Feliz Navidad

AUTHOR // Lulu Alvarez-Mon FELIZ NAVIDAD

I got dumped the day before Christmas Eve. There’s a blue Siamese fighting fish called Edwin shimmering around in a five litre glass jar to my right, and he keeps looking at me. Fuck off, Edwin.

I have a void where my culture should be. It’s a hole roughly the size and shape of Edwin’s vessel, and it’s weighing emptily in my stomach. If you were Edwin and you swam down into my void you would see that its walls are lined with objects. There is a TV screen, American sitcoms flickering through it. There are thousands of books, their pages softly waving in the water. Blank pages and pencils and old laptops. Screens bared, open to various Tumblr pages from 2014. Tattered school books, plane tickets, luggage tags, metro cards, and stubs from before. Packets of mi goreng noodles, holographic posters of Hindu idols, incense, Buddha figurines, art history books in French, archaeology books in German, books on anthropology, books on linguistics, hiking boots, yoga mats. The tiny things that people I love have given me. A small ceramic dog from Japan. A rusted tin with a pink elephant on it. A lace ribbon. Heartshaped post-it notes scrawled with messages.

A voice reverberates into the depths of the void from far beyond the surface: “Don’t wait for me,” it wobbles. “Being in ________ has made me think about how much my culture and my family mean to me.” I knew what they were going to say before they said it, but the words still punched me right there in the empty place. I had known what was coming, because I had spent envy-filled hours imagining what it would feel like to be them. I imagined having a home and a culture and ‘getting in touch with your roots’. These hours led me to the conclusion that they would be unable to reconcile having both their culture and me. I was, unfortunately, by some stroke of intuition and paranoia, correct.

How is it that someone else having something only makes you more aware of your not having it? I’ve never experienced it, but I imagine it so vividly that I can feel it. Going Home For Christmas. I imagine them surrounded by their family in a country that means something to them, where they were born and where their culture comes from, where the land feels like theirs and people look like them. To me the fact that any of those qualities intersect seems magnificent. I hear what is implied: “You are not part of my culture. You are not part of my family.” And of course, it’s true. And then I hear my stupid, panicking heart: “You have no culture. You have no family. Not like that.” I look around frantically for ways to prove that I do (to win this competition), but there’s nothing for me to grab hold of.

My family does not have traditions. It is Christmas Day. My mother has the flu, so all socialising (not with family, only with friends) has been cancelled, and gifts were exchanged two weeks prior with an explicit agreement: “Would you like this as your Christmas present?” and a transaction. I had walked out of the shop wearing a new necklace. Mama watched me

sew her a pair of trousers over a week. Papa is with his Australian girlfriend’s family in the country, hours away from here. We’re staying in a home that is not ours. Today is like any other day, except that today made me cry. I feel the void keenly. Mum wants to watch Netflix and lie on the couch, but every time I start to move, I imagine my ancestors slipping away from me. In my fit of melodrama, I feel immeasurable resentment and loneliness.

My family abandoned our traditions and pushed away our identity because during segregation in California, it’s what we had to do. We said we were Italian, and we said we couldn’t speak

Spanish. When someone asked where we were from, the response was: “Who’s asking?”. We told ourselves we had no Indigenous blood. We told ourselves we were white.

My parents were pushed out of their nests early, and they learned how to fly in an America that was liberal and smart. People of colour (because, of course, they still existed there) wore expensive hiking sandals, used the word ‘praxis’ regularly, and ordered delivery dinner. They had identities that had already been cultivated, picked apart and rebuilt into American shapes.

A rule: it’s never a good idea to base things on other already diluted things.

This rule goes for romantically tragic French alcohol. When preparing a good glass of absinthe, the only accepted method is to begin undiluted and fir-tree green, and to trickle in ice water over a slowly melting sugar cube.

The rule goes for information. If reading a scandalous newspaper article, it is important to first find the original source and base one’s judgement on that instead.

The rule goes for identity. One must not base the roots of one’s identity on a union of caricatured cultural misunderstandings (coming from those who do not belong to the culture) and vague advice from those who are only half-submerged (who do belong to the culture, but who have, as a means of adaptation, twisted themselves into hybrid forms).

On the floor, in the middle of the watery void, lies a haphazard stack of objects that I threw in it in the hope that they would fill it. They’re candy almonds, la virgen Maria, a tortilla press, a lace shawl to cover my hair, a multicoloured rosary, and a tapestry from Oaxaca. Nothing distinguishes them from the objects pressed into the walls except for their place in the pile.

Today I will throw another object onto the pile in the void. I will make some tortillas from scratch and make my mum watch a movie from Mexico with me. I will put on Chavela Vargas, and maybe some flamenco, and think about buying marigolds and poinsettias for my room. I will try to distinguish myself from educated atheistic whiteness as much as I can, because it’s Navidad. But I will speak to my mother in English. The words we pronounce in Spanish will sound inorganic. I will not recognise any landscapes from the movie, because my feet have never touched Mexico’s soil. I will not speak to family today because of the time difference, because we have nobody in Australia, and because when I do speak to them I get annoyed, because I’ve grown used to having nobody to answer to. Today I will celebrate no tradition.

Edwin’s owner has Gone Home to Queensland the way the owner of the voice that broke up with me Went Home to ________. I’m sorry for telling you to fuck off, Edwin. Maybe we can just spend today enjoying swimming around our voids.

AUTHOR // ANONYMOUS

CONTENT WARNING: Disordered Eating, Trauma

When I first moved out of home I was put in control of my diet for the first time. I was determined to eat healthily, and learnt how to cook my meals on YouTube and followed ‘fitness models’ on Instagram for inspiration. At first, I was doing well, until a traumatic event occurred at home. I was utterly beside myself and was looking for a way to cope. I was emotionally fragile and started to lose my appetite. I couldn’t stomach more than an apple and toast for a while.

I started being curious about how many calories were in food. I liked the feeling of knowing exactly what I put in my body. I read food labels more religiously than my readings. I budgeted how much carrot to put in my salad more so than my weekly spending. I made myself a rule that I was not allowed to eat between the three meals. If I was peckish, I was allowed a cup of tea, or if I was really hungry, one (but only one!) teaspoon of peanut butter.

I used food as a way to feel in control. Precisely because I couldn’t control the situation at home, I felt that obsessing over what I put in my body was a way to regain control in other aspects of my life.

Counting calories was incredibly addictive. ‘How many calories is X’ was my most googled question for a while. It got to a point where I could look at a plate of food and estimate how many calories it would be. I would then eat accordingly, as I had restricted myself to eating no more than 1,100 calories a day. So if I had already had a total of 800 calories for breakfast and lunch, I was only allowed 300 calories for dinner. If I cooked pasta, that meant having 1/5 of a box of pasta with sauce.

I made up in my mind that if I didn’t go to bed feeling hungry, I had overeaten that day. I would lie in bed trying to think of how I could restrict my breakfast the next morning. Maybe instead of breakfast, I’ll just have six strawberries.

I ate like this for nearly a year, and became underweight. My boyfriend hugged me for the first time after we were separated for a month, and his first comment was, “I forget how small you are.”

I would go over to his house for dinner, and his mum would say, “It’s good to see you eating.” I knew I was perhaps too thin, but ‘eating more’ wasn’t an option. Eating wasn’t just about sustenance anymore; it was about being in control. Eating more than what I considered to be an ‘okay’ amount meant that I was undisciplined. It made me feel weak. When I ate alone, I would always eat small salads. A typical ‘safe’ salad for me consisted of one handful of spinach, a third of a cucumber, five cherry tomatoes, one teaspoon of crumbed fetta, and five walnuts. I expected my body to run on that amount of food for half a day, every day, for months on end. I tried to hide my disordered eating from friends and family by binging whenever I ate with them. I would inhale crackers and dip for an hour straight, unable to stop. Afterwards, I’d be disgusted at myself. I would do a quick calculation in my head of how many calories I’d just consumed, and desperately try to vomit it out so that I wouldn’t digest the calories. Unfortunately, I learnt that vomiting out food meant that 70 per cent of the calories would be absorbed anyway, so I decided that the mess wasn’t worth it and thought of other ways to compensate for my binge. Usually, that included some form of exercise to ‘offset’ the extra calories.

One day, YouTube’s algorithm recommended Rebecca Leung’s video ‘Challenging 5 Anorexia Food Rules’. It seemed that after watching copious videos on ‘What I Eat in a Day’ and ‘Salad Recipes’, YouTube was catching on that I enjoyed videos about restricting calories.

The video hit me hard.

It made me realise that I too had senseless food rules that I had made up for myself. Although I never got diagnosed with an eating disorder, I was definitely exhibiting disordered eating patterns associated with orthorexia. Without Leung’s video, I could’ve so easily spiralled into something more serious. It took me a while to admit to myself that I needed to challenge my own food rules.

My first challenge was to have a cup of tea with breakfast. A cup of tea used to be my mid-morning snack, because those extra three calories exceeded the breakfast calorie quota I’d imposed on myself. I then allowed myself to buy snacks (that weren’t just fresh fruit and almonds) at the supermarket. Later I started eating dessert after dinner even though I had exceeded my 1,100 calorie ‘limit’.

I learnt that your daily calorie intake needs to fluctuate, and that it is okay to eat more one day and less the other. This seems so obvious now, but it was absurd to me back then. Today, I have regained some weight, and I no longer restrict my food intake. A combination of seeing a therapist to help with family trauma and actively challenging my made-up food rules every day has made me happier and stronger. I am still working on not overly portioning foods, and resisting the urge to constantly do a quick tot up of my daily calorie count. I accept that it takes time to rebuild a healthy, sustainable relationship with food.

Nowadays I eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full. It’s really not that deep.

checking in on yourself during the bushfires

AUTHOR // KIMBERLY SLAPP CONTENT WARNING: NSW/Victoria Bushfires, Climate Change

It has been impossible to escape this summer’s catastrophic bushfire season. Even while I write this, thousands of kilometres away from Australia, I can’t help but feel a debilitating sense of helplessness and despair. Of course, I am incredibly lucky – my family and friends are safe, my home has not been threatened, and I have not had to flee to the beach to escape the flames and smoke that have swallowed entire towns. I haven’t felt the heartache of communities who have lost their homes and their loved ones. I can’t understand the grief of Indigenous people, who have seen the lands which hold their memories, culture, and sacred places be mismanaged, and now incinerated. But as the bushfires continue to burn through the country, updates and images have taken a hold of social media, drawing every corner of the world closer to the devastation.

This has no doubt brought much needed attention to Australia’s painfully regressive climate policy and the government’s lethargic response to the unfolding crisis. Donations have also poured in from around the world, with millions of dollars being raised for various organisations around the country.

However, not all of the social media attention has been productive. Misinformation has spread as quickly as the bushfires, with false and exaggerated reports of widespread arson trending on Twitter and Facebook,undermining the link between this year’s unprecedented fire season and the drier, hotter conditions brought about by climate change. Social media platforms and even traditional forms of news media have been inundated by a continuous cycle of information and misinformation, and it has been hard for many to escape the seemingly endless pattern of doom and (literal, hazy) gloom.

Perhaps I have been affected so profoundly by these fires – even though I am only watching from afar – because I know that this extreme fire season is only a symptom of a far more severe disease. Our planet, suffering from human-inflicted climate change, is only continuing to warm, and without meaningful policy change towards climate action, the prognosis looks grim. The existential threat to Earth’s biodiversity and to our own species’ survival has given way to widespread climate anxiety, especially among younger generations who have the most to lose from the effects of climate change. It is hard to go about business as usual when, especially amplified by social media, news of melting glaciers, dying ecosystems, and extreme weather events surround us constantly. This fire season, consecutive maximum temperature records have been broken, and Canberra has been smothered by the world’s most hazardous air quality. The worsening state of our environment has become harder and harder to ignore.

While our government continues to drag its feet, held hostage by fossil fuel lobbyists but upheld by the Murdoch media, staying hopeful about the future of our planet can be difficult. It can also take a toll on our mental health. For some, getting involved in campaigns and contributing money or time to these causes can be a way to meet like-minded people, redirect feelings of anger, anxiety and powerlessness, and affect real change. Social media has also proven to be an invaluable tool to help inform, connect, and mobilise people to take action. Images of devastated landscapes and viral videos of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s disastrous tour of affected towns have had an impact on Australians. Arguably, as a result of mounting public pressure, the government has made concessions on climate policy, with Morrison himself proposing to ‘evolve’ current commitments to reduce emissions.

However, activism can be exhausting. In times like these, more than ever, it is important to check up on ourselves and those around us. Right now, the fires are still burning, and it is likely that they will continue for months to come. But with that comes a gathering of strength and a drive to push for change.

what i see when i close my eyes

AUTHOR // MORGAN SHEPPARD CONTENT WARNING: NSW/Victoria Bushfires

I close my eyes, and all I can see are violent flames, families huddled on beaches, the blackened ruins of homes, and injured wildlife in a now desolate landscape. I see our prime minister force an upset woman to shake his hand for a press photo before running away when the questions from angry survivors get too honest.

It wasn’t even me.

But it could’ve been.

The North Black Range fire ravaged Tallaganda National Park and surrounding towns, and threatened beautiful little Braidwood. It was too close – nine kilometres to be exact. Too close to our gorgeous property, my home. Too close to our animals that rely on us for food and water. Too close to my heart and my safety.

That terrifying Thursday when conditions suddenly changed, we got the horses out. Clouded in smoke, it felt surreal. They were safe, and the fish too, thanks to a lovely friend. Bags packed, plans to take the dogs and chickens. Alpacas moved to the safest, clearest paddocks.

We got lucky. The winds changed and stayed blowing away from us for the two weeks that it took for the fire to be controlled. Two weeks of being on high alert, of worrying about friends in Braidwood, of the extra work of having the horses off property. A huge amount of energy was sapped from me.

We got lucky, but this relief was always countered with the guilt that it meant others were not so lucky. The winds that were a salvation to us pushed the flames onto the properties and livelihoods of others. A guilt I know to be natural, but that remained insurmountable.

Now, things for us are normal. Except, for as long as this drought and bushfire season continues, it can never be normal. Perhaps with the ever-worsening state of the climate, this stress and anguish will be the new normal. We are faced with the challenges of paddock management, feeding the animals, and praying our bore water supply doesn’t run out. I desperately hope this doesn’t become normal, but my fears are not unfounded. Although the North Black Range fire remains largely under control, we have to be constantly vigilant for any fire that may start nearby. I’m aware of the toll this has taken on my mental health. But what makes it worse – what makes it a million times worse – is the lack of care and action from our government. Sometimes, it feels like everything I could do is for nothing – what difference does it make if our leaders don’t care? What is the point when this is going to keep getting worse as our world heats up?

But then I feel the breath of a horse on my face, see the sweet doe-eyes of a kangaroo and her joey, and watch my niece overflowing with joy and life. Even if the now isn’t forever, it still matters. So many lives matter now. And it’s not too late. It’s not too late to try, to fight, to hope, and to live. For as long as we have today, perhaps we’ll have tomorrow. And to me, that is worth something.

I close my eyes and I see violent flames, families huddled on beaches, the blackened ruins of homes, and injured wildlife in a now desolate landscape. I see our prime minister force an upset woman to shake his hand for a press photo before running away when the questions from angry survivors get too honest.

But, I also see a line of firefighters standing bravely before the whipping flames, communities rallying together to provide food and supplies for those who’ve fled, individuals opening their homes to strangers, tireless volunteers hunting for the wildlife survivors, and hoards of young people gathering together to raise their voices. And maybe, maybe, this will get us through.

AUTHOR // ZOE MITCHELL FROM CAPTION TO CAMPAIGN

CONTENT WARNING: NSW/Victoria Bushfires, Climate Change

The response of the international community to the Australian bushfire crisis over the last week has signalled a collective call to action regarding climate change. But beyond that, what does this call represent?

Over the last month, it has been near impossible to avoid reading headlines regarding Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s seemingly detached response to the Australian bushfire crisis. In Cobargo, his attempt to force reconciliation single-handedly rebranded the handshake from a gesture of solidarity to one of contrived tokenism. His bashful return from Hawaii led to his patronising transformation from being a respected world leader to becoming ‘Scotty from Marketing’, as remarked on by the Betoota Advocate and other news outlets. His PR campaign has been such a disaster that when giving a speech on Kangaroo Island, he needed to be informed by a local islander of the two Australian casualties lost in the horrific island blazes. So, acknowledging the Prime Minister as having become a vessel for the public to direct their anger and resentment is not without reason.

Without even criticising the government’s relative silence regarding the plethora of complex issues curtailing Australian legislation of climate change, the Prime Minister has failed as a figurehead. In a time of national crisis, we do not have a proactive voice communicating to the public. This last-ditch effort has meant the public have seen through the cracks, where strained attempts to encourage solidarity haven’t pardoned the fact that it was three months too late. Or three years. Or thirty. The conversation around the most recent catastrophic fires plaguing rural Victoria, as well as the South and North coasts of New South Wales, has been predominantly centred around public feelings of disillusionment and pent-up frustration with climate change inaction on a macro scale. It has come off the back of findings that Australia is comparably poor in its goals to reduce carbon emissions and to take measures to reduce its contributions to the continually warming globe.

The G20 Brown to Green Report in 2019 demonstrated that Australia was not on track for the world’s aspiration to restrict global warming to a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase. In fact, Australia is currently not even predicted to deliver on its 2030 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) target. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are approximately three times the average of G20 countries per capita. In July 2019, Pacific Islander leaders expressed their disappointment towards the decision of Australia under Morrison’s leadership to count ‘carry over units’ from the Kyoto Protocol as indicative of their commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This decision, delivered at the Nadi Bay Declaration, showed that Australia was clearly making the decision to desist from international cooperation to instead further the preservation of national industry growth.

Of course, when observing the country’s self-preservation, one does not have to look further than its commitment to building the Carmichael coal mine in cooperation with the Indian Adani Group. This demonstrates that the nation is clearly moving not towards developing and diversifying access to renewable energy sources, but instead towards continuing to support the lucrative coal mining industry.

This was supported in the government-released Australian Energy Update in September 2019, which reinforced that most of the growth in energy use between 2017 and 2018 occurred in the mining sector. Such growth had increased by nine per cent. It must be understood that the mining industry alone contributes to 13.5 per cent of Australia’s national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and has been a large contributor to the country’s economic success. Our country, rich in natural resources with its diverse landscapes, is lucrative for trade with other nations, after all.

This is pivotal to understanding the country’s slow political progress when addressing legislation which develops environmentally sustainable reforms to industry growth and production. As those who work in the mining industry are pivotal to the country’s economic sustainability, they are simultaneously instrumental lobbyists with tremendous stakes to ensure issues of climate change are not regulated through legalistic paradigms.

The recent bushfire crisis, publicised alongside apocalyptic imagery of red skies, the Sydney Opera House obscured by smoke, burned livelihoods and Canberra politicians walking the streets in face masks, has provided a vision of a world complacent to the irreversible impacts of our current climate catastrophe. These images should be etched in the nation’s conscience, a reality which demonstrates continual inaction on the signs of increasing temperatures and exacerbated scales of natural disasters.

However, shaming the nation’s political leaders will not go far in achieving long-term change. The social media activism and collective action by individuals from various sectors of society in the past weeks has been admirable, and an optimistic representation of a better world to come. Frequent fashion and lifestyle brands have decided to donate varying percentages and numerical sums based off of online profits to charities that are fighting the fires. Celebrities and social media influencers have used this opportunity to not only sympathise and offer support to struggling communities, but to educate their followers on the importance of understanding climate change.

Yet, this phenomenon, like many others which have come before it, risks falling into the grips of inaction, of short-term sympathy without long-term support. The ‘callout culture’ promoted on social media platforms now mirrors the media coverage of disasters and international news. It follows a pattern of being temporarily condemned before being squashed by a newer, more urgent headline. We as social media users are bombarded with the news of horrifying world events, and share our support by physically reposting and liking posts, perhaps linking a website to encourage donations or an online petition.

Through engaging in this cycle, we allow politicians to continue working in a ‘business as usual’ manner. Whilst social media may be bombarded with hate, fear and disillusionment, the letterboxes of local members of parliament and parliamentary administrators remain empty. Through voicing our opinions on social media, we fail to ‘CC’ in the people responsible for implementing real change. Instead, all that is left is a hope, without any expectations, that our messages will be heard and receive a response.

Whilst acknowledging the waves of support publicised on social media, there still remains a large ignorance of Australians broadly towards political structures and mechanisms of legislative change. This bushfire crisis represents a microcosm of the need for more education surrounding the significance of the vote, and of education surrounding policy. Anger cannot be our only response if we have, broadly speaking, supported policies which have allowed for Morrison’s aura of nonchalance towards climate change.

At present, the continued positivity in rhetoric surrounding the public as increasingly political and using social media as a tool for activism seems to be politically strategic. Whilst public platforms may be plastered with messages advocating for reduced carbon emissions, accountability for fossil fuel usage and the banning of plastic bags, action from the public seems to stop there. We desire change, but we’re not acting on it.

The shaming of Morrison exemplifies this. Almost all Australians, and many international audiences, have seen the photos of him returning bashfully from his Hawaiian holiday. We have seen the memes made out of his PR nightmares that compare him to images of George W. Bush viewing the suffering of Hurricane Katrina communities in 2005 from the air, detached from immediacy. We have cried “Fuck Scomo,” and pledged to cease from recognising him as our nation’s leader. But these cries of repugnance are nothing more than words in a vacuum without political lobbying. This anger needs to be channelled into movements, removed from social media, and lifted into the letterboxes of our local MPs.

Whilst we may not collectively support him in the present, Morrison was democratically voted in by us as the collective Australian public. We as a society voiced our support of him as the most suitable candidate for national leadership. But, he does not stand alone. We did not vote solely for him. We voted for his policies, those who stand behind him, and our local members who represent us directly.

It is now when we must use our local MPs, those whom we entrusted with our voices, and rally them to amplify our cries. Sharing a post on social media does not end up in our local MP’s direct messages. We must recognise that the members of the political elite are not the only individuals who are responsible for fixing climate change. Whilst they regulate it, they must be encouraged by the voices of the many, on whose support they stand.

Australia is a democracy, not a dictatorship. Let us speak using the correct political mechanisms, with which we are so lucky to have been bestowed. Let us not let our voices drown in the depths of social media in the archive of January 2020 on Facebook. Speak now before it’s too late.