a while before the public moved on to the next online trend.

When I saw my friend from high school post a monochrome picture of herself laughing, I smiled. I smiled because I saw the caption which stated that her boyfriend snapped the picture. Then I thought about how happy and lucky she was to be in love.

Not everyone got that chance. The women and men in India who dared to love are a testimony of that fact.

Of course, there are progressives out there. But we’re still far from reaching the point of total acceptance, where we can make the decision to fall in love for ourselves. I’ve always idolised my parents: they were rebels of the 90’s. They came from different cultural backgrounds; my mum was a fearless woman from Mumbai whose parents hailed from the northern state of Punjab, while dada came from the eastern state of Bihar and pursued his love for hockey full-time. They defied the whole caste-region dynamic. I can only hope that every person in India can one day hope to do the same.

CW: mentions of street harassment

Keep Walking

By Anannya Musale | Graphics by Mia Dugandzic

Cloudy afternoons, busy streets, Gloomy skies with a hint of drizzle.

Distracted from my study, I stared out the window as if it were a puzzle.

‘Maybe I deserve a break,‘ I said Ducking out of the window, I tasted the puzzle with my head.

It was a puzzle even as I closed my eyes.

Tiny droplets felt like a mischief in disguise.

They trickled down my cheeks, I could feel them race Soon they began to tickle me, and I tried to brush them off my face.

I opened my drenched eyelids only to watch The light drizzle now pouring into seas.

I moved away from the window, letting out a sneeze.

‘Close the window, you’ll catch a cold,‘ Said my grandma with a cup of hot tea in her hold.

‘You know what these showers remind me of?’

She began to ponder.

Excitedly, I leaned in, Only to hear the thunder.

‘We were walking to school, my friend and I, And it rained the same, it rained the same, As we walked along that lonely lane.

I suddenly felt a jerk, as if someone had pulled my hair, And I turned around to a see a grown man, Acting as if it was only fair.

I freed myself from his clutches, Ran away with my friend.

Realising he didn’t follow, we reached a dead end.

Looking back, we laughed and we cried; this became a famous tale.

We told everyone our little experience with the rain and hail.’

Grandma left me wondering how a shower so rough and so violent Could be dismissed and made silent.

I thought to myself, I have nothing to fear, The rain won’t be so cruel to me, It won’t make me shed a tear.

I also walked along a lane, although now a memory lane.

I was little, I was scared, I was small and golden haired.

A similar gentleman tried to ‘brush’ his hands past my knees, Giving me a smile, with utmost ease.

I kept walking and caught up with my mother, He didn’t seem to follow; he didn’t want to bother.

Then, too, it rained the same, It rained the same with a hint of thunder.

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How many more times has it rained the same, I began to wonder.

We live in a different world now.

We live in a different world, where it rains the same today, As yesterday and the day before.

It remains a puzzle; it remains a mystery, Although I can’t complain about being scared, As I lie in my bed within my home of perfect symmetry.

I still try to catch the droplets on my face, I still try to find a ray of sunshine, Thinking, there will be a rainbow, just in case.

Being inside these walls does make me feel secure For I know, outside, everyone is fighting to find the cure.

Now I walk a few near-isolated paths without fear, For I know, now they won’t come more than a metre near.

Having a mask does cover one’s face, It covers one’s cough, it covers one’s sneeze.

I wonder if it also covers one’s thoughts with the same ease.

I ask my Grandma, over the buzz of an interrupted video call, ‘Do you feel safe, do you feel protected, Now that your walks entail Strolling from your bedroom to the dining hall?’

She laughs and says, ‘Sure, I feel safer, But it still rains for those outside … I wouldn’t get my hopes too high.’

To collect my thoughts, ‘Connection’s poor. I’ll call later,’ I lie.

I remind myself every now and then, There are people boarding a bus and a train, With the same fears and many more.

It rains the same today, as yesterday and the day before.

To all those in rains like these, I send love, strength and gratitude.

I hope the raindrops on your cheeks get brushed off with ease.

I hope the cold doesn’t make you sneeze.

I hope you outrun the showers.

I hope you can enjoy the drizzle As much as the sun, And I hope you bloom as flowers.

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An Artificial Landscape by Kiara Allis 63

Our Lullaby

By Esmé James | Graphics by Joanne Guo I know when I see the call.

I feel an absence and I know.

No phones in the rehearsal room.

I mutter an apology. Something cold takes possession of me. I leave the room without looking up.

An ethereal song softens behind me. I breathe in what is left of it, warming myself on its words. It talks about happiness, promises of safety. It cools and melts on my lips.

I feel the vibrations. This time I must answer. My voice is a song, warning away a time already passed.

It’s your brother.

I hear it and I know.

The church doors crumble as I throw them open. The celestial music flees from the room. Eleven silent faces look on in confusion.

Es, what is it?

I can’t answer – shards of ice pierce my lungs, frost is creeping up my throat.

Es? Alanah’s voice floats somewhere behind me, in another world. She follows me across the room, out into the church car park.

Talk to me …

I want to speak but she is in another world. It is winter here and all sound is frozen. I open the car, fumble the keys into the ignition and reach for the handle. I hesitate. Words find me. It’s Ewan.

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The door closes. Alanah knows.

I am disappearing. I am driving. I am looking at the road without seeing. The frost is creeping, devouring the window – my breath fending it away with what warmth remains.

It’s going to be okay. He’s going to be okay.

The engine is humming.

It falls silent.

The door of my house is wide open; I enter, and it is not my house. Something else has taken possession; has drained it. It is not my house.

Before you go in — I don’t listen, I push past Colin, heading for the nucleus of this nothingness. I am coming to find you.

Esmé, he won’t wake up. Esmé, he won’t wake up.

A mantra – Mum at your bedside, singing. But her words are stifled, suffocated by the room’s staleness.

Only their ghosts form on her lips. The insipid snowflakes drift across the room, escaping through the open window. They can’t survive here.

Mum has faded into washed-out pigments. Only her gaze remains – it’s a plea, a call for something.

I can’t return it; I am unseeing. I only see you. The lifeless body pretending to be you, curled up to one side. You could have been in a peaceful slumber. You could have been dreaming with your eyes wide open – but I can feel the absence and it is suffocating.

I am coming to find you. Sitting by your body, I stroke you, talk to you, pretending I can feel you there.

It comforts mum – she knew I would find you, I always do. At stations, at playgrounds – every time you run away and get lost – down train tracks in the middle of the night I have found you drenched in the rain. You were standing there, waiting. You weren’t scared; you knew I’d always find you.

I am hugging absence.

Blanketing you in my arms, I sing, coming to find you, protecting you. Paramedics arrive but I keep singing.

A seizure, Colin is saying. I found him shaking… moaning… went cold… nothing like this before… CPR … just stopped moving.

Your hand in mine, I keep singing – it is our song. You used to skip when I would sing it; your eyes locked on mine as you giggled, flapping your arms in the air. People would stare but you took no notice – you perfectly understood this world that didn’t understand you. You would giggle and I would keep singing, flapping my arms with yours in the air.

You are lying motionless and I am singing. The paramedics tell me it’s helping – I know they are lying.

They have moved you to a stretcher and place a mask over your mouth.

It is not uncommon … keep going … move back to give us room …

A frozen screen hangs above you; cartoon firefighters mercilessly suspended in their moment of struggle are engulfed in a motionless blaze. Who paused it? You had been watching this episode in the morning and I hadn’t let you finish it. You’re going to be late for school. You flopped back into bed and hid under your covers. You had been giggling while I had been yelling. That memory creeps around my neck and chokes me.

A hand slips into mine, squeezes it – I think it is you. Jim is at my side, stoking me, telling me to keep singing.

The paramedics move around us, speaking in tongues I don’t want to understand. … breathing slowing … not responding …

And then I am torn away from you, held back, watching them changing machines, inserting tubes, flicking switches. They won’t let me go to you.

Colin tries to hold Mum but she is fighting, screaming – she needs to find you.

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I am held and you are taken. Snowflakes are falling, melting in the empty room; nothing survives here.

Jim is holding me, humming in my ear. ... It’s okay … He’s going to be okay … * A sterile maze – the smell of disinfectant stifling but unable to mask the rot beneath it. A dull humming fills the air, a nurse starts laughing. The sound is discordant, striking a strained chord with a cry nearby.

An elderly lady holds her husband’s hand as he stares back blankly.

I slide down the hospital hallway, sneaking behind curtains, stumbling into moments that are not mine to share. Will they see me in their memories – painted into the corner, a girl who stood there, staring at them blankly?

Sneaking behind curtains, I finally I find you, plugged into a machine that is breathing for you. Your pyjamas lie in two pieces on the floor – they were red, your favourite. I think that I will sew them back together; I know they will be trashed and burnt.

Mum is reciting the words she has spoken a thousand times. ... autism … can’t speak … needs help … all basic needs … epilepsy … not like this … absences … never shaking … will you wake him?

Is this his sister?

Mum looks at me, painted into the corner of the moment.

Yes, his older sister. He loves her more than anything.

I want to feel that everything is okay. We stand frozen, sharing a smile. Something is exchanged, something is invited.

We are with you, hoping – the machine is breathing for you.

There are voices far behind the curtains, approaching, growing louder. My grandparents blunder into our little curtained room.

Nan heads straight over and hugs me. There, there. Come on, now. No need to think silly thoughts yet.

Pulling away, she is smiles. Her eyes red from crying.

Grandad embraces me and starts laughing. Do you think he’s just trying to get out of school tomorrow?

That sounds about right. I am laughing. Did you hear that, Ewan?

A moment later, Colin and Jim have found us.

A moment after that, my dad.

A voice tells us in the distance, only one family member in Emergency. But we cannot hear them, we are laughing. Warm light pools around you.

We make a home in this hospital room. * It’s a celebration and we’re not holding back – laughing with bloodshot eyes, singing at the top of our lungs. Everything is going to be okay. You are going to be okay.

Pulling into the estate, we instinctively grow quiet. It’s 3am. I remember the neighbours, remember routine, and reality. How strange – all this time, they have been sleeping.

In five hours, the doctors will wake you.

We will sleep and come to find you.

The hum from the engine dims. The laughing ceases and I am crying.

It’s going to be okay. Jim’s humming. He’s going to be okay.

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But I am no longer in the car – I am walking back through time; through our curtained home, sliding out of the hospital room. I am watching the ambulance in front of us, I am finding you there (you could have been sleeping). I am hearing those words; I am becoming winter inside. I am singing in the choir (my phone starts ringing). I am driving to rehearsals. I am leaving the house. I am saying goodbye to you, too quickly. I am waiting for you to arrive home from school.

And there I stay in that moment of time.

I am waiting for you to arrive home from school and I am thinking. Standing at the piano, I am thinking something I’ve never let myself think before – thinking of a world without you. In that moment, I knew – somewhere within me, I felt the first flakes of winter falling.

A silly thought; I dismissed it. And so you arrive home from school, and I said goodbye too quickly. I left the house and drove to rehearsals – my phone rings and I became winter inside. And I know I was right when I see the call.

Jim holds me, soothes me. None of it matters now. He’s safe now. Everything’s going to be okay.

And I am smiling, laughing, because they said you’ll be okay – you saw the danger coming and you chased it away.

They said you were going to be okay. * A call wakes me – I think it’s my alarm.

We have slept and I’m coming to find you.

They said they would wake you.

Reaching out, I answer.

Es …

They are just calling to wake us.

It’s your brother …

Everything is still okay.

Es …

I am still sleeping; half asleep, not hearing clearly. … get here as soon as you can …

I will wake up. I will wake up and we will try again.

They’ve said we need to say goodbye.

I sit up.

I am awake.

I put the phone down beside me.

There is silence.

It is deafening.

I scream.

Not now. Jim lulls me.

He holds me but I am not there, part of me is missing – all of me is missing. I am screaming and you are not there.

Not now. Jim lulls me but I am not there. Get dressed, get in the car.

He hands me clothes; he can’t find my jacket.

We leave it, it clothes no one.

Jim is driving and calling my nan; she picks up straight away.

What is happening? I am pleading.

Nan is silent when she has always been powerful.

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I’m sorry, darling.

No one is laughing.

Drive as safely as you can.

Silence.

A red light, a green light; fading, dying away. The phone rings – Alanah’s voice sounds from another world. Any update? How is he doing?

They said I need to say goodbye.

Silence.

I’m sorry.

At the hospital, I am unseeing – a machine, I am breathing, following signs, running, finding ICU. I am no one.

My brother. I beg to a nurse. I need to find my brother.

She takes me to you.

A knife is sliced through reality – I see through worlds – it is done with words; it has pulverised them, torn the poetry from their meaning. Nothing lives here.

Mum is looking at me, looking up from your body to me. I can see it. Something has been written and I can’t change it, I can’t make a home in this unreality. We live here now – in a space in between – and we will keep living and you will be absence.

She can’t hold me, she isn’t there.

A washed-out hand. A mechanical beeping. A window – looking through it, I see my dad. He is running, weeping, holding the falling parts of himself together. He is running across parkland, running through that void, coming to find you.

I clutch at absence.

He is in the room, he is weeping.

My boy, my boy He collapses, his arms try to find you.

My boy, my boy He is melting, cries lacerating the silence.

My boy I pick up his body and try to contain it – it slips through my fingers and pools on the hospital floor. I can’t find you.

Crawling into to the bed, I lie beside emptiness; singing through absence, trying to find you. * We are moved, avoided – they don’t need us here.

They are talking. When will they kill you? They are checking, consulting.

I am singing.

They place a cap over your head – you look like a swimmer. You loved to swim. You would dive right to the bottom and let your body float to the top. You wouldn’t lift your head, you’d would lie on the surface looking under the water – looking like a body, drowning. After a while, I would panic, thinking that this time it wasn’t a game. And I’d swim towards you, but before I could reach you, your body would flop over and spit water from your mouth, laughing. And I would be laughing, wondering about that strange peace you found there, in the somewhere in between.

They place a cap over your head and no one is laughing. I am singing, trying to find peace here in absence. Dad is a pool around you. Mum is not there.

They are checking, consulting; they are multiplying, speaking in tongues. I am singing. They are telling

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me that it’s helping – I think they are lying.

I am singing but I’ve lost sight of the words – I have forgotten. There is no poetry here. A sound.

There is something – discordant – and it pierces through this in-between. Mum is singing, catching my words before they slip away. She looks at me and I can feel them. We are singing through absence, coming to find you.

Keep singing. A nurse calls to us, summoning a sea of blue bodies around us. He can hear you!

The nurses laughing. The activity in your brain is multiplying. You are responding. You can hear us. You can sense the concert around you.

He’s still there!

We are singing, coming to find you.

They tell us to keep singing. So we clutch at notes through laughter. We assemble words and give them meaning; we drift on melodies, flooding the room, drowning on tones and duration. We are finding you. You are here with us. We sing through hours of poetry and meaning, forgetting time and staying beside you. A new day has broken. We can just feel you, the tip of your finger touching me, reaching through this in-between.

There you are.

They will try and pull you over. They are staying, they are deliberating. We must stand back and keep singing. They will pull the tube from you; we will see if you are just machine. You must breathe and keep breathing – we have one chance to pull you from the in-between.

The cord is ripped from you.

There is a silence; we are suspended, drifting somewhere that time cannot hurt us, swimming through a moment that has no surface. We are emptiness, we are laughter.

I hear music.

I hear your laughter.

With a sharp inhale, you rise to the surface. Your eyes flash open, flutter, fade. They are closing. My heart is frozen.

And then you are smiling. They place oxygen over your mouth. You breathe it. The mask condensates from your warm laughter. Your eyes are blinking, you are searching. They catch mine and there is no fear in your gaze – you were never scared. You knew you would always find me. You hold me there, we are grounded.

The world begins to reform around us; piecing us back together, making us whole. The doctors are moving around us – they are hugging each other, cheering. A nurse is crying. You are surrounded and there is music. It is your laughter, singing through spaces, building a bridge through that in-between. I join in your song, laughing. Reaching out, I find you; my hand around yours, soothing you, singing our song of happiness, of promises of safety. Softly, you squeeze back. You are there, I feel you beside me.

You are music and you have made it home.

Crawling onto the bed, I hold you in my arms, your body nestling against me. I feel your gentle breathing – you could have been sleeping – your body is flooded by warmth and colour. It spills from you, spreading around our hospital room.

Doctors are parting, performing final checks and procedures. They are speaking to my parents of the future, of possible causes, of preventions. But, for now, I do not hear them. I close my eyes and lie there beside you. I have found you.

And there is a beautiful silence. And it is our song.

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CW: depictions of blood, violence, and death.

(Dis)enchanting

By Tharidi Walimunige| Graphics by Rosann Anthony

The sun isn’t right. Too pallid, too cold, too can the sun get sick? Its light cuts through the water without any of the usual finesse; serrated when it should be rich, glistening beeswax seeping from the sky. Why is it flashing?

Her senses flinch and press close to her aching mind as the haze lifts. There is no sun, only a deathly beacon from above and winking stars to the side. She scrapes her shivering limbs against the sand, frowning at its strange colour as she lifts herself up. Wading closer to the flashing orbs feels like a mistake – a naïve prey who hasn’t yet learned the tricks predators play with light – but she blames it on the haziness that persists in her mind. Creeping closer …

THUNK! Headfirst, she collides with an invisible barrier. It is a sturdy encasing. No amount of pounding, scratching, or pressing tears it away. Understanding the futility in I’ve never seen anything like you, she leaves it be and peers past it. The stars are bursting forth from black shapes, and they are held by …

She scuttles away from the barrier and whips this way and that, searching for a hideaway. She finds it between a boulder and a leafy curtain. Curled up in obscurity, the threat is drowned out by no, please, where did they take me?

Trying to coil even tighter around herself, her mind roars with an angry swarm of hornets. She is remembering hands, leashes, hurt, tumbling, cages, cloying croons, threat, threat, THREAT! Humans. * Spring is home. Wise trees gather around sparkling water, frothy waves cascade down limestone ledges, and winking sand beckons the forest’s creatures. She is revered here; powerful, but not as a predator. The animals sharing her home greet her with tickling twitches of muzzles, indulgent glides of fur, puffing rustles of feathers, and timid taps of scales. They bring offerings to her spring. Dead or dying are placed at the water’s edge, a wish for a gentle passing.

Today it is a wolf cub, hours alive and hours dead, carried by the scruff in pack leader’s maw. It is not the first time this pack has visited her, but where there should be ease and familiarity, instead the elder canine is skittish, ears staunchly pricked up and muscles tensed. He hesitates, then places his cargo before her and whips his head to the side. He glares into the distance, softly growling. She looks too, but seeing nothing amiss, returns her attention to the gift. Drawing the pup into her embrace, she plunges underwater and descends to the spring’s earthy floor.

Scooping out a bed in the sand, the corpse is laid to rest. Her fingers glide through its tawny fur, first in practicality to rub blood out of fur, and then in you deserved more, be at peace now. She leaves it in the company of the sparkling mounds scattered about. Soon the cub’s body will follow their lead, as crystallisation devours the death and decay.

Wading to the water’s surface, she breaks for air. Though the wolf pack is gone, they left a festering curiosity within her. She dives back down, gliding through an underwater hole along the far edge of the spring. Much time is spent weaving through a maze of dim tunnels, before she reaches the connecting river located in the direction of the alpha wolf’s wariness. Slowly breaching the surface with the tip of her head, she stills.

Too quiet. Something is here, and the forest doesn’t like it. The air is brittle. She can neither see nor hear any of the larger creatures. The intruder must be dangerous then, to have driven off the great predators. Swimming closer to the river’s edge, she notices an unusual shrub. From her throat, a questioning warble vibrates in you do not smell 70

alive. In fact, when she sidelines her other senses and sniffs deeply, she recognises plastic, oil and metal.

She pulls away too late.

The shrub shoots a net at her, trapping her flailing limbs and dragging her out of the water. She keens and scrabbles in vain. And then, all at once, cacophony returns to the forest. Thundering steps and piercing shouts overwhelm her.

The humans win. * That light placed above her enclosure, too I wish you would leave, sickly thing, is called a lamp. She hates it. * Birthing-One had screeched when Sire-One echoed a human filth-word. He had puffed up, warning her to leave human inventions alone. They were destined to destroy with what they create; this was his favourite saying when she was one of three. And yet, Birthing-One still taught her the language of humans. Taught her that knowing was more powerful than using.

She can hear them beyond the glass. Muddled most times, but if she focuses with her utmost effort, the glass dissolves to Birthing-One was right, leave them to their filth.

She doesn’t eavesdrop anymore.

Last time –

‘Mayor Helsby, thank you for visiting us today.’

‘Well, I just had to see with my own eyes what was causing such a fuss. Our city’s on the map because of this beauty!’

‘And for good reason. No other aquarium, reserve or park has anything like our Miriam. Youngest of her kind in captivity.’

‘Sounds like you’ve given that spiel before!’

‘Heh, what can I say, we weren’t sure if we could pull this off, but now that we have, well … you can’t fault us for a bit of boasting.’

‘No, of course not! You’ve done wonders here. I only hope you have enough in you for another go.

What do you say, think Miriam needs a friend?’

‘Believe me, we’re trying. Everyone from Sweden to New Zealand is wanting one of their own. But none of them last long in captivity and no one knows why. We think that people may have only been catching sick ones. Miriam’s first in the world to survive past twelve days.’

– wasn’t worth the effort. * Beady eyes ask all the wrong questions. Itching nails tap CLINK! CLINK! The little ones run off, and then there is a handler, taking his fill of her before another swarm descends.

‘Bastard,’ she tastes on her forked tongue. Sire-One would be proud.

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Everything is sick here. Heavy water, dazed plants. She thinks the wrongness around her now swims in her blood.

She doesn’t remember the last time she ate. She doesn’t remember the last time she cared. * Birthing-One and Sire-One catch her small form as she tumbles off the waterfall. She clicks and chirps merrily, and they toss her up onto the ledge again. She slides down the current and falls into their waiting embrace. Their favourite game. They cradle her close and begin to nuzzle and groom her. She opens her mouth – SPLASH! The dream – memory – becomes powdery like butterfly wings before dissipating. She clicks in a sharp burst, irritated, and sets her sight at the handler who just dived into her enclosure. Unfurling from her lounged position nestled in moss, she floats up to meet him.

‘Hey there, Miriam. You haven’t been eating and it’s got us worried. So, I’m just gonna give you something to make you sleep and then we’ll get you checked out, okay? Good girl.’

He has a pointy tool in hand. There are only so many ways a human can think to use something like that. She decides apathy will have to wait, for try to hurt me and I will gut you is needed now. A glance at the glass barrier shows no audience. Shame. For once, she wanted to give the humans a show.

The handler reaches for her slowly, as if speed was the problem between her and them. As if she would welcome their touch, as long as it was gentle. She lets one hand float near her head and when he moves the other to use the pointy weapon, she strikes.

CRUNCH! Her teeth shatter the bones in the arm closest to her. He screams, losing hold of his weapon. All hope of this man rallying against her sinks with it. She hears clamouring from above the enclosure, picking up fragmented phrases from the other handlers.

‘Fuck! What happened­—’

‘Get him out!’

The handler is hitting her, flailing in his attempt to get away. But he is weak, weaker even than her ill state. Weak, wrong, bad, and foolish. He will regret ever coming near her. They all will.

She rips a chunk of his throat out and cracks his ribcage in her jaws. She makes vines from the flesh on his legs as she bashes his limp body against the glass of her cage. There is so much shouting, the walls are wailing, lights are flashing, and all she sees is red. It is pure chaos. ‘… too volatile … put her back …’

They shoot nets again. They catch her again.

The humans don’t win.

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She swims through the twisting tunnel. No light shines here, but she navigates by heart, for finally, I missed you. It is a path traversed countless times, countless flutters of fins in precise motions so as not to graze rocky walls. But this time is different – I’m here, I feel you – so she lets her filmy appendages caress the limestone as she darts by.

The sun! The real one – salmon egg yellow; spilt yolk puddling bigger as she draws closer. And then she is welcomed

by Oh! You haven’t changed a bit. Crystallised carcasses slumbering on the waterbed, bird’s-nest moss cushioning playful pups, singing liquid pooling from great heights, metallic scales twinkling like stars, sunset petals shyly unfurling, hoots and yowls and chirps rejoicing her return. Home, as it should be.

Unlike her spring, she is no untouched beauty. Glass-sickness has followed her back. Weak, grey, unmade. She wants I’m home, back to normal now, but the humans poisoned her, they must have, for she aches. The waters she yearned for burn so cold, a stabbing of it’s too much, not enough.

She sinks. Her limbs shudder in is this death? Her eyes glaze in I thought I understood dying. A grainy embrace catches her. The remains resting around her answer none of her silent, ebbing thoughts. Her final breath is will I wake again?

Before her eyelids clam shut and sever the pearls of her vision, she sees that shining circle …

The sun …

Or was it a lamp?

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CW: Classism

The Problem of Compassion

By Donna Burroughs | Graphics by Mia Dugandzic

It’s difficult to read the news these days. Every day, you’re faced with an onslaught of bad news.

Cuts to Job Seeker and other benefits will impoverish millions of Australians, both major parties continue to advocate for the coal industry, as if last summer’s bushfire devastation is all forgotten about, and proposed fee hikes in the university sector will leave low-socioeconomic students with less control over their futures.

In my experience, what makes such stories particularly difficult to read is the blatant lack of compassion that characterises them. Such policies are detrimental to social cohesion and negatively impact the individual lives of millions. Being forced to choose between paying rent and buying food has detrimental impacts on mental health, as well as the economy at large. Refusal to act on climate change will threaten families in Australia’s backyard and abroad. And forcing prospective Arts students into decades of debt,while many federal politicians received their Bachelor of Arts for free, is simply cruel.

But these policies aren’t just at odds with my personal sensitivities; they’re at odds with what Australia’s supposed values are. There’s a lot of opinions out there on what constitutes ‘Australian values’ and one loud voice in the conversation is the Department of Immigration. They state that Australian values are embodied by a: ‘Spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, tolerance, fair play, and compassion for those in need and pursuit of the public good.’

Evidently these values aren’t reflected in public policy. Locking low income students out of arts degrees isn’t ‘fair’, and forcing millions into poverty during a pandemic doesn’t really scream ‘compassion for those in need.’ And yet, I doubt any Australian, from either side of politics would deny the importance of such values, or better yet, the goodness of such ideals. So, what explains the discrepancy between Australia’s supposed values, and the values actually exhibited by our political representatives?

Humans have never been particularly kind to each other. But neoliberalism has excelled at entrenching and encouraging the worst instincts of human nature. Pioneered by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and US President Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism rejects the idea of common interest, prioritises economic growth at all costs and places the blame for poverty on the poor themselves. It is a system that ‘has convinced people they are defined by selfishness, greed, and vice’ and proceeds to celebrate the process of exploiting those around you in the name of personal gain. Kindness and empathy have been relegated to the private sphere; you’re a saint if you volunteer to distribute food to homeless people, but you mustn’t ask why the government doesn’t intervene to help them.

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Politics isn’t a vehicle for maximizing public wellbeing and happiness, but an institution that functions to serve corporate interests. When the odd politician defies the norm, and brings compassion to their political campaign, they are demonized by mainstream media and discredited by their political opponents. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has been labelled a ‘bitch’, and is continually attacked for her economic and racial background. Daniel Andrews lockdown strategy, which centers the goal of protecting human life and avoiding loss has earned the premier the label of ‘Dictator’. While his strategy is certainly not without fault, this epithet has certainly caused me physical pain to read, given I’ve spent this semester studying the actions of an actual dictator, Stalin. This teaches us that politics of compassion, which includes policies that aim to improve the lives of disadvantaged communities, do not belong at the official center of politics.

Neoliberalist values such as pragmatism, competition, and aggression, shoulder off traditionally feminine traits of compassion and kindness. Although a version of feminism has made itself compatible with a neoliberalist system, evidenced by hashtags of #girlboss and #ImWithHer, neoliberal misogyny grows out of previous centuries of misogyny. Instead of the idea that women do not belong in power, it is traditionally feminine traits that do not belong in power. Australian political commentators turn their nose up at the idea of ‘nanny states’, ones that take care of society’s most vulnerable groups, ones that embody feminine traits. Apparently the idea is a government ambivalent to the plight of its most vulnerable citizens, and leaves the invisible hand of the market to magically solve social ills.

This is an economic and political ideology that praises aggression and entrenches previous centuries of traditionally toxic masculine views that deride compassion as weak and bad for government. This is having detrimental impacts at both a personal and global scale, from young workers struggling to make ends meet during a pandemic, to the effects of climate change. There is a dire need for the reintroduction of genuine compassion and kindness into politics. The problems in our world are not going to be solved by headstrong politicians yelling over each other, by budget surpluses or the invisible hand of the free market. We can and will start to see change when we allow ourselves and our politics to be influenced by the human need to show and receive compassion.

References How neoliberalism is normalising democracy- openDemocracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/how-neoliberalism-is-normalising-hostility/ The Challenge of Compassion in Politics- Rowman & Littlefield https://www.rowmaninternational.com/blog/the-challenge-of-compassion-in-politics Can politics ever be compassionate? - openDemocracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/can-politics-ever-be-compassionate/ All you need is a politics of love- openDemocracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/all-you-need-is-politics-of-love/

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CW: mentions of rape culture & masturbation

Hungry Eyes

By Mickhaella Ermita | Graphics by Geegee Abernethy Behold the ruins of a millennial entombed! Clothing is strewn in collapsed heaps across her floor – invariably clean, because for what reason would she go outside to dirty them? – adding another layer of carpet to carpet.

Blood can be found spattered across soiled bedsheets; the violent aftermath of open eczema wounds and illexecuted damage control over her menstruation.

Surveying this devastation are her keepers: three stuffed toy animals perched atop her dressing mirror, whose plush bodies are grotesquely squished together to circumvent toppling-down into dusty oblivion. Together, they are patchwork chimera. Their six eyes collectively watch her as she watches herself in the dirty glass. She squats, shrugging off ladylike propriety in the presupposed privacy of her own room, and examines the unflattering creases that line the sides of her belly. She can hardly make out her face through the grime – she leans in closer.

The Big Three tower overhead, looking down upon her. She resists the urge to knock them off.

Her younger sister had placed them there as a comfort. They are relics of their shared girlhoods, unearthed from the cardboard boxes that had neatly packaged and transported their lives across the Tasman Sea a decade ago.

Then, high-pitched voices were used to animate and anthropomorphise them into familiar companions. Now, they are silent. Their vantage point enables surveillance of everything within the room, vanquishing prospective nightmares when she is at her most vulnerable – with her eyes closed. In childhood, there is safety in being watched.

The pandemic has hurtled me across spacetime. The blank white walls of my bedroom – effaced from any temporal markers aside from the constant shifting of light outside, weakly streaming in through a glazed window – do nothing to moor me to the present. I am atemporal, tenseless. To rectify this, I subconsciously gravitate towards the past; safety can be found in regression and repetition. There’s a familiar antidote to stress in the 21st century – the compulsive consumption of ‘comfort’ media, preferably from the 90s and early 00s.

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With a few clicks, it is May 28, 2004 again. Dylan Moran is onstage again. He’s performing his Monster stand-up comedy routine in Vicar Street, Dublin again. I delight, witnessing this living picture of ornate Irish shambles in his element; untucked baby-blue button-up, crazed black curls, lightly-slurred speech, cigarette lit and insouciantly woven around in dissent of local ordinances. He’s pissed and brilliant, defiant and unorthodox-I’m half in love already.

In one of his bits, he gripes about technology, linking our modern fascination and dependence upon it with our attention-seeking behaviour as toddlers, when we begged our parents to look! as we did miracles with no hands! With age, this need to be seen was transferred to religion as we (mostly referring to the West) found comfort in the thought of an omniscient deity, especially against the sobering inevitability of death. But, with the death of religion sometime in the 20th century, we instead turned to technology and social media for voluntary surveillance, inviting that invisible gaze to confirm that yes, we are here and exist and, in turn, gaze back.

Because that’s the thing with the Internet. Tunnelling through hyperlinks and YouTube wormholes, you inevitably find yourself in virtual freefall – becoming a pair of hungry eyes, unbodied, with an all-encompassing gaze diffracted across any and all metaphysical temporal and spatial boundaries. Your corporeality is an afterthought, interrupted by external factors; your roommate barging in to remind you to take the trash out already, for fuck’s sake (holy shit, is it already past 6pm?); your grumbling stomach; your alarm clock buzzing, spiking your blood with the rush of impending deadlines. Insatiable for the new, you blankly absorb information, jumping from hyperfixation to hyperfixation – taking bits and pieces from everywhere until you’re some Frankensteinian assemblage of subcultures and trends.

As a millennial, my identity has been forged from the blasted ruins of consumerism, surviving past their obsolescence dates through me. Peering into the magic mirror of technology, I become a mirror myself, reflecting within myself the reflection of thousands. * Under the covers, the fingertips of my right hand drift from my forehead to my belly, and then to my left and right shoulders before clasping together in the centre of my chest. It’s silent with the coming of midnight, save for the cheery chorus of my parents’ voices, remembered in the still darkness from when I’d kissed them goodnight a few hours ago: don’t forget to pray!

In primary school, where I first learned to do it, I was plagued with anxiety. Dumbing down centuries of historical and theological complexity for a classroom of five-year olds, my Year One teacher simply told us that the sign of the cross, symbolically beginning and ending prayer, was a way to send secret messages to God. But, I privately worried, what if I neglected to cross myself a second time? Like a phone call I forgot to end, would God then be able to eavesdrop on everything I was thinking: the good, the bad … the dirty? With age, these childhood fears eased with the realisation that these hand-motions were merely that; ritualistic, formal, symbolic. God was watching regardless. The thought both terrified and comforted me.

In adulthood, I learn to use those same hands to worship my own body. Perhaps, if I were someone else, I could make this sexy; but, in truth, masturbation in lockdown has become as rote as nightly prayer. It harkened back to the blur of VCE, when I’d brought myself to orgasm nearly twice a day as a stress-coping mechanism. My mind, racing ahead, could only be halted by my body — orgasm was my failsafe biological off switch. Sometimes it was pleasurable, but most of the time, I sought release for what came afterward (not including myself): blissful sleep.

Tonight, as I slip my underwear down my legs and position my hands, my mind drifts. As my gaze turns to Moran … I hesitate. Almost out of courtesy, I pull the bed sheets to cover my face and redirect my mind’s-eye-turnedvideo-player to Bernard Black (a character he played in a sitcom), and later, to disembodied appendages (lanky and pale) and a shock of black curls, attached to a face I was careful not to peer too closely at. My conservative Catholic upbringing has brought about an internalised reversal of dogma; alone in bed, I think 77

of flesh made word, of earthly desire transmuted into the fictional, the abstract. Perhaps this was stupid. It was certainly at odds with what I’d heard from a British podcaster, who prided himself on being a ‘true’ man of the people. On the subject of OnlyFans, he’d declared that there was nothing stopping him from jacking off to pictures of hot girls on Instagram for free – it was a God-given right. The moral line here is blurry; after all, the women in question posted these sexy pics of their own volition, in exchange for currency. But at the same time, I couldn’t help thinking that his commentary indicated an entitlement to women’s bodies that fed into rape culture and, more nefariously, manifested into revenge porn, or worse.

From my own point of view, I knew how startling and invasive the ‘male gaze’ felt when turned towards myself; did the same rules apply for women looking outward? Wasn’t consciously thinking of a person (a celeb, or worse, someone you actually knew) to bring yourself to orgasm an invasion of privacy? Objectification, as you thought of their face, their hands, their imagined body underneath their clothes? How did consent function here? Was it acceptable to fantasise about someone you knew if the sexual attraction was reciprocated? (But, at that point, why not then progress to actual fucking?) Or, did it simply not matter – was it foolish to ascribe real moral principles to the unreal world of fantasy? I’d only been able to pose these questions to my closest friends on nights out; otherwise, it was something I pondered privately over again and again. Half-lucid, I once asked myself: did Marx have a Masturbation Manifesto somewhere?

Consulting arts and culture where religion and education had failed me, I toyed with the thought of deliberately inviting the ‘gaze’ and redirecting my own feminised version outward as a form of empowerment. After all, this was the solution espoused in all the feminist novels and films I’d studied during my arts degree, ranging from the fin de siècle in Europe to the Sexual Revolution of the 60s. The titular character of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (2013) is my most recent prospective role-model in the unapologetic, startlingly frank way she spoke about and broached the taboo of female masturbation. In particular, her conception of the thought of being masturbated to as thrilling, of someone desiring your body as an ultimately flattering end-point, transfixed me.

It was, true to the expression, liberating.

I discovered some truth to what she said a few days after watching the stage play. Venturing outside the house for the first time in weeks, I was braless and garbed in baggy sweatpants under the sterile lights of the supermarket; my eyebrows messily drawn on as an afterthought. Perhaps it was my libido talking, but, despite being so ‘unpresentable’, I felt more eyes upon me and relished in it; checking out both my groceries and the people (mostly men) looking at me. It was a mutual recognition and in these shared glances, I saw a shared appreciation of the sight of actual human beings. Maybe it was for that reason that we all decided not to be too picky in our window shopping this time.

But even this had its limitations. Fleabag’s compulsion towards sex is inevitably revealed to be a distraction from her own personal grief, and the concept of sexual liberation, including the female gaze, seemed offlimits to me; an exclusively white feminist fantasy. Fleabag, after all, was white, middle-class, cisgendered and skinny — conventionally attractive and independent. While I didn’t think myself hideous, I was first and foremost aware of the imagined weight of hundreds of eyes, spider-like, on me as a consequence of my sheltered Asian upbringing: of my parents (who I lived with), my stuffed toys and the faces on the posters in my bedroom (my supposedly private space), the unblinking lens atop my laptop screen, and of God inside my head.

As Melbourne enters its sixth month of lockdown, the point to this pontification seems further and further away.

I wonder how much longer I can hold out before I turn cannibal, violating my own principles due to a lack of sustenance in the face of my own unending hunger. The alternative looks more and more ridiculous under a growing cynicism and self-scrutiny: am I to wait, like some maiden in an ivory tower, for a partner to enact my fantasies in the flesh? I close my eyes. Maybe I’ll have an answer in the morning.

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This edition is all about staying true to your experience of 2020, whatever it may be. So go ahead and make the cover yours. Colour it, paint it, stick on sequins or scribble all over! Then after your cover has gone through it’s very own chrysalis, send it in @judyspunch so we can share everyone’s different designs!

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