 
MC2

ISSUE 2, 2013

Edited by Matthew Asprey Gear

First published in 2013 by the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney. Copyright © 2013 Macquarie University and individual contributors. No part of this journal may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the copyright holders.The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

SMASHWORDS EDITION 2013

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is provided free but licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold.

CONTENTS

Introduction \- Matthew Asprey Gear

From Sydney To The Northside: Chasing The Dream In Dublin \- Gregory Brown

Rethinking The Imaginary \- Nicky Gangemi

Side Effects \- Amy Way

A Massive Impact \- Rob MacKenzie

Breaking In The Ballerina \- Chelsea-Rae O'Connor

Investigation In He Lan \- Gemma Chew

From The Kut-Kut \- Nicholaos Floratos

The Irreplaceable \- Kate Gunn

$2 \- Olivia Whenman

Where She Had Been \- S. K. Riley

Helike \- Claire Catacouzinos

Extract From A Novel \- Carri Fisher

The Brazen Truth Of Mrs Claus \- Kyra Geddes

From Trash To Treasure \- Ishbel Cullen

The Heart Of The Matter \- Jessica Leigh Kirkness

Biography Of A Train Wreck \- Genevieve Giles

The Nation Of Poets \- Valerie Wangnet

Stateside: Boston, MA \- Hannah McNicholas

Contributor Notes
INTRODUCTION

**Matthew Asprey Gear**

Welcome to the long-awaited second issue of _mc_ 2, an anthology of outstanding writing by undergraduate students enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University, Sydney. Although published by the Department of Media, Music, Communications & Cultural Studies, this journal also features student work that originated within units taught by the Department of English.

The writing gathered here takes many forms and evokes many moods. We have memoir pieces exploring a vast range of human experience. These autobiographical pieces explore family history and the shaping of identity, narrate tales of comic misadventure, contemplate profound pain and grief. Fiction is represented by comic monologues, historical evocations, and excerpts from larger works-in-progress. We also include feature articles and stories of international travel.

Such diverse content is unified by each writer's devotion to the particularisation of human experience in vivid detail.

We hope these stories resonate with you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editor would like to thank all those who assisted in helping prepare this issue of _mc_ 2, including Kate Rossmanith, Peter Doyle, Willa McDonald, Pat Grant, Beth Yahp, Sarah Keith, Marcelle Freiman, Clinton Walker, Ray Devitt, Vanessa Berry, Mark Evans, Justine Martin, and Lisa Cuffe.

And thanks to all the students who submitted work for consideration.

Memoir

FROM SYDNEY TO THE NORTHSIDE: CHASING THE DREAM IN DUBLIN

**Gregory Brown**

"You look like you've had sex with a wildebeest!"

These were the first words my manager yelled at me when I arrived at work on a chilly December morning. My alleged romance was simply a replacement of hair gel with toothpaste to try to tame my increasingly long hair. Venkat, my travel companion turned business associate, winked at me. We knew that our troubles would ease that evening because our promised paychecks were due. Our manager, Phil, had finally fought those bureaucrats in head office. They weren't going to delay our earnings three weeks in a row!

We had been in Dublin for seven weeks and the initial excitement of the tough hostel life had begun to wear thin. Phil had warned us of our previous two paycheck delays and we prepared by spending every last cent we had on accommodation and two-minute noodles. With no money for the wash facilities, we had been giving our suits and shirts a deodorant spray before donning them. Our socks and undies were assessed by sense of smell to decide the most appropriate for the day. We had no money to satisfy our rumbling daytime stomachs and would have to wait until our evening meal of noodles. This was unchartered territory for us. We were used to a world where we never had to worry about money and where clean clothes and cooked meals appeared without notice.

On that day, however, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our morning meeting had its usual elements, but with extra oomph. The ten of us stood in a semi-circle and clapped to dance music. Phil then burst into the room and everyone began cheering. He proceeded to run around the group, giving us all high-fives. Finally, he took his centre stage position and, as usual, yelled:

"How are we doing?"

"Good!" we yelled in unison.

"I can't hear you!"

"GOOD!"

Phil sensed our excitement and gave an inspiring sermon. "Now is the time to have blind faith and to make something of yourself," he proclaimed before sending us out to "sell, sell, sell."

We were in the business of door-to-door sales and were paid on a commission-only basis. Our product was Talk Talk (a landline call provider) and our opportunity was success. If we worked hard, in just one year we would be managers earning salaries over 100K. Just like Phil, we would be living the dream. We could visualize the Armani suits and those sweet little Porsches! Before we left the office, Phil pulled me aside and said:

"Just remember, no matter what happens today, a leader always continues. Management is up to you!"

Grateful for his advice, my face switched to battle mode. When I stepped outside, I told myself that my future was in those winter streets of Dublin.

On the way to my assigned selling territory for that December day, I remember being quite reflective. It was sheer chance that I had the management opportunity. I had finished high school in Sydney a year earlier and was fuelled with ambition to see the other side of the world. I had it all planned out: first I would do a month-long Contiki tour, then I would live and work in England for six months, and to wrap it up I would spend three months going unguided through the European mainland. Venkat was sold on the trip by my promises of a carefree ten months consisting of nightclubs and girls.

Venkat spent $500 on a UK work visa but I put in my application too late and had to leave Sydney without it. Dismay set in as my ten-month quest to conquer Europe looked like it would turn into a one-month holiday. This couldn't be! This was the trip of my destiny, my calling, a chance to find my place in the world! I declared to fight on and left home telling my parents:

"You watch, I'll last ten months. I'll sweep the gutters of Athens if I have to."

During our Contiki trip we were still in limbo: how would I manage to stay longer? My saving grace came while enjoying absinth in Prague. Another slurring Aussie proclaimed:

"You can get your Irish working visa without being in Australia. Go there!"

A few days later, on October 15th 2007, we arrived in a Dublin that had more opportunities than ever before. The city was still experiencing the regeneration of the 'Celtic Tiger' era, which began in 1994. This was an economic boom that transformed the economy, turning Ireland from one of Europe's poorest nations into one of the wealthiest per capita in the world. The Irish say it's the year when someone switched on a light and things instantly turned good. Dublin became a European hub and a place where people from all over the world came to be part of the action.

After ten short days in the Irish capital, however, I looked at Venkat and moped. "If I don't get a job in the next few days I'll have to go home."

The truth was I didn't have more than $1000 to my name. I'd spent double my budget on the Contiki tour and had the unfortunate occurrence of losing my wallet, phone, and camera. To lift my mood we went for an evening stroll around the city and noticed an Aussie pub. We decided to go in for a drink but the bouncers pointed to our thongs—flip flops to the Irish—and turned us away. A tall man in a suit was standing outside the pub and observed the situation while puffing on a John Player cigarette. As he began to mock and taunt us, we joked about the fact that the Australian national footwear was not allowed in an Australian pub. He seemed impressed and, knowing we were looking for work, said:

"I own a direct sales business. How about you boys come in on Monday and see if you like it?"

*

When we arrived back in the office that December evening, Phil summoned the group and announced, "I'm sorry, fellas. The paychecks haven't come through. Head office has told me you'll get four weeks of commission paid to you next week."

"This is a fucking joke!" I screamed.

Phil dragged me into his office. "How could you be so stupid?" he yelled. "You only have to wait another week. You've just brought the attitude of the whole office down. If you're not careful you'll be denied the management opportunity!"

I told him I was sorry. When I left the office, I had a strong feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was the feeling of fear. Venkat and I didn't have two cents between us. It was a Friday night and we had no food, no money and no accommodation paid for.

"What are we going to do?" Venkat asked me.

We decided to sneak into the hostel we had been staying at—the YHA. We had become friendly with the staff and we thought they would simply assume we had paid. Our plan worked on the Friday and Saturday nights. We were able to sleep in the empty television area and we nourished our stomachs by sneaking off with other people's food from the communal fridge.

"You've gotta do, what you've gotta do," I would assure my guilt-ridden friend.

On the Sunday evening we went into the television area and, to our dismay, it was full of the hostel staff. "We are having a movie marathon tonight," one of them informed us. We pretended to take part in the festivities but when they caught us sleeping we were told: "You can't sleep in this area. You have to go to your rooms now."

I could feel my heart pumping in my chest. We went around to every dorm in the hostel to check if any doors were unlocked. We had surveyed the first four floors with no luck. On the fifth and highest floor, we noticed one of the doors was not closed properly. Venkat pushed it open and, to our shock, there were eight empty beds in there. It was the best night of sleep I'd had in Dublin.

When I left the room the next morning the cleaning lady asked me what I was doing in there.

"Sleeping!" I replied in a condescending voice.

We put on our suits and went down to the main area. The staff quickly quizzed us as to what room we spent the night in. When we told them they screamed: "That was supposed to be an empty room!"

"Oh, we must have got our rooms mixed up," was my best comeback.

They checked the system and our names weren't assigned to any room.

"Pack your bags and never come back!" we were told.

We packed our big travelling backpacks—with everything we owned—and walked to work. "What the fuck is all this?" Phil enquired when we arrived at the office. When we told him we didn't have anywhere to go, he looked concerned and said, "I didn't know you were that fucking broke!"

He loaned us €100 (Euros) each until payday that Friday. We thanked him profusely but knew we had to find a place to stay. It had to be the cheapest hostel in Dublin.

We spent the evening enquiring around hostels and finally settled at the City Manor—or the Shitty Manor. It was only €11 a night and was mainly a hostel for the homeless when they had begged enough money that day. We paid until the Friday and those four nights gave us a good idea of the place. We would come home after twelve-hour working days to find drunks and junkies having fistfights and screaming matches in the main area. Families of Gypsies were our housemates and they had no sense of hygiene. I would often walk past the toilet door to find three children pissing all around—but not in—the toilet. Even worse, I was sometimes forced to skip my shower because there was a heroin needle in it. The rooms smelt like rotten feet and it was windier inside the hostel than out on the streets. One thing was for sure: we were looking forward to Friday.

Friday came and we finally got our paychecks for four weeks of sales: €500 each. "Where's the rest of it?" I asked.

Phil explained that a lot of the people we signed up to Talk Talk had cancelled in their ten day cooling-off period, which meant we didn't get the commission. When we looked a little glum, Phil yelled:

"Don't lose your attitude. It's poison to the business."

With that we knew we would have to stay in the Shitty Manor for longer. Although we were anticipating another paycheck the next week, we had many items to buy. Our appearance had begun deteriorating and we had dreams of getting haircuts and washing our clothes. New socks, undies, deodorant, shavers, and hair gel were on our agenda. And of course we were going out for a hot meal. But before any of that, as soon as we left work, we went to the pub and had a pint of Guinness. I had a Guinness in Australia and spat out the first sip. But an Irish Guinness proved to be magic. Creamy and cold, I turned to Venkat and said, "It's like an ice-cream that gives you a buzz."

We couldn't help but have four each.

*

From December to January our paychecks continued to be inconsistent and when they did arrive they were rarely more than €200. The Shitty Manor didn't even disgust us anymore and it almost felt like home. Security at our new home was pretty lenient and we managed to sneak in without paying for a period of two weeks. A couple of Saturday evenings, however, the rooms were full and we had to sleep on park benches. It was around this time our already shabby appearances took an even sharper decline. Our stench became so strong that one of the hostel stayers actually called me the smelliest man who wore a suit in Ireland. Around the office we officially became known as the "two Aussie bums". Still, we worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. With our dream of management and determination to stay in Europe, we dealt with it. We trusted Phil and believed him when he said his new branch of the business was having teething problems that would soon be resolved. We had faith that things would get better.

Even in those tough days we always admired the city's ode to the Celtic Tiger boom, The Spire. Dublin's major monument stands 121 metres tall and looks like a large needle right in the centre of the city. Legend is that the Spire is supposed to signify Dublin's new found ambition while reminding Dubliners of their past: a heroin epidemic in the 1980s. Significantly it is located on the River Liffey, which runs through the city and is Dublin's cultural and class divide. Those who live in suburbs north of the Liffey are the working class "northsiders" and those who reside to its south are the upper class "southsiders". Southsiders mock northsiders for their 'common' accents and working class ways. Northsiders resent southsiders and believe the benefits of the boom were not shared but that the "rich got richer". From the moment we arrived in Dublin, Venkat and I were northsiders. Affluent Dublin was something we often heard about but rarely saw.

For starters, as well as living in the northside we worked there. In selling Talk Talk, we were sent out to the toughest suburbs that the northside of Dublin had to offer. The grey, rainy skies of an Irish winter matched the crumbling estates in which every house looked the same. Abandoned houses had wood nailed to the windows and doors because no one would move in except the rats. Yards were in a state of anarchy. The grass in the front yards was up to my knees and walking through it made me thankful that Saint Patrick had banished the snakes from Ireland all those years ago. Suburban, malnourished horses would roam the streets in large numbers feeding off this long grass. When a kid would want to go up the road, they would just jump on a rogue horse and away they went. Gangs of lads would stare at every turn as we went about our job. These suburbs were full of kids who wanted trouble and didn't have a fear in the world.

Similarly, all of my colleagues were young northsider lads. The business promised them a way out of the working class and a better life. True Dub sayings like "What's da stoorrriiee?" and "What's the craic?" took some getting used to and the strong accents left me needing to lip-read. Most of the boys were involved in gangs and drug dealing. In the Sydney I knew, drugs were used by the trendy middle class. In working class Dublin, there was no pretension. Drugs were just a part of life and an escape from the reality that life might not get better.

*

"I'm really over this," I said to Venkat as we sat down in front of the internet. It was almost February and we were having another one of those weeks where we didn't have a cent until payday. We arrived in Dublin broke and, more than three months later, things had only gotten worse. We were willing to fight through the initial hardships because we believed them to be only temporary. But by the end of January, we couldn't see an end.

"Lets look this place up," Venkat suggested as he Googled the name of our company. We quickly came across a host of blogs that had hundreds of contributors. These contributors all had the same thing in common: they began working at our company and were sucked in by the promise of an easy road to success; they got ripped off and went broke; they realized all too late that it was a con. The bitter bloggers described and trivialized the daily events of the business and made the company sound ridiculous. A light bulb went off in my head. We had to get out!

The next day Phil summoned the whole office and announced, "I'm sorry, fellas, but the paychecks haven't come through again. You'll definitely get paid next week."

"Phil, can we speak to you in private?" Venkat asked.

As soon as we entered his office he began telling us how angry he was that head office had kept making these mistakes.

"Phil, I've had enough. Look at me!" I yelled. "I look like a bum and I feel like a scumbag. Do you know how degrading it is sneaking around hostels without paying?"

"I know it's terrible," he said. "Listen, I still believe you guys have what it takes to get to management. You'll stay at my house and I'll feed you."

We didn't have much choice but to accept his offer. Before we left the office to start selling, Phil said:

"Keep your heads up today boys. A leader never lets personal problems effect their work."

Venkat and I paired off without our colleagues and we slowly walked towards our selling territory.

"Do you have a minute for Amnesty International?" enquired a worker who stood in the middle of the street.

We stopped and the young man gave us a speech about the perils of world poverty and then asked us to provide our bank details and donate on a monthly basis. "Do you get paid commission only?" Venkat enquired.

"No, I get a regular wage" he replied.

"How can we get this job?" I asked.

He gave us the phone number of his manager and told us the company always hired travellers who were looking for short-term jobs. He also assured us that there was no management opportunity! Venkat borrowed the charity worker's phone and immediately organized a job interview for the next day. We weren't even excited. Just exhausted.

We then shunned our selling duties and walked into the warmth of a pub. We sat for hours drinking the only thing we could afford: tap water. The bar manager didn't seem to mind. As we drank our water, we looked at each other and laughed. We laughed hysterically and uncontrollably. We laughed that our dreams of success had been shattered. We laughed that we fell for the whole thing. We laughed at how bad we smelled and how hungry we were. We laughed at how our Europe trip had turned out. Our stomach muscles hurt and we had tears in our eyes. But we just couldn't stop.

Memoir

RETHINKING THE IMAGINARY

**Nicky Gangemi**

DRAWING BY RACHEL SUTTON

" _An imaginary friend is often what the child needs it to be."_

— _Barbara Goldstein_

I sit in my parents' living room with seven thick photo albums, looking for a photo of my bedroom at the time Elizabeth appeared. I don't even know if the photo exists. I flick through Mum's ordered albums, all done by date. I'm searching around 1997-1999. That was when Mum and Dad decided it was time for my middle sister Rachel to move out of the room we had shared into a room with my little sister Danielle. I was all grown-up and a 'big girl', old enough to get a room by myself with a 'big bed'.

Found it!

The picture is in a small individual album sleeve and I pull it out. I have to wiggle it to get it dislodged because of the stickiness that always develops between the photo and the plastic when they haven't been separated for years. I look intently at the photo. The colours seem a little faded and washed out, but there I am sitting up in my new big bed, huge smile on my face, by myself, reading a book. I can see a small section of the floor where Elizabeth used to sit.

Elizabeth was my imaginary friend. She moved into my room when Rachel moved out. She had a cute round face and long brown curly hair that came down almost to her waist. I remember she would always sit cross-legged on the floor next to my bed. She was good company, my new confidant, now that my sister wasn't there to chat to me anymore. I would tell her about my day before I fell asleep. I don't really remember when Elizabeth left, but one day she just stopped turning up, and life just carried on as normal.

Many parents find it worrying when they discover the new friend their child has recently been playing with isn't actually a real playmate from pre-school, but only imaginary. This concern is linked to conclusions from studies and research conducted in the early decades of the 20th century. These stated that imaginary friends were the "private hallucinations and fantasies of disturbed children" or those who had personality and social deficiencies, such as a nervous temperament or an inability to play well with other children. Textbooks for teachers and parenting and childcare books from this era suggested that imaginary friends were for children who couldn't distinguish between pretence and reality and that interacting with these imaginary playmates could lead to schizophrenia. With past conclusions such as these, it is understandable that parents feel uncomfortable with their child's new playmate.

But recent analyses of these early studies have shown they were intrinsically flawed. Research was often conducted without a control group and participants were patients from clinical institutions. Research in the past 15 years has turned out overwhelming evidence for the benefits of imaginary friends, as well as concluding that these playmates are actually part of normal childhood development. Studies have shown that children with imaginary friends are often more creative, have better language skills, larger vocabularies and are more achievement-orientated. In contrast to conventional opinion these children are also able to better distinguish between the imagined mental life and the exterior real world. They are more social, have more real friends, dislike solitude and are better equipped in social interactions with other children and even adults.

Children benefit from and are more advanced as a result of having an imaginary friend. This is because the child must invent not only their imaginary playmate, but also both sides of the conversation and all the activities they both participate in. This helps them to develop their understanding of how other people think as well as empathy and sensitivity to others' needs. As a result of these developments, researchers have concluded that imaginary friends are the vivid merging point between fantasy and reality. This nexus has thrust imaginary friends to the forefront of discussion surrounding Theory of Mind.

Theory of Mind is a developmental stage referring to individuals becoming aware that they, as humans, have thoughts and beliefs and therefore other people must also have thoughts and beliefs. But the most significant development is understanding that others' views may be different from yours. This means that an individual can attempt to predict others' behaviours and reactions by imagining the other person's thoughts and feelings. It is a transformative moment in the development of relating to others. A team of researchers in the USA has shown that Theory of Mind develops earlier in children with imaginary friends than those without.

Dr Evan Kidd, a researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, suggests that imaginary friends are invented when the conditions are just right, such as when "children are creative and have lots of opportunities for lone play." Common examples include being an eldest or only child. I am an eldest child, and Elizabeth appeared when I was alone in my room. This was the only location in which she ever existed, and only when I had no one to talk to. Never once did she venture out of my room with me. I had many real friends out there for me to interact, talk to and play with. It is comforting to know that my experience is remarkably standard as most current research suggests that highly social kids in the absence of people to play with will invent their own playmates. Clinical psychologist Fiona Denton says the "creation of an imaginary friend is not an indication that the child is deprived or deficient in any way -- it is absolutely normal."

Imaginary friends are now considered to be a common part of childhood development, occurring in up to 65% of children between the ages of two to eight years. But what actually constitutes an imaginary friend? Imaginary friends are defined as being projected into space, rather than existing only 'in the head'. Research has also shown in most circumstances that the child recognises that the imaginary friend is not actually part of real life around them. Despite this and the fact that other humans cannot see, touch or interact with their play-mate, imaginary friends become a significant part of the family and their regular routines. They often require a space in the child's bed, a place set at the table and even participate in bath time.

One example is my friend's daughter Tara. She is a very creative three-year-old with an imaginary friend named Rajah. She involves Rajah in her own play time and consistently in the family's day-to-day activities. Kidd explains that "creating a whole new individual with its own personality is a very sophisticated thing to do." In the case of an invisible friend "it shows that children have a developed capacity for visual imagery, an interest in how others behave, think, and feel, and, importantly, it shows they have a very active imagination!"

No matter how positive the current research, there remains a stigma attached to imaginary friends. Denton puts our negative conclusions down to "the general lay person's understanding of psychosis and hallucinations", such as associating imaginary friends with 'hearing voices' or as a sign of a mental illness. These attitudes are often then amplified by popular media, films and generalisations about imaginary friends. This is particularly portrayed in the film _Drop Dead Fred_ in which a young woman's imaginary friend from her childhood reappears after her husband leaves her. Most characters react badly to the reappearance of Drop Dead Fred, especially the woman's mother. She calls her daughter "absolutely insane" and takes her to a shrink who prescribes pills to fix the "malfunctioning" part of her brain. While this reaction is quite extreme, it is not totally unrealistic \-- many parents are truly concerned about the appearance of an imaginary friend.

Fortunately for Tara, her mum is quite unlike many parents. When Tara's imaginary colour-changing-tiger Rajah appeared, she didn't worry or stress. In fact, as Tara's mother she wasn't surprised at all. She tells me that Tara is quite the imaginative child and engages in imaginative play every day. Sometimes going on an adventure through the jungle at the supermarket or scaring monsters out of the car while driving or even having a tea party in a cubby house while sitting under a table at a café. These adventures with Rajah all involve miming and imagining with no tangible objects. Pretend play is often based in reality, such as the 'jungle' setting or the 'tea party' scenario in Tara's case. This imaginative play allows children to explore real-world themes in the safe confines of pretence.

Often children don't choose their imaginary friend. One will just develop. They help to fulfil a need such as a friend to talk to, someone to boss around, or a personality who shares the same thinking as the child. For a young child an imaginary friend can competently fill that role. Jackie Paper desired a friend and Puff the Magic Dragon became his playmate. They would go on adventures together in "a boat with billowed sail." This childhood song reflects a reality regarding the life-span of an imaginary friend. A child will play and imagine with his or her friend, but one day realises, "wow, I haven't seen so-and-so for a while," and this is because the child hasn't felt the need to, just like when "one grey night...Jackie Paper came no more." According to author Leonard "Lenny" Lipton, the song lyrics tell of "the loss of childhood" -- growing up and no longer having an interest in imaginary adventures. Often after the need has been fulfilled, "the imaginary friend tends to just dissipate and go off into the ether" (Denton). As the child develops this is a natural occurrence.

While imaginary friends are for the most part confined to the years of childhood, there are rare cases of them appearing during adulthood as a mechanism for coping with life traumas, such as childhood abuse or severe isolation. The appearance or reappearance of this friend occurs mostly in periods of high stress. Often the individual cannot find a way of coping that is considered more 'normal'. And when they are significantly unhappy or lonely, an imaginary friend helps fulfil that need as does Drop Dead Fred. This imaginary friend explains he had to come back again because the young woman's husband left, leaving her "all alone and unhappy". In other cases imaginary friends appear in the elderly, often when a spouse dies or when mental capacities start to diminish, such as dementia. Again, it is a way of coping or fulfilling a need that has developed in and around the individual.

These days I often don't hear of kids having imaginary friends as much as I used to, or would expect to. I think it might have something to do with the way in which we teach them to be entertained. I have more than once seen a three-year-old skilfully playing on an iPhone or iPad, or kids being entertained by other screens such as the television or a computer. I wonder if the culture of kids playing in the backyard with sprinklers and making use of whatever objects were around to create a game has been lost because of the technology around us. Tara's mum agrees. She explains to me about 'Imaginative Play', allowing kids to create imaginary adventures and stories with simple objects around them. She points to some silicon cupcake holders and tells me that Tara will turn them into anything from a mobile phone, to a hat, a mini-pet or even a pirate spy telescope. Is it possible that in rearing our kids we are teaching them that creativity is nothing more than drawing on a piece of paper with some pencils? Or that our practices are telling them that being entertained happens best in front of a screen where they don't have to do any of the imagining? Maybe this is one of the contributing factors that is leading to kids losing the ability to engage in imaginative play and be creative enough to develop an imaginary friend.

In the creative hub that is Tara's house, she and her mum sit on the loved, once-cream couches. They are covered with fingerprints and stains from food. The windows have little smeared finger-paintings at child's height and there is an eclectic collection of toys smattered all over the lounge room. Tara finishes eating her lunch and sits down on the floor. "It's Rajah's turn for lunch." She kneels and proceeds to prepare the imaginary meal on the carpet. "Rajah's favourite food is kiwi fruit," she says to me as she hands over lunch. Her imaginary friend is very active and it's difficult for me to keep up with where Rajah is located. One second she is eating food on the couch, then she's on the top of the staircase, then Tara is reading to her _Old MacDonald Had a Farm_ and then they are even doing gymnastics together. All of a sudden, Tara scoops up Rajah into her small cupped hands and heads outside. Tara walks over to a bucket full of water. She stands above it and in an upward sweeping motion opens her hands, allowing Rajah to fall. Plop.

"Look Mum, Rajah is swimming!"

Tara's mum turns to me with a smile on her face. "Rajah must be a pretty flexible tiger."

Memoir

SIDE EFFECTS

**Amy Way**

It's winter 2009 and the chemist is full. Fluorescent lights make the stacked shelves shine yet cast an unflattering glow over the customers. In the middle of the shop is a woman in her sixties with short white hair and a tired face. She stands waiting for a prescription until a cough seizes her chest. It's deep, hacking, and it folds her in half as she tries to breathe through it. Mothers angle away their children's faces. Teenage girls testing makeup look over. The woman takes a seat and continues to wheeze. The cough makes the telltale whoop through her chest. The fit is finally over at the same time as her prescription is ready. She shuffles to the counter and signs the script. Everyone is staring, because now they can see the wet patch that spreads across the back of her pants. Pity is on their faces. The woman leaves quickly and the teenagers laugh. One staff member goes to the seat with wads of paper towel and disinfectant, and discretely wipes the urine off the lino cushion. Customers whisper, but for them the spectacle has passed. The shop returns to its chattering.

The thing about working in a chemist is that there's nowhere for people to hide. If customers have a problem they have to say it out loud, most likely in front of two or three other people.

"I have this...thing...on my...you know."

There's lots of shifting eyes, nudging, winking, and vague hand gestures.

Then there are the ones that come right out and say it: "I'd like a Fleet Enema, please. You know, the one that goes up your arse."

At the same time, there's nowhere for us to hide either. As soon as we pin on the badge we're subject to mundane anecdotes, sleazy pick-ups, and every dissatisfied consumer complaint known to the retailing world.

"This bottle is empty. I need a refund."

"The bottle has been opened, ma'am."

"Yes, and it's empty."

"...did _you_ empty the bottle, ma'am?"

"...I need a refund of this empty bottle."

Of course you have nice ones: regulars like Phil who brings a metre long box of chocolates whenever it's someone's birthday, who asks about your family and your degree and tells you your ex-boyfriend is a schmuck. The most frustrating part is that the customers need help and you need to help them, but you find yourself caught in a contradictory universe. Make a profit but provide good advice. Take strong painkillers but don't get addicted. Are you a trained healthcare professional? Or a fifteen year old working her first part-time job? One minute you're helping a sweet old bird find her colour in the lipsticks, the next you're apprehending a suspect-looking man who's trying to lift amphetamines.

In the 1800s pharmacy was all about compounding: mixing creams and solutions, and preparing crude drugs from natural sources. Rough-looking wooden buildings in rural communities held homemade signs: John Souter, Chemist and Druggist. There were dispensaries, herbalists, and medical halls, all made from freshly cut timber, corrugated iron and even paperbark. Moustached men stood behind counters with endless rows of bottled formulas, and in Hill End NSW, F.W. Reay could sell you his patented herb extract.

These days, it's a rare treat when one of the pharmacists I work with is commissioned to make up a cream. When I tell the customer her cream has to be made and will take at least half an hour, she looks at me as though I haven't showered in a week.

"Are you serious?"

I shrug. "You can come back later tonight, we're open till 8."

"Pffftt."

"Or we open at 8am tomorrow."

"Hrumph. Pssh." She shakes her head, looks at her watch, and throws up her hands in consent.

"Have a good night." I smile at her retreating back.

Only in the hour between the after-school and commuter rush do we get time for creams. Marion is the Pharmacist on tonight and I watch her massage salicylic acid into dense urea cream with a metal spatula. I'm sitting on the stool in the dispensary with my elbows on the desk, my chin in my hands, and my bum sticking out as I lean dangerously close to her deft hands. While she works she tells me about the things they used to make up when she trained for her registration in 1981, everything from standard creams, suppositories, and cough mixtures, to cocaine eye drops. The 1980s were the middle period before the wholesalers figured out they could pre-package everything. It was also before the advent of computers. A period when every pharmacy had a script book the size of a microwave, and every drug and manufacturer had a code that had to be recorded for every script dispensed. If you did 80-100 scripts a day, you were busy. Today, our average is 400.

I don't mind the bustling workplace: it makes my shifts go faster. But it can mean not all customers get the help that they need. My number one rule is that if it seems out of your depth, it probably is. Vitamins, creams, cold and flu, and even most dispensary items—I can give you a decent run down. But our greatest advantage as pharmacy assistants is there's always a higher authority. It's a Tuesday and in between a chesty toddler and a sprained ankle, I manage to make my way back to the prescription counter.

"Can I help you there?" I say to an elderly couple a few feet away.

The woman, short and frail, scurries forward to the counter with a weary man in tow.

"Oh yes, hello," she says. "I just need to get this script filled for my husband."

She hands it over. It's freshly typed. Agomelatine, brand name Valdoxan. Anti-depressant.

I ask the routine questions as I scribble on my script pad: "Has your husband been here before for scripts?" "Would you like a generic brand if available?" "And are you waiting here or calling back?"

When I'm done she leans in and asks, "Can you tell us a bit about this drug? He's having trouble sleeping. The doctor says this will help."

I feel my brow wrinkle.

"I'll just go get the pharmacist."

I leave the couple with Marion. Later, when it's quiet and Marion is making the cream, I ask whether it's normal for a doctor to prescribe an anti-depressant for sleep problems.

"Valdoxan is marketed as an anti-depressant but it can have positive effects on sleep."

I frown.

"Why wouldn't the doctor have just prescribed him temazepam?"

"The script was written by a psychiatrist, not a GP, so maybe something other than sleeplessness is going on." She shrugs. "The wife was adamant it was just sleep issues."

The explosion in the range and prevalence of lifestyle medications is a modern phenomenon. Thirty or forty years ago, people were less conscious of checking their cholesterol and blood pressure. They often only came to the chemist because they were noticeably ill. Now with the rapid expansion of the pharmaceutical industry, and advances in science and research, it seems as though nine out of ten people are on some form of medication for cholesterol, blood pressure and/or depression. The highest selling pharmaceutical drug on the market today is Pfizer's cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor. In 2007, around a quarter of young Australians aged 16-24 were recorded as having a mental disorder, and approximately 27% of the adult population regularly used anti-depressants. Marion tells me how there used to be only one drug for your ailment, whether it was cholesterol, blood pressure, or even an antacid. If you were depressed, you had three options.

"Get medicated," she says as she mixes the urea. "Usually with tricyclic anti-depressants, big wham-O ones like monoamine oxidase inhibitors. There's only Parnate on the market now—but you weren't allowed to have beer, eat cheese, you couldn't have anything with tyramine in it because you'd go into some hypertensive crisis. The cure was worse than the complaint."

"Geez." I grimace. "What else?"

"If you were lucky you had wealthy parents who'd just send you on a cruise. 'Oh, she's a bit depressed, let's send her on a cruise.'"

"Or buy you a horse?"

"That's it." She laughs.

"What's the third option?"

"Suck it up. People probably didn't think they needed anti-depressants much, unless they lost their husband or something. There was no Zoloft, no Aropax, no Luvox, and no niche market for young people like there is now."

"Well, that's good then," I chime in, "that people can get the help they need."

"I guess, but who knows whether these companies are marketing to an existing niche or creating one?"

The cream is done and I help her scoop it into two clean glass jars.

A few days later the elderly couple is back amongst the crowd in the chemist. Thankfully it's on a day that Marion is working and they remember her. The wife explains that her husband doesn't feel any better. He feels worse and he looks it: an empty shell I could send flying with one breath. He doesn't want to take the medication, but what should he do? Marion calls the psychiatrist and after some receptionist jumping she gets him. The psychiatrist listens attentively but his answer is brief.

"No, I want him to stay on it. Maybe try a lower dose, half a tablet."

Marion's closing advice is to keep taking them but to go and see the psychiatrist or even his GP as soon as possible. The husband's expression is blank and unchanged, but his wife looks calmer. She thanks Marion and they leave.

It still amazes me how intelligent the pharmacists I work with are. I'll point to a drug in the dispensary and they can tell me what it's for, its active ingredients, and often what it interacts with. They can look at generic red splodges on a child's stomach and give a diagnosis in seconds. They are the invaluable medium between professional advice and public service, because at the end of the day even they can ask for help. Just as I hand over authority in certain situations, so can they: "You should probably talk to your doctor."

When people question their doctor's diagnosis or drug choice, I'm usually inclined to side with the doctor.

"If that's what the doctor has prescribed, sir, then it's probably the best thing for you."

There's always a customer whose found something on Google, or read something somewhere by someone. If I don't check myself however, I'm in danger of dismissing all customer comments as uneducated and misconceived. Some days, I spend twenty minutes telling a woman about the pros and cons of her different pain relief options. Other days, I spend twenty minutes enthralled in one man's battle with skin allergies and the alternative treatments he's discovered.

The best days are when I leave an exchange with a pat on the back and new feedback, and the customer leaves with the promise of relief and a sense of pride. The days when Phil comes into the shop with his sleek new walker that he's already shown off to his entire family. When a lady I'm serving recognises me from five months before and thanks me for the help I gave her. When the survivor of root canal surgery weeps when we tell him there's a painkiller that won't interfere with his regular meds. When an awkward father buys his daughter's tampons, or a nervous teen asks for the morning-after pill. It's pretty incredible to see the wall of our staff room covered in "Thank You" cards and "Season's Greetings", but even more so to be able to tell a customer, "This cream's fantastic. A lady I know used it to get rid of her psoriasis."

Spring is here, which means less cold and flu, and more hay fever and spray tan. The shop is empty but for the man I've just helped to select a decent nasal decongestant. Marion is working, covering for our usual Sunday pharmacist. I'm about to start sorting scripts when I hear the front doors slide open. In walks a woman, small and hunched, face down, carrying a clear bag filled with medication. She reaches the back counter and raises dark-rimmed eyes. Her face is familiar, but so are most in a town like this.

I smile. "Hi, can I help you?"

She hands me the zip-lock bag of medications. Among them is Valdoxan. That's when it clicks: the wife of the man who used anti-depressants to help him sleep. I look around, back towards the door, but she has come alone. Her face is lined and pale, like a worn out photo fingered and folded too often. She opens her mouth to speak, but I can already read his name on the medication in my hands.

"I just wanted to let you know that my husband passed away."

The dull, business-like tone of grief. This is where my training fails me. I revert to the generic words assumed appropriate for this kind of confession.

"I–I'm sorry."

The woman gives a half-shrug and looks down.

"I brought in his medications. I thought you might need to destroy them in a special way..."

I'm bumbling and motionless at the same time. "Yes, yes, thank you. We have a special bin."

The woman sniffs, looks around, scratches her neck. I can't stop staring at her. Marion materialises beside me. Later, she'll tell me that she never normally asks. The fact that she remembers the couple at all in our busy shop forms a newfound sense of intimacy.

"Do you mind if I ask how he died?" Marion asks softly.

No one is ready for the reply, not even the woman it seems. Her eyes open a little wider as she speaks.

"He shot himself. He hired a gun and shot himself."

"Oh...I'm so sorry."

There's literally nothing to say. I want to say "sorry" again but even in my head it feels redundant. She's given us the medication and we'll write a note on his file. Our relationship is finished, our services no longer required. Yet the three of us still stand there.

The woman shakes her head.

"He never had a depressed day in his life before he starting taking those tablets."

There's no anger in her voice, no accusation, nothing. She's empty and so are we. Just three people standing silent in a shop on a Sunday.

Memoir

A MASSIVE IMPACT

**Rob MacKenzie**

It was April 17, 2002 and I was lying in a bed at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. One of the most respected spinal surgeons in Australia, Dr Steven Ruff, leaned over me. He pushed his glasses back along the bridge of his nose and took a breath. "I could kill you. You could bleed to death. You may become a paraplegic. Or you could be okay." A caricature of a man, he occupied the space somewhere between mad scientist and grizzled surfer. His eyes were kind but wearied, and a shock of grey hair tumbled over the collar of his lab-coat. He was to be my saviour or, conversely, my butcher.

Dr Ruff had shown me my MRI results and explained what they meant. My T7 vertebra had collapsed into a wedge and was kinking my spinal cord. I needed surgery or I would live in a chair. If I lived.

He told me his team of surgeons would collapse my right lung so they could remove a rib from my right side. The fractured vertebra would be removed and in its place they would insert a titanium cage. The rib would then be ground up and used to pack inside and around the cage, providing the bone that (hopefully) would fuse my new T7 to the vertebrae either side of it.

My family had been with me all afternoon but there was nothing more they could do. As the lights went down throughout the ward, I wanted to reach out and connect with those I loved. I wanted to call every number in my phone to say thanks for being there, for being my friend, my sister, my mother, my brother, my lover. But it was 10:30pm and I didn't want to disturb anyone.

I thought about my life—mistakes made and victories earned, but most of all I thought about my friends and my family. I cried myself to sleep.

*

This accident changed my life and helped determine who I am today, yet for years I have had very little knowledge of the details or my time in hospital. It occurred on February 23, 2002, at around 1:30 am. I'd been at a mate's house but as I had work in the morning I'd left to head home for bed. I was riding my bicycle when a car clipped me, forcing me off the road, sending me face-first into a tree.

The paramedics found me with a GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale) score of 8. I was unconscious and breathing, and could be roused only through strong pain stimulus. I had significant amounts of bleeding and bruising on the brain. My right femur had cracked, as had my T7 vertebra. I'd fractured three ribs, one of which had punctured my right lung. I broke my right cheekbone, right eye-socket, and shattered the front of my skull. My right eye bulged out from where its socket should be. I was taken to the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal North Shore Hospital, and there I stayed for three weeks. They never caught the person who hit me.

*

Nearly 11 years later I revisit Royal North Shore Hospital's Intensive Care Unit. I step out of the lift and into a blue hallway where I meet Helen, the Nurse Manager of the floor. She takes me to the Neurological Ward, where I would have stayed due to my head traumas.

The room is small, no bigger than 12m x 8m, yet a doctor, five visitors, eight patients and eight nurses occupy this space. At one bed the doctor is suturing something. Another bed is curtained off. Ahead of me a patient lies unmoving, intubated and connected to oxygen. Two nurses study her charts.

I try to re-create the scene when I was a patient. I see the bed I would have occupied—"First one in, on the left-hand side," my mother had told me. I see my body lying in the bed, my head a pulpy mess. Face smashed up. Eyes bulging. According to Pete, my mate since childhood, "Your head looked like a misshapen sack of features. Your eye had caved in so you had no socket left. You looked like a muppet. But you were alive. I was relieved. The issue of brain damage was there, but you were alive."

I'd been delirious from the combined effects of brain trauma and morphine, and had lashed out on a few occasions. I'd been restrained, tied down using bandages. I was intubated and connected to oxygen. More than a decade later, my mother tells me, "I still see your feet sticking out of that bed." Her voice drops to a murmur. "That's in my head—it'll never go away."

The main desk has a monitor showing the heart-rate and blood pressure of each patient, and a couple of nurses sit chatting in front of this screen. I approach and speak to Charlotte, a nurse who has worked in the ward for about six years. She tells me that the nurses work with patients on a ratio of 1:1, and that they mostly deal with young men "because young, twenty year-old guys tend to be risk-takers." I mention my violent outbursts and she assures me, "Lots of people get combative or aggressive. It's not uncommon."

When another mate had visited, he'd gone to the desk to ask for me. The nurse asked if he was Mick. Taken aback, he nodded. She explained that I'd been calling out his name. He came over and I recognised him. Mick reckons it was by voice. "Your body was completely fucked up—your eyes were bulging, and they went in different directions, but they were looking at me the same as always." He pauses and smiles. "Well, the one that could see me was, anyway."

On that first visit, Mick had asked the nurse if he could help. She told him he could brush my teeth. "But make sure you cover his mouth, he may spit at you," she said. Mick was brushing away, and says, "I remember seeing the glint in your eye. Like you were hatching a plan, and you'd spotted a chink in my armour." Before removing the toothbrush from my mouth, he looked at me and told me not to spit at him. "Sure enough, as soon as I took the toothbrush out, bang. You got me."

I remember nothing of my three weeks in Intensive Care, and very little of the weeks that followed. Brain damage and morphine combined to leave me in a state of delirium. My memories are based around stories my friends and family have told me. I would have brief moments of lucidity, where I held normal conversations, before lapsing back into my fantasy world. There were ninjas climbing up the walls of the hospital. I thought my nurses were over-medicating me, so I attempted to stockpile my pills. The bedside cabinet contained a portal that would take me through to a dark, rain-filled world from _The Godfather_ , which existed above Hyde Park. Another time we were at war and I thought the man in the bed opposite was a champion fighter pilot. I yelled across at him, "Mate! You gotta get out there. We need you!" I'll bet he was glad when I contracted golden staph and was quarantined in my own room.

My favourite story involves the time I was 'cast' in a National Lampoon movie. The movie people would come and collect me each day for filming and drop me back at the hospital afterwards. My mates and family laugh as they talk of the sincerity with which I recounted these events.

All my friends and family dropped everything they could to be by my side. When the phone rang that morning, my mother was understandably distraught. She has lost two younger brothers, and both times she found out via a phone call. She would finish work early to come and visit me at lunch time nearly every day. Similarly, my brother Duncan would make sure he finished work in time to feed me dinner. The elder of my two sisters, Sarah, lives in New Zealand, so relied on the phone for updates, but she flew over to help with my recovery once I was discharged from hospital. Mick had been doing training exercises with the Army Reserves on Stockton Beach in Newcastle. He left for Sydney the next day.

My other sister, Vida, proved invaluable. She had the unenviable task of calling people to tell them of my accident. She rang everyone whose number I had stored in my phone, and she did this armed only with snippets of information. She also had to listen to abusive messages left by my workmates. At the time I was a third-year apprentice electrician and the tradesmen at work were 'quite annoyed' when I didn't show up with the plans for the job. Vida and her fiancé (now husband) Matthew had been set to leave on a year-long trip around Australia, planning to depart the very next day. They put off their holiday because of my accident, instead visiting me in Intensive Care each day to feed and care for me.

The accident and my subsequent recovery were a massive drain emotionally and physically, and I was very rude to everyone. Mum said she knew my brain was alright when I told Matthew he was "a fucken idiot" because "there's no such thing as a left-handed ratchet!" After saying that she looked up at me. "For once your vulgarity was welcome."

*

I am six foot, ten inches tall. Currently I weigh 112 kilograms. During my time in hospital I dropped to a weight of only 52 kilograms. I looked like a POW from Changi prison camp. Using the forefingers and thumbs of both hands I could encircle my thighs at their widest point, and was able to easily slide my hands up and down. Being a spinal patient, it was six months before I could do any upper body work, but having broken my right femur, I needed to strengthen my leg and improve my fitness, so I did a lot of walking. Overall, it was eleven and a half months before I made it back to work, a very good recovery time for the injuries I suffered. I maintain that at least 60 per cent of that comes down to having had a positive outlook.

I no longer have any sense of smell, as the nerves were severed when I shattered my nose. The surgeons worked off photos to re-build my face, and it is incredible how well they have done. They could gain relatively easy access to my nose and jaw, but in order to fix my broken cheekbone, eye-socket, and frontal lobe the surgeons need to perform microsurgery. I now have a scar running from ear to ear across the top of my head where they peeled my face forward to gain access, and similarly, I have some impressive scars from the spinal and femoral procedures.

I am now bigger and stronger than ever, and while I am very lucky to have survived, I am even more fortunate to have such a supportive inner circle. My family and friends were there for me. They were in Intensive Care not knowing if I would live or if I would die, if I would suffer permanent brain damage or if I would be okay. They were there for me in hospital, they were there for me during my rehabilitation, and I was rude and obnoxious to them all. While I was the one in physical pain, it was my family and friends who truly suffered.

*

I ask my mother to take me to the site where I had been found. She shows me the house belonging to the people who found me and points at a sturdy-looking tree. "That's where you were. Wrapped around that tree." It is an old gum tree that forks in two about a metre and a half from the ground. It has rough bark and measures about eighty centimetres in diameter at the base. I never stood a chance.

I'd always believed that the accident happened about 800 metres from home, but it now seemed closer. Checking afterwards on Google Maps I discovered I was actually only 300 metres from the gate of my house. They say most accidents happen within five kilometres of home. I guess this is true.

As it was I didn't make it home for nearly three months.

Memoir

BREAKING IN THE BALLERINA

**Chelsea-Rae O'Connor**

I started ballet when I was six. Every Tuesday afternoon my Mother would try to scrape my short, bobbed hair into a bun so that I would match the other girls. It would be years before she had any success with my hair. We would stand in a circle in the middle of the room while our ballet teacher checked our posture and corrected our technique. She would prod and poke our backs and arms, readjust our pointed feet and tilt our heads in the right direction. From a young age I learnt to be aware of my body, the way it moved through space and filled the air around me. Above all I learned how to use my feet.

In ballet the feet are everything. If they are too flat they can be stiff and hard to manipulate; too arched and they can become over-stretched and sore. I had the latter problem. On nights after ballet class I would lie in bed and wait for the cramps to come. Starting in the balls of my feet the pain, hot and gripping, would flood through my soles and into my calves and Achilles tendons leaving me writhing in my sheets, desperately trying to massage out the tension. As I got older, the other girls became jealous of my feet. I had the highest arches in the class and they looked beautiful in my satin pink demi-pointe shoes. As I progressed, my feet became stronger and more resistant to the cramps that had plagued my younger years. I worked on them constantly. When I wasn't in ballet class I would walk on my tippy-toes for a few metres before sinking down into my heels and stretching out the arches. I would sit on the floor in front of the television, legs straight out in front of me, pointing then flexing my feet. In this position I could leave my legs flat on the floor whilst arching my feet enough to touch the toes down as well. I try this now and have instant cramps.

The ballet world has been fixated on feet since the late 1400s. Of course, movement and dance has been around since the beginning of humankind, but not until ballet did it become so structured. One of the first and most important principles of ballet is that the feet must always be turned out. From this came the five fundamental foot positions, first through to fifth. The arms were arranged around the feet and were often impromptu or forgotten. Intricate sequences and movements were created to best portray the feet and costumes became shorter and less cumbersome to show them off. Today there is a team of podiatrists in most major ballet companies around the world. Its job is to keep the dancers training and performing night after night despite injuries and pain. When I first started ballet I never considered getting hurt. I thought that was just for the girls who played soccer or netball or did little A's. When I became old enough, at around thirteen years of age, I was sent off to buy my first pair of pointe shoes. It was then that I realised the reality of being a ballerina.

I remember my first pair of pointe shoes. I remember thinking how beautiful they looked with their soft pink satin. I envisioned myself as a prima ballerina, _boureeing_ across the stage as if weightless. My feet would be strong and arched within the shoes. They looked harmless enough inside the plastic Bloch bag, fragile even.

The trick to breaking in a pointe shoe, my ballet teacher had said, was to make them look as ugly as possible. This meant bashing, smashing and beating them against concrete or brick. Scraping at the soles with razor blades and knives. Bathing your feet in methylated spirits to make the skin harder and prevent blisters, bunions, calluses, cracked nails and bruising. Finally, wear them anywhere and everywhere. A lot. The first time I did a point class my feet throbbed for days. The flesh was tender to touch and my big nail turned black. The second time, pins and needles pricked at my feet and calves, and blood soaked into the toes of my pink ballet tights. This was not about breaking in the pointe shoes. The shoes were breaking in me.

By the time I was seventeen, I had finally let them. Years of practice and numerous pairs of pointe shoes had led to this moment in my life. My Advance 1 ballet exam was in June 2007. It was a cold day in Kings Cross and the heater in the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) studios wasn't warm enough. I remember limbering up. Swinging my legs and rotating my arms, trying to get the blood flowing, but nothing would stop the goose-bumps from erupting all over my skin. I massaged my pointe shoes, bending and banging them on the timber floor. I knew they were broken. It had happened gradually over the last few pointe classes. I had a habit of breaking shoes, despite the specially made, extra strong soles, my feet still found a way to snap them. Broken shoes weren't always a bad thing. In concerts and performances they made my feet look even more arched and spectacular, but in an hour and a half exam where every movement was scrutinized, it could mean the difference between a pass and a fail.

To me, a Pass was not acceptable. I had a history of distinctions and whether I admitted it or not, anything less would be a failure. The exam was excruciating. With no support in the soles of my shoes, the impact on my toes became two-fold. I left the exam with a cracked nail and the bitter taste of disappointment. My feet had failed me.

I had to wait a month to find out my grade. In the meantime I broke in a new pair of pointe shoes and started training for the next level. My mother answered the phone when the results came in. "Mrs. Gray for you." She had called across the lounge room.

"Credit."

It was the only word that I seemed to hear. I knew my teacher was reassuring me, saying how hard the examiner had marked and this was only a minor set back, but it didn't matter: in myself I knew I had failed.

I continued with ballet until the end of 2007. When the summer holidays came I knew I wasn't going back. I blamed it on starting the HSC, bitchy classmates, and favoritism within the studio. Sometimes I still do, but the real reason I gave it up was deep seeded disappointment. For years I had strived for the perfect _arabesque,_ the best turn out and the highest _jeté._ I had compared myself to the thinnest, most flexible and tallest girls in my class, always wanting what my body did not allow. I had set my sights so high that the fall had crushed me on the way down.

Sometimes I talk to my mother about ballet. She has a strange nostalgia when she speaks.

"I was a bit sad when you decided to throw it in. There was just so many times that you made my hair stand up when I saw you perform so I was sad to see you give it up," she told me as we sat sipping green tea outside my parents' home. My mother used to be a dancer and then later a teacher. At fifty, she still instructs a weekly dance fitness class at a local gym. I ask her why she thinks I gave it up.

"You got so close to the end. I can see why you did it but you got so close and I still think you had so much potential in ballet but your personality worked against you."

I have heard this before. My mother thinks that you need to have a certain personality to make it in the ballet world. I don't disagree with her.

"You haven't got tough enough skin to survive and if you haven't got that then it's an agony going into it so in a way I'm glad that you decided to give it up when you did... and the thing with ballet is that it stays with you all your life and I think that's what has led you into fitness and what you're doing now."

I work as a group fitness instructor and personal trainer. I use my knowledge of the body and movement everyday but I still miss dance. I miss the way I felt when practicing it; the familiar muscular contractions and elongations. I miss feeling weightless when I stood _en pointe._ So, almost four years since giving up ballet, I decided to take a class.

I stand in my kitchen facing the television. My hand is resting gently on the bench which is the perfect height for a makeshift _barre_. I pretend that it's wooden and that my fingers are curled around its' smooth, round exterior. Thankfully, my housemates are at work otherwise I would feel self conscious in my baggy grey tracksuits, rolled up to the knees to expose pink demi-pointe shoes on my feet. On the television an older lady with slick, grey hair is demonstrating how to hold the _barre_ correctly.

You always start with _pliés._ They warm up the muscles and stretch out the ligaments. I stand in first position with my feet turned outwards and heels pressed together. The lady on the television begins a _demi-plié._ Her knees bend to midway, stopping just before the heels need to rise. I replicate the movement. As I lower my body I can feel the familiar pull of my calf muscles and Achilles tendons. I keep my back straight and my chin lifted and my right arm curves around the side of my body coming to rest at the front of my upper thigh. I reach the sticking point, just before a demi becomes a full _plié_. I begin to rise and my body responds; feet, calves, quadriceps, core and vertebrae. I become a coil of muscle and bone, stiff to the touch but soft to the eyes.

It takes me forty minutes to complete the _barre_ work. From _pliés_ to _tendues_ and _ronds de jambe à terre,_ my kinesthetic sense guides me through the movements and although I have lost my flexibility, I feel supple and empowered. I hardly notice the dull ache in the arches of my feet.

In the days that follow I become excited at the thought of wearing my pointe shoes again. I hunt through dust covered boxes of things left in storage when I moved out of home, until finally I spot the fraying pink tip of a satin ribbon. Pulling them from the wreckage of old photo albums and CDs, my pointe shoes look tattered and forlorn. I squeeze them onto my feet, tugging at the fabric to get them over my heels. They are tight against my skin and I can already feel the pressure building on my big toes. My ankles creak and shake as I rise to the pointe of the shoes and my whole body fights the unwelcome strain.

Despite the pain and despite the cramps that are already prickling their way up my legs, I feel normal again.

I sink back into the earth feeling the muscles in my feet release and connect with the floor. I untie the ribbons from around my ankles and take off my pointe shoes. Outside the air is warm and the sun beats down upon the concrete driveway. I raise one shoe above my head before smashing it to the ground.

Memoir

INVESTIGATION IN HE LAN

**Gemma Chew**

My grandparents were married in 1947, just as the chrysanthemums had started to blossom all over Shanghai. The air was crisp and cool. She wore a red embroidered _cheongsam_ with a high collar and butterfly clasps. He wore a black silk _samfu_. They look like porcelain dolls in the faded picture. Two weeks later she was helping to dislodge a M1900 bullet from her new father-in-law's arm. "It smelled bad," Ma-ma informs me primly, "and the blood was very red. The stain on the cushion never came out."

My great-grandfather was 37 years old when he was shot by his brother, Hun. His brachial artery was torn, although luckily, the slug missed bone. Two days later, my great-grand uncle fled the family estate in the Xuhui province, and was never heard from again. The family had not approved of their first son's fascination with the communist movement. Hun had suddenly taken to it after his best friend invited him to a secret meeting. Everyone else thought it was just one of the fads he followed, like his strange hairstyle. The family was renowned and wealthy. Communism was for peasants.

He joined the party in his twenties. The family supported the _Kuomintang_ —the Chinese Nationalist Party, the oldest political party in the Republic of China—and was willfully blind to their son's involvements with the enemy. Until The Argument. The Communists were winning the Civil War. The family said enough was enough. Tradition, values and family were more important than this new Russian belief. Hun was to stop.

The tale of the disappearing son spread through the villages, all the way up to Beijing. Searches turned up nothing. The family gave him up for dead, and after minimal mourning—for grudges are not forgiven easily, especially family betrayals—it was back to business. Until one day, a friend of a friend of a friend of the family's turned up with the news that Hun had been spotted in He Lan _._

He Lan (Holland) was a country approximately 7500 kilometers away—far enough to be considered dead. No one spoke about it, and it became as forgotten and as unreal as dragons and legends _._ China became The People's Republic in October 1949, my great-grandfather passed on, and my grandparents migrated to Australia.

Earlier this year, my uncle Robert decided that it was time to reconnect with this long lost limb of our family by flying to Holland. The idea had been flung around at dinner parties and family reunions over the years but had never been seriously considered. "I think I surprised even myself when I clicked 'Purchase'," he admits. "But I'm very glad I did."

Unlike Ma-ma, he tells me everything I want to know, and some things that I don't. "I felt like a PI. I kept everything," he says proudly. He produces his travel journal, a manila folder of maps, itineraries, brochures, tickets, another one labeled 'Research Documents', and leaves me to look through everything as he sets up the slideshow. Everything barely fits on the coffee table. The Cathay Pacific ticket stubs show that he left Sydney (SYD, Terminal 1) on Monday 12 March 2012 15:40 and arrived at Amsterdam (AMS, Terminal 1) on Tuesday 13 November 2012 06:30. There are seven maps of the Netherlands, circled, highlighted, sticky-noted, and a sheaf of newspaper articles. Private investigator, or OCD?

I hold my breath as I wait for the black screen to change. "That's me on the plane," he says unnecessarily. We fly through the clouds of Sydney, pass through Hong Kong, and arrive in Amsterdam. The sun smiles through the dusty windows overlooking the runway. Lunch at the Grand Café Het Paleis is seafood chowder—" _Moules frites_ ," I am told, "mussels in white wine."

We are in the air again and then at Eindhoven airport. It is much less elegant than _Schipol_ in Amsterdam. Then we are driving through the country. The hills roll on for ages, and the road is narrow and curving, never-ending. The clearest blue sky. There are fields of flowers in neat rows of red and pink and yellow. The clichéd windmills wave in front of floaty, cotton candy clouds. It is a fairytale. I simply cannot grasp how someone coming from Communist China could live here.

Hun grew up in a small village in South Shanghai, where walked from end to end, and was related to most of his neighbors. The family estate took up most of the village, and had three separate oriental gardens portraying different dynasties. The _Han_ garden featured a lake with three miniature islands you crossed to on wooden bridges. _Song_ had an artificial mountain and pavilions shaded by weeping willows. _Ming_ was full of lotus blossoms and a tiny pagoda. It was Ma-ma's favorite. There were seventeen singing birds in teak cages across the gardens, numerous dogs and cats, and over three hundred Japanese Koi in the ponds.

We discuss Hun's arrival in the Netherlands. Or He Lan, as the Chinese call it. Uncle Robert believes Han arrived at the port of Rotterdam on board a Chinese ship. They regularly brought seamen from Guangdong, laborers from Qingtian _,_ and peddlers from Zhejiang into Waalhaven harbor in the 1940s. The port was over forty kilometers long, with long, spindly piers poking like spider legs from the boardwalk. His photos show ships lazing on the water, cranes in single file, neat little grids of cars, and containers stacked like Lego bricks.

From Rotterdam, Hun made the journey inland to Eindhoven, where the friend of a friend of a friend spotted him. Uncle Robert thought the train would have been his best mode of transportation. Rotterdam Centraal had been Delftsche Poort railway station before 1957. The faded newspaper clipping displays a brick double storey with ornate carvings and a shallow roof. The arched entryway sat below the station clock with silver hands and a flag of red, white and blue. Now it's Centraal Station, all glass walls, metal poles, and geometric shadows. The Eindhoven express took an hour and 12 minutes, and the views, Uncle Robert assures me, were spectacular. The photos don't do it justice, and also, the train was moving too fast to focus.

His research began at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven library. Digitized newspapers with birth and death records and wedding announcements from 1945 -1955 enable an easy CTRL + F type search. Unfortunately, 'CHEW + HUN' turns up nothing. That was to be expected though. The last name Chew is derived from the Chinese character ' _Zhou',_ the literal pronunciation of the word. The Romanized transliteration has several variations, including Chou, Chiau, Chau, Chow, Chou, Chu, Hjou, Joe, Jou, Jue and Jo.

Like everyone else in the family, Hun had studied at the old and prestigious National _Ciao Tung_ University. He was fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Hakka dialects, and knew minimal English. He would have been very aware of this, and could have picked any of the names from the list without having to legally change his name. That made things difficult for Uncle Robert. There were hits with most of the names—twenty-seven in total. And that was just with the variations he could think of.

Of those twenty-seven, fifteen were born in the country. That left twelve. Of the twelve, nine had migrated to the Netherlands between 1947-1952. Expected, as Zhou is one of the ten most common last names in Mainland China. What surprised me was the amount of Chinese migrations—around 900—during the period. According to a 2008 poll, the Netherlands hosts the one of the largest overseas Chinese populations in Europe, with nearly 70, 000.

Three of the nine possibilities were born in 1908, when Hun was born. But none of the birth dates matched. This was when Uncle Robert started to get frustrated. He had made notes on everything in his 'Research Notebook', a worn A5 leather journal with a press-stud that doesn't close properly. It consists of detailed diagrams, hand drawn maps, and flowcharts, which I marveled at, until I remembered he was an engineer. There are lots of crossing out and scribbles and question marks and arrows. But then he realized something.

Traditional Chinese do not follow the Gregorian calendar, but use the Chinese calendar. Ma-ma has one on the side of her fridge, next to the DIY calendar with family photos my mother compiles every year. The paper is so thin you can see the writing behind it. It is a day per page, but there is no room to write your daily activities or children's birthdays. Half the page is taken up by a large number (the Gregorian date), with the month and year in English and Chinese. The bottom half is a table I cannot decipher. Ma-ma explains it shows Chinese day and date of the week, and information on _feng shui_ and astrology.

The Chinese calendar is a year ahead of the Gregorian calendar, incorporating both lunar and solar elements. There are 354 days in a year, instead of 365 days, which changes things. For instance, my birthday is on September 4, but my Chinese birthday is on August 18. Hun's birthday was June 16, and his Chinese birthday was May 2.

There were two men born on May 2, Zhao Hun and Jow Hun. Zhao was born in 1908. Jow was born in 1907. The Chinese calendar is a year earlier than the Gregorian calendar, so either of the men could have been the one we want. Zhao died in 1957, and is buried at _Crooswijk_ , the Rotterdam General Cemetary. There are no other existing records. Jow died in 1963. He had married a Dutch woman, Fina Berg. Dutch law at the time required women marrying across cultures to give up their Dutch citizenship, as cross-cultural marriages were frowned upon. Their children, Arie and Margriet were both born at the Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven, a town two hours away from Rotterdam.

Unfortunately, that's as far as Uncle Robert's research took him. Fina Jow died in 1968. There are no death, marriage or birth announcements related to either of the children following that. He had spent a week in the library by this point. "It's frustrating to think that I may have come so close to finding them," he says, gathering up the papers on the Ikea table. "But then again. There's also the possibility that I was looking for the wrong person."

For all we know, Hun could have changed his name when he got there. He may have moved on after the friend of a friend of a friend saw him. He could have died at sea. He could have died in the Netherlands. There are no photographs of any Huns in the Dutch newspapers, or in our family records. We have no idea what he looked like, apart from Ma-ma's vague descriptions—he looked like my Great-Grandfather, and was about 5' 9", he had dark hair that was short and stood up on the left side, thick eyebrows and dark eyes.

As I help to carefully pack up all his Private Investigator Paperwork, I picture a Chinese man with short hair that stands up on the left side. He is wearing a grey Mao suit—an unlined, cotton tunic jacket with a small collar, five center buttons, and four outer pockets. He steps off the rickety dock. People crowd around, wearing clothes he has been forbidden to wear. The Communist Party had outlawed jeans, coats, ties, jewelry and long hair as symbols of bourgeois lifestyle and wealth. The summer in this new country was a mere 19°C, compared to the 39°C he was used to back home.

I wonder what his first meal was, and how he managed without chopsticks. I wonder how he got from the harbor, Waalhaven, into the town. I wonder what he thought of the trains, and if he missed his bicycle. I wonder if he missed his family, his home, his rose finches and Mongolian larks, and the brother he had shot. I wonder if I have relatives on the other side of the planet I will never know about, because of this one man escaping from his family.

Memoir

FROM THE KUT-KUT

Nicholaos Floratos

They say they moved here in the 1950's. They had grand tales. They talked of the slow sun melting into the lines at the edge of the world, the sound of the sea breathing and collapsing back onto the sand. The story goes that they looked off the Kefalonian shore side and looked for the great big world outside Greece and found a place so far from the Ionian shores that the sand was a different color. The trees were like big claws compared to the isles of orchids and colonnades of arbutus. Australia was a brown land, with red dust and rusty trees and menacing landscapes that stretched on forever in its terrible flatness. My mother knew better than to believe their stories. My grandparents say they come from a country of marble hills; my mother just says they're from Greece. Tales only go so far in Blacktown. They can only replace so much history. The great European wave of immigrants brought my grandparents to Sydney together and together they stayed. My grandmother was loving but utilitarian; my grandfather ancient and stoic like marble. He remembered where he came from. My grandmother talked about it all the time, but it was almost superfluous in her speech, as if it was the color of her hair or the color of her smokey eyes. My grandfather would lose himself in Mediterranean reveries, recalling hills like supple olives and the smell of fresh mornings by the groaning sea.

I'd never thought of myself as Greek. I was reminded of Kefalonia and one half of my blood in fragments: my grandmother's obsession with olives and their slow, powerful oil, and my grandfather hobbling into his field of tomatoes bobbing in the breeze like dark red stars on a sky of vines and orchids. He was always my other. My grandmother spoke English well enough to nag and complain with an utmost efficiency, reminding everyone how fat Stella had become or, in the deepest moments of secrecy, the idea that my Phillipino mother had married her son, my father, in fear of boats and airplanes and visas. My mother's apparent Oriental machinations seemed to chase away the wog my grandmother tried to raise. In some strange, unforgivable way I felt my grandmother's discomfort with my Asian eyes and slinking jet black hair always on my shoulders. She was the world with her rich accent like smooth yoghurt and it was her Mediterranean weight always on me; I thought of myself as Atlas and her the very (albeit, Greek) globe I would never escape.

My grandfather spoke English like a terrible trainwreck, stuttering violently on syllables then jumping off and hitting a wall of letters impassable to the Mediterranean mind, spilling them out like a great tide at the end and finally, his sentence would sound like far off, guttural thunder.

When he did speak his fusion of English and Greek, he flickered between his world of the Kefalonian hills that feared the heels of the Nazis and their steel fences, and my world, where the one thing people my age fear is freedom. I lived a machine; he owned five goats and lost sisters to earthquakes; I went to highschool and spoke of the Nazis in metaphors and crude jokes. I felt God in his world, too. I was baptized as an Orthodox but was never fostered as one. I felt deep shame when they brought me to the ancient church halls of distorted glass mosaics and old wines made sweet by crisp, foreign bread. He had a picture of the Parthenon at which he would point and tell his sons, my uncle and my father, that was where knowledge had come from. He only told this to them and never to me because he knew it was their knowledge as true, olive-skinned Greeks with the constant waff of bitter cheeses and cured meats following them as if the shadow of Greece had searched for them and found them like lost children all the way here in Blacktown. It was all myths and bitter but hidden disconnections for me. Still, as if in concession to our blood, he would buy me books about Jason and Achilles and especially Heracles. He adored the idea of him being our great, great ancestor, as if somehow, Heracles was in the room with us, stitching together our deep silence and creating a mythology that we never had. In the silence, I felt the glittering Ionian sea bury me and in the blue depths I was some Greek god and he was proud and he would smile and there would be no silence between us even beneath the sea.

*

8/4/2007—Orthodox Easter Day

The morning was loud. My father's alarm left a terrible silence at its heels when it stopped, as if it was chasing something and the two had slipped out of sight. It left a hole in the house afterwards. You could tell who had woken first even through the still morning grayness. My mother groaned once and would be done with sound, slipping into her Victoria pink gown and slinking through the clean morning air like dust, seemingly moved by the wind. My father however found it necessary to wake the neighborhood with his deep yawn that danced and twined in the air with his horrible alarm. As he stumbled downstairs the house would eek as if he wore nails on his soles. I took after my mother here as in most things. We would slide through the house as if our feet hovered millimeters above the floor. My father was partially deaf, however, although we forget sometimes, laughing at his ridiculously loud cabinet closing or when he wondered why we were able to hear the TV from outside sometimes. I found the cold creeping around me like a big veil as I slowly unpeeled the blankets. It was completely intolerable at this hour. I thought to myself about sinking into the blankets and becoming part of its huge, wooly ocean and not meaning anything to anyone, except maybe the bedbugs. At least there would silky warmth waiting for me. I lifted myself into the glassy air and felt it slide from me like clear water, the kind you only see on television. I sat body upright and watched the ripeness of the sun freeze onto the wall as if I had caught it doing something sinister. It splayed and danced in panels as the heater pushed the pale fabrics of the blinds back and forth. I finally arose and went to the kitchen. The first floor of the house could have been a meat locker. I couldn't ever remember it being warm, all I can think of is the loveless sheen of tiles shaped like rough, dirty ice. I looked into the fridge and lost my thoughts amongst its whirring. I was looking for food at first but eventually I was just staring. The slow whir squeezed into my head and I forgot it was there for a moment, like air. I felt as if I was looking for stars in the fridge, each scrap and leftover being homogeneous and similar but none being the one I wanted. I closed the fridge and its muddy tune followed like footprints in sand behind me and suddenly I was aware that I had been looking for stars for a very long time.

After eating, my father and I got our church wear together and met my grandparents outside of the house. The distant grey storm clouds were rolling closer, it looked as if it would never stop moving. My grandmother wore all black with her small self-knitted purple jacket sticking to her like skin.

'You should wear those more often.' said my mother, making a motion towards her ears.

My grandmother clasped her ear lobes gently and said 'It's only church. Jewelry, lipstick, God doesn't care if you show up in skatta or dresses, as long as you're there. You know who does care though? Theia Maria. Gossip that woman.'

Their accents paralleled, my mother's oriental pitch like a song bird and my grandmother's gentle but rumbling accent like the seaside. My grandfather chuckled very quietly to himself and briefly smiled, then went blank again as if my mother had turned him to stone.

'Theia who?' my dad said.

'Never mind, let's go.' said my grandmother.

We got in the car and we sat in silence, as if we had all run out of words for each other, or maybe we acknowledged the big walls of language around us all. My father's English was impaired by his disability, my grandmother and my grandfather had been married for years and talked like all Greek old couples do, one Greek word at a time, and me, having nothing to say and feeling spiteful for making me wake up for a religion that didn't fit me.

Watching the Orthodox church get closer from the front seat it looked covered in innumerable ants, skittering in circles and being very loud. If it was one things the Greeks loved, it was noise. We got out of the car and walked towards the church. Each bird took its turn in a procession of deep shrills like thin, clanging metal. In concert, they burned through their sequence and then went quiet as if the ears of the world ate all the sound they made and stomached its terrible, animal syllables. It was however outmatched by rustic accents and the heels of old women dragging pebbles and gossip beneath them. My family immediately found another family to complain with, as they talked about the coming rain and that maybe George was gay or theia Trasulla's recent heart surgery. The other children all gathered and talked too, running around grabbing other kids to join in one by one. They all had lighter skin than me, they all spoke Greek like my family, they all had short hair unlike me. My hair was long and curved to one side, my face, sharper, more oriental than any other person there. I was suddenly aware why my mother never went to gatherings on my father's side. None of the children came and asked me to play.

Memoir

THE IRREPLACEABLE

**Kate Gunn**

I walk up a set of grey and grainy stairs. The hospital is cold and sterile and I can hear my feet squeak on the grey plastic material covering the floor. Before we walk into the doors a sign at the entrance yells 'PLEASE WASH HANDS'. We all do so one at a time, gently rinsing and sterilising our hands at the small sink. My family and I walk through the doors of the ICU and are welcomed by a set of horizontal beds and matching grey curtains.

Walking further in I see my dad sitting by my brother's side, curtain slightly hiding the sight from the entrance. The room is cold and warm at the same time, full of bodies in beds who are all still. I stay for a few hours, sleeping a little, walking around, contemplating everything. I have never felt so strange. My mum and dad will take turns staying the night here for the next five days, making sure Jamie isn't alone. My grandparents will be at home with us everyday, driving us to the hospital and back, while my parents watch over my brother in his hospital bed.

There are some things that are irreplaceable, irreparable to say the least. The methods by which we attempt to rejuvenate can be small, or they can be grandiose. Everyone responds differently to loss. I lost my brother in July 2008, and it's hard to explain the extent of the rupture it left behind, not just with me but with my parents, my sisters, my extended family. We knew it was inevitable, and that the diagnosis of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy would lead to an early death and heart failure. When you are born with a disease that gradually deteriorates all muscle within the body, it is hard not to see that as the conclusion. As much as this has the ability to make you sad, loss can also allow you to interpret life in a way you never thought possible.

I went back to the hospital for the first time in three years today. It was at 3am, the hour Jamie passed away. Outside the hospital the air is cold. There is only one ambulance left facing the road. The rest are gone, out saving people. The windows high in the building are mostly dark—except for a few dimly lit rooms. I revisit the inside of the hospital. The overwhelming smell of disinfectant is no surprise. At the end of hall I see sign for the ICU. It is late, and the doors are closed, but I can see through the glass indent in the door.

The room is mainly empty except for a few nurses walking around. I can see the room where Jamie was, and where I sat by the window. It is empty now. To my left I look at the room where we all sat waiting—where my dad must have slept on his first night here. The light is off but I can see outlines of posters on the wall which are supposed to make you feel okay. There is a Bible on the coffee table. The memory of being in this room comes flooding back to me. I had completely forgotten about it.

I have always had an interest in scientific developments concerning Muscular Dystrophy, and recently there was some news which caught my attention. By increasing levels of 'heat shock protein 72' in the muscles of animal models of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, researchers and scientists have shown improvements in muscle strength of the rats being tested on, and a slightly increased lifespan. This research is being led by Professor Gordon Lynch, head of the Department of Physiology at the University of Melbourne, and being conducted by Dr Stefan Gehrig for his PhD.

When I first read this, a gentle sense of hope came to me. Not only was I glad that there had been a significant step towards a cure, but I was also reminded of how much it would have pleased my brother. When he was in primary school, they were asked to write a list of things they wanted to achieve when they were older. I don't remember the whole list, but I do remember that he wrote that he wanted to be the first man to be cured of Muscular Dystrophy. Although that wasn't possible, I know he would be glad that they were making steps towards a future for boys and girls affected by Muscular Dystrophy. My parents were really pleased.

My father once told me that he and I are deep thinkers. I never admired this quality until I saw Jamie die. It is a strange thing, because you imagine a deep, consuming sadness being your only associate during this time. But it is not. Reality is also your friend. I don't mean a cold version of reality, although there is that too, but rather the realisation that you are alive, that you are real and that life is short, and moments are precious. When you watch someone die—and I am not sure if this is the case for everyone—but life grows bigger within you. The desire to be alive is never stronger. I guess my parents feel somewhat the same. We had our first proper conversation about it this year. I know that they think about my brother everyday, like I do, but I guess it is a hard thing to vocalise without bursting into tears.

Jamie's third day in hospital. It's July and it's raining. There are numerous tubes going into his arms and mouth. A ventilator puffs gently at his side. He is asleep, hardly conscious under the spell of pharmaceuticals. Nurses walk briskly around the ICU, tending to patients in other rooms. I sit in the plastic chair next to his bed. The chair is cold but his hands are still warm. I feel quite redundant, because I want to talk to him so much, and my last conversation with him was a couple of days ago before he went in.

His mouth moves slightly and his eyes open for a few seconds. They are red and glazed. I think he knows I am here, and is awake in some way. One of his fingers strokes mine as I hold his hand. It is comforting to know he is here. I hope he isn't scared. My brother's best friend Luke was just told about Jamie today over the phone, maybe a few hours ago. He arrives with his mum and sister and starts crying.

Jamie was always curious. From a very young age, he always had an innate sense of the world around him. At the age of five, he could name all the planets of our solar system and their surrounding moons. He could tell you almost every classification of dinosaur, and describe in detail how photosynthesis worked. He devoured books, fiction and non-fiction, and computer games and console games. He loved to read about war, he loved biology, he loved learning about these things on his own. Maybe because it was one of the only things he could do on his own, completely, without assistance. I think it gave him a sense of independence from his body, or I would like to think anyway. I never did get around to asking him about it.

My brother has been in hospital for a few days now. My last proper conversation with him was last week. The thought of it makes me feel so fragile; the me then is so different from the me now. As I sit in the courtyard of the hospital, watching people escape and enter the luminous grey building, I can't help but feel temporary. The idea that someone can be talking one week but not the next, that someone can be so easily removed from the world without a moment's notice is becoming a difficult poison to swallow. Is this what they mean by cold harsh reality? The same feeling that a mother greets as her children grow up and move away, the feeling of being on your own regardless of the things that surround you. Existential loss of the self and the beginning of a lifetime of contemplation, perhaps.

I don't think you can ever appreciate someone until they are gone. You appreciate the things they do for you in an immediate sense, but appreciation for their existence comes later. It was a hard thing packing up Jamie's room. All his books and games, his lamp, his computer—these things seemed so lifeless now. The space at his desk where he used to sit in his wheelchair seemed like a void, an empty space marked only by the gentle indent of wheels in the carpet.

We all took things to keep, and the rest went into a large box that now sits in Mum and Dad's cupboard. It is a baffling concept that someone's life can be packed away like that. Their presence still remains despite a lack of physical evidence, and you continue on as though they were still there. Until one day you see a sock that belonged to your brother and you start crying because it reminds you of how his feet used to tap as best they could to the music he used to play. Yes, objects are not so superficial as they are important reminders of people who used to be.

I remember my brother's last day in hospital really well. It was a long day. We had been at the hospital the night before as well, and by the last day, we were all physically and emotionally drained. At one point in the afternoon my parents were told that this was going to be his last day. I understood without having to be told. I remember seeing each one of my family members cry separately. My sister, once she understood what was happening, burst into tears. I remember seeing my dad lift his hand to his face as he looked out the window, crying with the whole force of his body. I didn't see my mum cry, though. She later told me it was because she didn't want Jamie, or any of us, to feel scared.

I think in someone's final moments, you prepare yourself for the worst. The brain builds you up for some kind of heavy emotional action. There is an element of fear, nerves, and an overall gut-wrenching sadness. But I think the worst part is not being able to do anything. All you are able to do is watch, in morbid fascination. I have heard people say that the body loses 21 grams in the moment of death. It is said that this is a soul leaving the body. I am not sure if this is true, but I am sure that something leaves. In that terrifying final breath, the chest pulls itself upwards for the last time, staying there for a moment. As it exhales, the body relaxes itself in the same way a coat becomes loose when it is not being worn. The eyes move a little, and roll upwards, and the whole room becomes quiet. The funeral follows, and your life continues while someone else's has stopped.

Every year 'Hotel California' comes on the radio. It was Jamie's favourite song. It always plays on his birthday. My family and I have developed a tradition on this day—we walk up to the lighthouse and watch the sun rise. I think it's the most exercise any of us get all year, but we make it up there. Ready by 5:30, we pile into two cars, me driving one of them, and head to Palm Beach. To keep myself awake, I switch on the classic hits station, and the song opens. First comes the slow melodic guitar, gently strumming on the precipice of a lyric. I am reminded of nights spent listening to music with my brother in his bedroom, of his 18th birthday when we might have drunk just a little too much, of chasing him around my grandma's garden, of eating Chinese food and watching stupid movies. I am reminded of his whole life. I like to think that whenever it plays, it is my brother telling me that, wherever he is, he is alright and okay—and that I will be too.

Fiction

$2

**Olivia Whenman**

1.

Like, fuck trains. Pieces of shit with vomit seats and fucking hideous carpet. And they smell rank. It's sick. Now I'm stuck on the diarrhoea express because I got my licence suspended. Some dickhead policeman says he saw me speeding. But like he'd fucking know, he was wearing specs, probably can't see for shit. Now I can't drive to see my girl. Yeah, I know. It's fucked, ay?

It is, it's real fucked because afterwards Tia didn't wanna see me anymore. Kept saying I was a tool. She didn't get that sometimes I just gotta drive, ya know? Just gotta rev that engine. Just gotta drive as fast as I can.

Then she said something about there being someone else.

Well, at least I still got my best mate Seth. He told me not to worry about it, 'cause she's just a skank and I can do better. And I thought, yeah, I can do better, but I still love her, ya know?

But man, I'm telling ya, Seth's got it all. Fuck, I wish I was livin' his life. He had a party last night and it was fucking insane. Like I can't even remember what happened. Shit, what was that song playing? Had that ace beat. I think I got it on my phone. Yeah, there it is. Fucking Skrillex is king shit. You hear that shit? You hear it? Yeah, fucking awesome. In class I remember Martina always used to tell me I was dumb. But music's my real education.

School doesn't even really matter, and anyway Martina "Man Eater" Georges was a fucking cow! In 9th grade she told me my hair looked like a bowl. Like my fucking grandma cut my hair and Martina was all like "Jimmy, why'd she cut your hair? It's pretty bad, what is she blind or something?"

And I wanted to punch her in the face because my grandma cut my hair because my brother stuck gum in it when I was sleeping and she had to cut it out. Fucking Mark is such a douche. And Martina went around telling everyone that he put gum in my hair. What a bitch. I legit need a song to celebrate I won't ever see the fugly face of Martina "Man Eater" Georges ever again.

"Hey. Hey! You. Can you turn the music down, mate? Not everyone want's to hear it, yeah? Ok. So can you just turn it off? This is not a place for a party," says some geriatric knob. His fat wrinkled finger pokes me in the arm and points to my phone.

"Yeah, alright, old man. Fuck off. I can do whatever the fuck I want. It's a free country. Maybe if you listened to some tunes like this, ya wife would actually do ya sometime," I say.

Hell yeah, fucking owned him. I'm even gonna turn my music up louder, block out the sound of his gronk voice.

"Yeah, well, mate, you need to turn it down or I'll call the transit police. This is a public place with children. So no one wants to listen to your music. Save it for when you're at home," he says to me and then goes back to talking to some old woman with more wrinkles than a Shar Pei and his two grandkids.

"C'mon, man, ya wanna fight me? Yeah, you wanna fight?" I reply.

Yeah, a fucking face punch should do it. I'm staring at the old fucker but he just keeps talking to the little kid wearing an Iron Man t-shirt, he doesn't even turn his head to look back at me.

"Oh yeah, ignoring me are you, motherfucker?" I tell him.

What a pussy. My music cuts out because my phone starts ringing. It's Seth. Man, he's gonna fucking love this. I answer the phone.

"Yo, man, what's up? You won't believe this fuckwit on the train! Thinks he can tell me what to do," I say.

The old guy still ignores me. I hear Seth breathing down the phone like some fucking serial killer.

I hear the sound of a girl laughing.

"Huh dude, you with a chick or somethin'? You don't have to call me when you're getting it. I've got porn for that shit," I say.

Seth doesn't always call me when he's getting some. I'm not some gaybo. For a while there I thought Seth might've been, but then he dated that Skye chick, so I guess I was wrong. I can still hear his breathing down the phone, but then I hear a voice. I hear fucking Tia's voice coming through my phone and I legit nearly throw my shit across the carriage.

What the actual fuck?

"Oi, Seth! Motherfucker! What the fuck is going on?" I say.

I put my phone on speaker. Tia is giggling. I grit my teeth because this can't be happening. This can't be fucking happening. I hear her whisper, "You're hot you know, I just want to..."

Someone grabs my arm. It's the old man.

"Hey, kid! How many times do I have to tell you? This is public transport. If you can't keep the noise down I'm going to have to get the transit police. My grandkids are on this train, you hear me, and they don't need to hear that, yeah. You got me, boy? The rest of this carriage, they don't need it either. So keep it quiet. This is my last warning," he says.

His hand grips my right bicep tightly and his old blue eyes look at me.

"Paedophile!" I yell.

My phone is still on speaker but now it's quiet.

2.

It's hard to move because I'm crouching in the empty space that's between the carriages so the transit cops don't see me. I bet ya that old fucker called them.

I just need this smoke, I'm fidgeting like a fucking crack head but I need this durrie. I NEED IT. Fuck, where's my lighter? Shit, I think I left it at Seth's. Oh no, wait, it's in my back pocket. Thank fuck. I can't believe this is happening to me.

"Aw shit! Jimmy. Jimmy? Shit! Jimmy, are you there? Fuck do you think he heard anything? Jimmy! Jimmy, are you there?" Seth said.

"Yes, Seth, I'm fucking here," I said.

"Mate just listen..." he said.

I hung up.

So now I'm stuck on this fucking train, smoking this fucking durrie and I get a text message from my fucking ex-best friend Seth, who I don't want to talk to ever again because I'm so fucking devo. I look at the screen of my phone. It's a pic of me and Seth at the Big Day Out last year. I got so drunk that I got kicked out before Kanye came on. I woke up in the city a couple of hours later and had no idea where I was. Seth had to come find me. He was so fucking pissed. I open up his text.

sorry. tia said she was going 2 tell u soon, but she didn't want 2 hurt u. i'v fucked up. i'm sorry.

I can see the train tracks going past underneath my feet through the floor. This is too fucking much. I want to throw up. Fucking Tia. Fucking Seth. I hope they die. I hear talking on the other side of the door. I look up just as some transit cops make their way towards me. The old guy is behind them pointing at me and saying something. I decide to do a runner. The transit cops with their fucking beer guts struggle to fit through the door. I keep running and jump down the stairs. I land awkwardly on this fucking hideous ranga and some girl who screams. Where have I seen her before? Man, it's fucking Martina.

The cops make it down the stairs finally. The one with the beard looks like he's gonna pass out. His face is already red. This is too fucking good.

"Oi, you! Stop," says the bearded cop as he points to me.

Everyone's looking at me but I don't give a shit.

"Nup," I say as I turn and run.

3.

A few carriages later and the cops are long gone. Fucking fatties. I take a seat at the front of the carriage to catch my breath, smoking is killin' me. I hear the transit cops come into the carriage. Fuck it. I can't run anymore.

The transit cops run through the carriage. The ground shakes like a fucking earthquake. They run right past me. Wait, what? They don't even fucking realise I'm sitting right there waiting for them! This is gold.

I guess I better get off at the next stop, those fuckers don't deserve to get me now. But fuck, they've probably got people waiting for me on the platform. What the fuck am I going to do? The sign in front of me says: "Alarm signal. In case of emergency PUSH BUTTON. Penalty for improper use $20."

I get my keys out of my pocket and pull the alarm as we jerk into the station. I do a runner out the door onto the platform and watch as all the transit cops scatter onto the train, looking for the emergency.

I hope they find that $2 I left them. I thought $20 was a little steep. I'm a fucking genius, ay?

Fiction

WHERE SHE HAD BEEN

S. K. Riley

A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse,

A difficult path is this—poets declare!

—Katha Upanishad III, 14.

I started travelling early in life on my magenta Javelin bike, mostly to avoid the shouting at home. Before I knew how to ride it I'd coast along with my weight balanced on one pedal, digging the other bare foot into the dust to get up a bit of speed. These were the reconnaissance missions of a small child, scouring the edges of that hot Queensland town, curious to know if such a thing existed as a quiet safe life, somewhere out there. Or was the whole wide world and the future it promised full of hiding under tables during roaring bloody fistfights with dishes crashing all around and crumbly tumbly dreams?

My young siblings and I, seven at last count, lived amongst the sodden wreckage of our parents' marriage in a dark humid house on stilts, patrolled by the ghosts of secret shame through cockroach-crawling nights. Kids crying, cat hair flying, stiletto missiles in the air, pots or a parent thrown down stairs, mangoes pelting on a hot tin roof and cyclone-season floods. We lived in a constant state of emergency in a loud and dangerous world, but no help ever came.

The neighbours we knew in that combustible town all lived in familiar domestic uproar. Handsome descendants of sugar cane cutters hurled loud Italian curses and well-designed furniture through open windows on insect-teaming nights. Steamy family rivalries, ignited by the long fierce days of heat, triggered ancient blood feuds, inbred vendetti, to erupt like Vesuvius up and down our street.

My secret discovery on those long bike rides, past silent cottages crouched at the edge of whispering fields of sweet-smelling cane, and wood slat shacks in scrubby paddocks dotted with fly-blown cattle, rhythmically flicking their tails in the shimmering heat, was that other parts of the world seemed relatively peaceful.

This revelation ignited my love for wide open spaces. I decided that if I could survive, I'd grow up and become an explorer of distant lands, as far away as possible from the hostilities at home. By the age of four I'd vowed to escape to Africa. And I did, much later, after dropping out of Law school. What I'd witnessed as a child did not endear me to a profession based on constant bickering, stuffed with notable bullies. I sold what little I owned and joined a band of young adventurers to travel the Dark Continent from north to south in a big old Bedford truck. Africa was everything that four year old girl had dreamed of, and more.

Before that, I'd hitch-hiked around Australia with my little best teenage friend, our backpacks so huge we could barely lift them. She wore John Lennon glasses, I wore a fluffy red jacket, and we both had long long hair. We had no money, but lived large and free on tomato sandwiches and cups of tea in the truck stops and communes we found along the way. We mooched rides from big rigs up thousands of miles of straight dirt track corrugating the heart of the desert, fine red dust swirling into silken clouds in our wake. We'd lie on our backs to look up at a billion stars in the middle of nowhere in the vast outback, safe and happy at last. It was better to be lost and free in that infinite Dreamtime wilderness than living like hostages in a bad old dream, back where we'd come from.

My friend was strong and brave then, and we both knew how to survive. She'd escaped a cruel religious upbringing in a household squirming with at least ten kids. I'd come through the horrors of desperate Children's Homes and iron-barred boarding schools where god-fearing folk were paid by the hour to break the spirits of the very young. Other street kids we knew weren't so lucky, what with all the drug overdoses and suicides that were going around at the time. I don't know why her gentle spirit was taken so young, along with so many others.

When we'd circled the continent back to the East Coast and run out of fresh roads to explore, my friend began to sob, and she sobbed and sobbed for days. I stayed on in the warm Queensland sun. She hitched back alone to a bleak Sydney winter, where, heartbroken, she took up heroin. _I bathe the rubble sunshine from my eyes_... she explained in a post card. She never did tell me what she was running from, and I never asked. We both knew the weight of other people's secrets. I survived, newly born from a near-death experience. She died by inches, suffocating slowly in her pain.

The last time I saw her, she was back in her grim family home, riddled with cancer, waiting to die. This came without mercy, after she'd beaten her addiction to earn her degree and start a new life. When I hugged her to leave, I felt the feeble life force in her sucking at mine. A great fountain of energy passed from my body into hers, leaving me spinning and dehydrated for days. She told me then that this was the last time I'd see her alive. But she was smiling when she said it, already moving into the light, returning to the Dreamtime stars, forever. And she was right.

I hoped that the energy her body took from mine that day was enough to help her die with dignity, there in her parents' house. Her journey was over at last, but I travelled on with a wide open space where she had been.

Fiction

HELIKE

**Claire Catacouzinos**

The gods are amaranthine, and so is their wrath. They are the controllers and doers of the land, they know their place, and the mortals know theirs. They decide when to thread life with a needle through their canvas, when to place a stitch here and another over there, when to sew across or diagonally or down to the depths of Hades. Perhaps another coloured thread will be interwoven, just to test the mortal's piety? And if a stitch is removed from the canvas, a place vanishes from history, lives are taken away. The canvas shall be restitched, in time, when the gods decide to do so. For they are the controllers and doers of the land, they know their place, and the mortals know theirs.

The Gulf of Corinth 373 B.C.E.

In the month of _Anathesterion_ , Alethea the daughter of Mikkos of Helike is spinning her wool in her family's marble house when the floor beneath her bare feet begins to shake. He has come back, she thinks, moving in rhythm with the quaking earth. Her body is tossed against the mud brick wall and falls to the unsteady floor. She presses her ear against the wall, feeling the vibration of the earth ringing in her ears. Why is Poseidon angry? She hears her stool tapping against the floor. The chimes hanging in the room jingle together as the storage jars shimmy across the room. She forces herself to stand, to do something, anything! Her sister is screaming in the opposite room. She hears the outcries of Helikeans outside; children crying for their mother's protective arms, animal's footsteps are clapping against the cobblestone pathways, fathers hollering for their families to get inside their houses. Is it safer inside or outside? The earth shakes. Alethea waits for a moment, her body still against the wall, then it stops. Poseidon's anger has abated.

'Alethea!' she hears her sister weep. She pushes herself from the wall and runs to locate Adelphia. She finds her amongst the pallid blankets in the corner of her room.

'Are you alright?' she asks.

Adelphia's curly brown hair is tangled like vineyards, her complexion that of a terrified child. 'Why is Poseidon Helikonios angry?'

Alethea grabs hold of her sister's hand and helps her up, still hearing the screams of the citizens. 'Perhaps the city has unwittingly been impious to him?' For she knows she has been for many years.

'Father is at his workshop, do you think he is alright?'

'If the gods have willed it,' Alethea says.

She hears a hoarse voice outside her window and clasps her sister's hand. She moves towards it. A tall, white-bearded man is talking to a clan of Helikeans, where more, one by one, approach to hear him speak. 'My good citizens of Helike. There will be a meeting tonight in the market place to discuss this matter. I advise all of you to be there.'

Alethea turns away from the window. She looks at Adelphia, thinking over the past years of how they have been deprived of their mother. She knows Poseidon has not been angry with her city since the day he drowned her mother at sea. They had been returning from a visit to the Oracle of Delphi, across the Corinthian Gulf. She remembers that it had been the annual festival of the Theophania, celebrating the return of Apollo from his winter quarters in Thrace. She had been twelve at the time when the turbulent waves of Poseidon had rocked the boat. Little by little each wave grew, becoming stronger and stronger until they had risen over the surface of the boat and crashed down onto the deck, taking many helpless victims. Had Poseidon been angry with them for paying homage to a god who was not their patron? Is that why he had killed her mother? Is this why he is striking again? She knows that the only gods she prays to are Hera and Zeus, ever since she became betrothed to Elpidios. Is the quake her fault? She takes her sister's hand and squeezes it; they look at each other and Alethea knows she has to do anything to keep her sister safe.

*

That night, under the lunar light, Alethea and her sister arrive in the market place, joining the crowded Helikeans. They surround the area like fire flies, holding their torches. They have not heard from their father the whole day. Perhaps there was an accident during his travels to Aigion to deliver his new crafts?

Alethea feels her sister holding her hand tightly, just like she did that awful night when their mother was swept away. She turns her attention to the white-bearded man—a magistrate of the committee for the safety of their city-state. He is standing on a stool in front of the Temple of Poseidon Helikonios, 'My fellow citizens,' he begins, 'the quake is over. Poseidon has relinquished his wrath on us. But we shall sacrifice a bull to him tonight. We shall soothe his anger.'

A tirade breaks out amongst the Helikeans.

'Why is he furious with us?' they ask. Some are blaming the politicians for their corrupt ways; other citizens are frantic, holding their children closer to them, their eyes fixated on the magistrate.

While Alethea watches, she can feel her fear of Poseidon rising. Deep down she is sure she knows what he is up to. She hears her betrothed speaking her name. She lets go of her sister's hand and embraces Elpidios. Her arms wrap around him like Penelope did when she hugged her Odysseus for the first time in twenty years. The warmth of Elpidios' skin calms Alethea's thoughts.

'Where have you been?' she asks.

'I was fishing in the gulf when the waves started tossing our boat. We capsized and had to swim to shore.'

'Thank Hera you are alright.'

' _Agapi mou_ , of course I am alright, it would take all the gods to tear me from your side.'

Alethea refuses to ponder the matter, for she knows, if the gods willed it, they could kill anyone. She kisses Elpidios as he wraps an arm around her and she leans into the curve of his chest and shoulder.

She can hear the Helikeans still shouting at the magistrate when he announces, 'I have with me the Priestess of Poseidon Helikonios, our dear Elpis. She will save us by slitting the throat of the sacrificial bull.'

Alethea watches as Elpidios' sister, wearing her white shawl, holds the dagger to the thrusting bull's neck and begins her prayer. 'Patron god of our city, Poseidon Helikonios, Shaker of the Earth, I humbly succumb to your presence and will, to accept this sacrifice as homage from your people.' The crimson blood from the bull is purged and gushes forth upon the marble altar, and slowly drips down on the cobblestone. 'For now, we hope he will give us another day for his Panionia festival tomorrow, so we may be pardoned for our misdoings.'

*

At midnight, the god Morpheus enters Alethea's dreams. His presence awakens her deep thoughts on Poseidon. The spirits of Morpheus' _Oneiroi_ envision dark roaring waves and high-pitched screams of civilians running inland. Animals are stampeding amongst humans, squashing those in the way like insects. Alethea finds herself amongst the waves, drowning in the ocean. Help me, help me father, Adelphia, help! Elpidios, where are you? She thinks. Her eyes are stinging as she tastes the bitterness of salt on her tongue, her nose inhaling the waves, suffocating her. Why does Poseidon hate her? He reveals himself, his white mane covering his squared face, the sharp ends of his golden trident pointing towards her, condemning her. His cerulean eyes are fixated on her, mouthing words to her, words that never enter her ears, the sea water has already deafened them. And all she can think is, You, you who are the saviour of our city, you the god of the sea, the earthquakes, the rivers, the floods, the droughts, how could you? You, you who are the Patron of our city, Poseidon Helikonios, oh why? What have I ever done to you?

She awakes from heat, sweat and dried tears. She looks over at her sister sleeping beside her. Their father did not return that night. She turns her head and looks at the starry night sky through her window. Help me, Hera, oh help me, she thinks. She feels the heat and notices her blankets are lying on the floor. Is it not winter? Why is it so hot?

*

The next evening Alethea finds Elpidios upon his fishing boat alone. The sun rays of Helios lighten his dark skin and his obsidian hair. She watches as he packs his belongings from the boat onto the deck.

She approaches him wearing a thin shawl. Her hand fans the heat away from her face. 'I thought I might find you here.'

He looks up from what he is doing and their eyes meet. 'I thought you would be preparing for the festival tonight?' He places his hand upon his brow to block Helios' rays, his eyes squinting.

'My father has not returned home since yesterday. I fear he has left my sister and I, the coward within him is too scared to return to Helike.'

'Why would you say such things?'

'He knows from the earthquake that Poseidon's rage will be thunderous soon. Yesterday was only the beginning.'

'Alethea, you know my sister would have spoken to me if she knew Poseidon was going to punish us.'

'Have you not heard the cries since yesterday? Something happened a few nights ago when the Akhaean League formed an agreement. There is gossip in the street that Poseidon will strike again tonight.'

'You should not fill your head with discontent, Alethea. We have appeased Poseidon with our sacrifice and today we shall rejoice in celebration of him.'

'We ought to leave before he strikes again. We must travel inland.'

He lifts himself out from the boat and clasps her hand. 'You should not be scared of him. Can you not see he has blessed me today with all these fish?'

Alethea's eyes look upon the carcasses stacked in a net on the boat. Their scales silver, their black beady eyes looking up to the heavens. 'I cannot stay. I have already sent Adelphia inland to Tritaia. Many people are leaving the city today.'

'Are you going to leave me?' he asks, wiping his hands on his tunic. Alethea smells the odour of fish, and breathes in the scent, remembering all the times she has been fishing with him. How he catches a bundle, kisses each of them, and thanks Poseidon for the blessing. Out in the ocean, this is where he had kissed her for the first time. On their patron god's territory, when she was only fourteen years old, the same ocean that killed her mother. Why is Poseidon doing this now? she thinks.

'You need to come with me. I want you to leave with me.'

'I cannot go,' he says.

'Can you not see the animals are fleeing? Even they know Poseidon will release his rage soon.'

'My sister is the priestess, you are defying our patron.'

'Then why have the wells risen? The air soaring with heat when it is winter? The fate of our city is in turmoil...Elpidios, _please_?'

'No, Alethea, I am to stay here in the city with my family. I have an obligation to them. If I leave them I will lose my honour.'

'There will be no honour once Poseidon has had his way.'

'You do not know if he is to cause any misfortune. Elpis said Poseidon had sent us a message yesterday to strengthen our piety for the festival today.'

Alethea closes her eyes, and takes in a long breath of the salty air. She could go and leave him here. He could suffer the wrath of Poseidon if he wanted. She could find a new partner, marry a different man. And yet, all she wants is to be the mother of his children. She wants to be with him.

' _Agapi mou_ , you are being suspicious because of your mother. Please stay for the festival tonight?'

She did not know what she was doing. A part of her wanted to run to the hills, to jump onto a cart and ride to Tritaia, further and further away from Helike. And yet the other half of her yearned for Elpidios, for him to stay with her. Perhaps Poseidon would not strike tonight. Perhaps tonight, the festival _would_ soothe his rage, and they would be left for another night.

*

The festival that night is triumphant; the athletics start with men and boys competing against each other in honour of Poseidon. At dinner time, four fat bulls are sacrificed by the Priestess during the procession. Libations of silky milk, red wine and honey are poured in honour of Poseidon Helikonios. The Priestess performs her fluid dance, choirs of boys and girls sing in praise. And to Alethea's shock, there has not been another tremor. It is not until midway through the next pouring of libations and dancing that the ground begins to shake.

She jumps from her seat, grabs Elpidios' hand, and runs away from the festival, her body shaking and moving with the rhythm of the earth. She can hear people screaming, panicking—run, run for your lives! Have mercy on us! What are we to do! Keep running! She hears thunder above her head. _He_ has awakened. She keeps running. She needs to find safety.

'Alethea, wait!' Elpidios shouts, catching his breath. But she cannot, she is terrified, her heart pounding in her chest like her fists banging on dough. Her eyes watch the buildings around her shake; some are swaying side to side, and others she can see are forming cracks. She keeps running, with him behind her. She runs, and runs, and runs all the way outside of the market place, pacing through the cracking buildings and animals thrashing from their chains.

She hears outcries.

'Help me!'

'Where is my mother?'

'Where is my father?'

'Oh Zeus help us! Where are my children?'

And then. It stops. And so does she. She bends down, and inhales a long breath of air. Oh help me Hera, she thinks. That's when she turns around and sees Elpidios is still there. Scared like her. But her eyes look above him. She sees a huge wave. It is rising up, up, up towards the sky, as when she had lost her mother.

She cries, 'Oh Hera! Please, help us!' She tilts her head up, watching the wave; it just keeps on rising, _it just keeps on rising._ 'He's got us, he's got us!'

Until, in a sudden moment, as she holds her breath, it hits its peak...and then, like the speed of Zeus' lightning bolt, it rushes towards the city of Helike.

Elpidios grabs her. He clutches her as he whispers in her ear, " _Signomi agapi mou, s'agapo._ "

The tidal wave crashes down upon them. For the gods are the controllers and doers of the land, they know their place, and the mortals know theirs.

_[For] you will remember, for we in our youth did [many] things, yes many beautiful things._ _Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time._

—Sappho of Lesvos, Fragments 24A & 147

Glossary

_Anathesterion_ February/March

_Agapi mou_ My love

_Oneiroi_ Dark-winged spirits of dreams

_Signomi agapi mou, s'agapo_ I'm sorry my love, I love you

Fiction

EXTRACT FROM A NOVEL

**Carri Fisher**

_I arrived today. The 18_ th _of October._

_They said to write everything down. Writing it down will help to trace patterns in my mood._ _If I can know when, then one day I might be able to figure out_ why _._

My parents left. They didn't offer to wait while I settled and I didn't ask them to. I don't know whether to be angry with them for leaving me here or guilty they had to bring me in the first place.

I was taken to the nurse's station. They took my photo, my blood pressure, my heart rate. They weighed me.

A nurse took me to my room.

She emptied my bag. Took my cords, my medication and my bag strap.

I was wearing a belt but she didn't know about that. It was a small victory.

' _Blades, scissors, perfume or mouthwash?'_

' _No.'_

She left.

I scanned the room for potential ways to suicide. I don't intend to do it but they claim the clinic is suicide safe. I felt compelled to test the theory.

Curtain Rails—magnetic

Wardrobe Bar—clip on

Mirrors—shatter proof

Electrical wires, chair legs, bed sheets—there will always be a way.

My room is fine. It's like any other hospital but there's carpet and a sliding door to the garden outside.

I closed all the curtains and lay on the bed.

I didn't leave except at meal times and for medication.

Lunch was good. Dinner was not.

I didn't make friends the first day.

*

Addison could see him through the window. Skinny jeans, grey t-shirt, and that unkempt sandy blonde hair she had never been attracted to. She couldn't quite remember how they ended up together in the first place.

He must have been persistent.

Addy blew the fringe from her eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed through the door.

He looked up at her. A rush of anxiety flooded her insides. Addy realised this was going to be harder than she anticipated. She proceeded straight to the counter.

'I'll have a flat white to go.'

As the words came out Addy felt her stomach drop. She hated acting this way but seeing Dan tore away her rationality and she couldn't control herself. She could feel his eyes and his anger on her but she couldn't look at him.

'To go?' Dan stood from his chair. 'I thought we were having lunch.'

Somehow in the anxiety-fuelled struggle between body and mind she had become committed.

'I have to work, Dan. Make whatever it is we're doing here quick.'

The barrister gestured towards Addy's takeaway cup sitting on the counter. Neither of them seemed to notice.

'Can we please just sit down and talk about this?'

Addy looked past him, her eyes fixed on two middle-aged women still in their workout gear after a busy day of dropping the kids at school and meeting for coffee. They had paused their scandalous gossip about which housewife was getting intimate with Pablo the personal trainer just long enough to impart a disapproving glare.

Dan grabbed Addy's arm, startling her back to reality.

She managed to look at him only to see that familiar pain in his eyes. Not just pain, but literal tears. She found his weakness infuriating. Tears were more than Addy could tolerate.

'I'm not doing this again.'

*

Wake up.

Then medication. Then breakfast.

I've decided to drink only water. It's filling so I don't need to eat. Also, the juices aren't labelled and that gives me anxiety.

I can never remember what has happened each day, or the day before. Everything is so monotonous it all melds into one.

I like it, though. It's safe. I never want to leave.

Doctor Miller. He's overweight and underwhelming. Pants are too loose, shirts are too tight. Blue and white striped. Always.

I don't understand why he sees me in my room. It makes me uncomfortable.

' _Can you tell me more about your family?'_

_I despise this question. Every psychiatrist on the planet has that 19_ th _century_ _mother-blaming approach to therapy. However many years at med-school and somehow the psych curriculum didn't get past Freud._

' _Can you be more specific?'_

' _How's your relationship with your parents?'_

' _Not good.'_

' _Why's that?'_

' _If I could answer that, I probably wouldn't be here.'_

Why are my parents paying this dunce a fortune an hour to blame them for my problems? Especially when I do it so well for free.

' _Well... why are you here?'_

I pulled my sleeves down over my hands. I could see myself standing on the edge of the rocks. My face. His face. The blood soaking through my mattress. The screaming. The crying. The hospital. My mum.

' _I don't know.'_

*

It was an otherwise ordinary day at work, but Addy arrived home still wired with irritation after seeing Dan. She had been living in their apartment alone for several weeks, demanding that she endure her mental breakdown in solitude. Addy lay herself down on the couch, the same way she encouraged her patients to during their sessions.

So Addy, what seems to be the problem?

Oh, I don't know... maybe that I'm an self-destructive, uninhibited, colossal mess who spends day after day giving advice to other people about how to fix their lives and night after night talking to myself on the couch because I can't fix my own.

Her therapist subconscious had no response on the matter.

She slammed her hands down on the couch and pulled her knees to her chest. Her phone was vibrating on the coffee table. She fought the urge to throw it across the room, mentally preparing for another sickly melodramatic plea. She reached for the phone but it was not Dan' s name flashing across the screen.

'Mitch, what's up?'

'Oh, hey, you. Thought we could both use a bit of fun. You busy tonight?'

Several hours later, when Addy was dressed, ready, and beginning to doubt her decision, Mitch rolled up in his blue Mini Cooper. She remembered her relentless teasing when he received it as a gift for his 18th birthday. He didn't care. It suited him. Addy couldn't stop looking at him. It had been over a year but Mitch hadn't changed a bit. He seemed excited to see her.

'You ready to go?'

She reached over and brushed his fringe to the side. 'Rock star. Now we can go.'

Mitch rolled his eyes. 'You're cute when you pretend to understand hair.'

*

It's dark and I'm running. The Nazis are coming and I have nowhere to go. My home is no longer safe. Somehow I'm in a shopping centre. The walls are crumbling. I think to myself, if I can just make it to my parents' house I'll be safe. They have something to offer. They have a reason to be spared. But when I finally get there, they won't have me. They tell me it's too dangerous for them to hide me and that I need to find somewhere else to stay.

I was brushed off with no other response than to caution me against going to bed anxious:

' _Everyone has bad dreams.'_

I wanted to explain that it wasn't just this one. That I have these dreams all night every night. That I remember them all -probably because they're so terrifying. Sometimes they feel more like bad thoughts I can't control. They're so vivid. I am asleep for hours, but I wake up exhausted.

I can't decide how I feel about being here. Or if it's even worth my while to get better. As long as I'm here they can't tell me I'm making it all up. As long as I'm here they have to care about me. I don't want that to go away.

Lisa told us she had been drugged and raped. Nicole said she had been raped when she was younger. Including Leon that's three people in here that I know of so far.

I wish I had a better excuse to be the way I am.

*

Addy woke up the next morning on the right side of the wrong bed. She could hear Mitch already in the shower. The night replayed in her head. She had been intoxicated, more with the magnificent haze of music and lights and freedom than with the alcohol. She remembered the conversation that started it all.

'You know what's crazy?'

'You?'

'I don't think we've ever been single at the same time.'

'So you're single now?'

'I don't know.'

She remembered dancing close, flushing as his palms brushed over her waist. She remembered his smile. That boyish smile she found so irresistibly sexy. He grabbed her, pulling her close. She remembered his lips against hers and the brief moment when she began to feel anxious. She had closed her eyes, the drum of the bass drowning out her heartbeat. She remembered the rush as he pushed her up against the wall, hands above her head, his fingers shackles wrapped tight around her wrists.

'Should we get out of here?'

_YES. Yes. A thousand times yes._ 'Yeah, okay.'

She remembered it felt good. It was just the release she needed. The kind of release that can only come from years of mounting sexual tension.

'So, what did you get up to last night?'

Mitch was out the shower.

Addy blushed.

She felt guilty. He felt nothing.

Fiction

THE BRAZEN TRUTH OF MRS CLAUS

**Kyra Geddes**

What is truth? What is myth? What is real? What is fantasy? If we imagine something to be true, does that make it so?

If I dare to tell you my story and you no longer believe the myth of my life, will I cease to exist?

Will I be free?

As I gaze out the window of my small, timber cottage, surrounded by sea and painted a bright yellow to beckon the sun, I smile to see Rudolph enjoying the last days of summer before the darkness returns. Reindeer like the cold; they are born to it, of course. But like us, their souls respond to the warmth of the sun's rays. He turns away from the leaves he has been eating, lifting his head to the sun and sniffing the scents that travel on the wind. A bee lands on his nose and he snorts, shaking his head to throw it off before quickly scampering away.

My eyes follow him as he pauses at the water's edge before stepping purposefully into the sea and breaking into a graceful swimming motion. "Rudolph,"` I call, out of habit, "not too far now." Though he cannot have heard me through the glass from this distance, he glances back at the cottage, accustomed to my warning.

Turning slightly, I catch sight of my reflection in the window. I am nearly forty now, but small and still petite, as everyone is in my family. My long dark hair, plaited religiously each day by my _Ayah_ when I was a girl, then by me during my boarding school days, has been cut short since my twenties and points wherever it wishes in uneven spikes. My dark skin, another reminder that I do not belong in this far northern land, is smooth and not yet lined. Only the unexpected sight of a collection of tattoos on my arms, souvenirs from the northern seaports I travelled to in those first few years after university, reveal some of my life's history.

You may be shocked to learn that 'Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer' is real, more than just a fantasy we tell our children. Or, if you are one of those adults who has never left childhood behind, you may be equally shocked to hear that he is not with the other reindeer anymore, no longer guiding Santa's sleigh as he makes his Christmas deliveries around the world each year.

Rudolph is real, as real as you or I. He lives here with me now, on our little island in the Stockholm Archipelago, 972 square metres all of our own. Despite what you may think, this remote island is not a place of exile, rather a place of refuge. It was in my former home, the North Pole, in which I truly felt exiled.

When I left Nikolaus—Santa Claus, as you know him—a few years ago, I longed at first to return to the tropical warmth of my homeland, Sri Lanka; the veritable jewel of the Indian Ocean, a place where winter never comes and where I thought the sun could dry out my sorrow and allow my heart to thaw. I knew, though, that Rudolph could never survive its warm climate. Stockholm was the furthest south that I felt I could bring him to live. The journey here was arduous enough, a bewildering blur of snow, train tracks, icebreakers and stowage, ending in the motorised dinghy that the previous house owners had left for me on the mainland.

As you too may come to learn, leaving a fantasy behind is difficult.

So, yes, Rudolph is real, that much you can rely on, but, beyond that fact, truth and fiction merge unrecognisably and you will have to draw your own conclusions.

I met Nikolaus more than ten years ago, some time after my university studies in England and during my years of bohemian travel. I was working in the Ratskeller, the basement bar of the renowned Bremer Rathaus, the town hall of Bremen, in Germany. It was late, very late, on Christmas Eve, and Nikolaus was on his way home from the Christmas toy deliveries, weary and in need of a drink, as he always is. The affair meant little to either of us but two months later I discovered I was pregnant. When I think back to what we must have seen in each other that night, I suspect we were both drawn to the exotic; he to my unlikely combination of dark skin, perfect Oxford English, tattoos and punk-like hairstyle. For my part, I admit I was attracted to the fantasy, to this man who, over countless rounds of schnapps, insisted he was Santa Claus. "Why not?" I thought.

Leaving the bar together at the end of my shift, he asked my name.

"Eve?" he pronounced. "Like Christmas Eve, or like the wife of Adam?"

"No," I corrected. "Evelyn, it's always Evelyn, as in my mother's name."

"I think I will call you Eve," he slurred, as we climbed up the narrow stairs to my shabby apartment nearby.

I stayed in Bremen, naming my baby 'Roland', after the famous statue, the protector of the city. Only after he was born did I write to my parents, who came to Germany immediately.

"Evelyn," my mother cried, shivering in the cold room as she disappeared further into her coat, "I don't know whether to be more shocked by this baby or by the tattoos with which you have disfigured yourself. I have always looked forward to a grandson but now I can hardly recognise you as the good daughter we raised you to be." Pursing her lips, she glanced at my father, who added his part:

"After your mother studied at Oxford, she never felt the need to keep travelling without purpose, as you do, or to rebel against her parents. She came straight home to Ceylon and taught at the school until we were married."

Perhaps to both their relief, I refused to return to Sri Lanka, to live with my parents on the tea plantation, but accepted their monetary support as my son's due. When Roland was almost a year old, I wrote to Nikolaus to tell him of the baby. "Please come," was all that he replied. This simple plea, in contrast to the guilt-laden appeals of my parents, moved my heart, and I packed our things, wondering what one should bring to live in the North Pole.

Mere days later, coinciding with the September equinox, we celebrated Roland's first birthday together—mother, father, child—seated around a small wooden table with mismatched chairs, while outside the cabin the sun set for the last time in six months and we entered the winter world of perpetual night-time.

Are you curious about Nikolaus? About your Santa Claus? You will be pleased to learn that, unlike me, Nikolaus quite resembles his mythical image. He is tall, solidly built, with strong arms and a great barrel of a chest, well-suited to lifting the heavy toy sacks onto the sleigh, but that I have never seen rise or fall with the _ho ho_ kind of laughter you might have wished for. No longer a young man, but perhaps grey before his time, he wears his hair long, and needs glasses for fine work, though his vanity dictates he wears them as little as possible. His face, with fair skin made red through exposure to the punitive Arctic climate and excessive drinking, is covered by a great beard and moustache that Roland used to delight in pulling.

When Roland was two years old, old enough for more than just picture books, Nikolaus presented him with the little Golden Book edition of _Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer_. I laughed to read the story of this reindeer, whose glowing red nose was first seen as a cause for ridicule, a kind of ugly disability, before Santa recognised its true worth and appointed Rudolph head of the reindeer.

The real story is quite different from this Christmas version. It was I, not Nikolaus, who first found Rudolph, stumbling upon him one dark day during one of my long walks not long after I first came to live with Nikolaus. Lying on his side, partially hidden by some low shrubbery, it was evident that he was young, perhaps not long weaned, with just the rudimentary antlers of a juvenile reindeer. He was weak, clearly feverish and near death, so weak that he allowed me to come closer to examine him. I saw that his nose was a deep, painful crimson, swollen and oozing puss. He must have scraped it on something, or been stung by one of our huge Arctic Bumblebees, before it festered, causing infection to spread through his body. Unlike in the book, Rudolph's nose did not glow like some other-worldly light globe, but throbbed, red and sore, from the poison that lay within.

Needing help to move him, I scrambled back through the tundra to the workshop, relying on the torch to light my way through the darkness and keeping my head low to ward off the brunt of the wind that whistled past my ears. Dragging Nikolaus from his work to return with me to the clearing where Rudolph lay, he eyed the young bull unsympathetically.

"What do you want with this animal, Eve? Can't you see he is almost dead?"

His hand tightened on his rifle, but I brushed it away.

"It's not right, Nikolaus," I reproached, "we can't just leave him here. He deserves a second chance." I paused. "He reminds me of the deer I used to see in Sri Lanka as a child."

Shaking his head as he lifted the reindeer onto the pulka, normally reserved for bringing provisions back to the cabin, he muttered, "No one gets a second chance, you know, no matter what you think."

Ignoring these dark warnings, and with grudging help from Nikolaus, I dragged the pulka back to the cabin, stepping cautiously to avoid slipping on the icy ground, and avoiding the few muddy patches of marsh that remained from summer. I made a bed for him in the barn and dressed his wound with antibiotic powder, then administered a tonic, mixing it with sugar water, and feeding it to him each morning and night in a baby bottle. Using the combination of homeopathic remedies and western medicine I had observed during my time in Germany, I slowly nursed the young deer back to health, naming him Rudolph.

Every morning and evening, either side of Roland's long lunchtime nap, he and I would go together to check on Rudolph in the barn, each time gaining a little more of the animal's trust. It was only a week or two later when they both stood up uncertainly and took faltering steps towards the other; for Rudolph, the first since his illness, and for Roland, his first steps ever. I smiled widely, clapping my hands together, and raced to the workshop so Nikolaus could share in their achievements. Striding past Rudolph, he went directly to Roland, saying nothing, but clutching the boy to his chest while a few errant tears escaped from below the rim of his glasses.

Some days after this, when Rudolph was fully recovered, Nikolaus and I debated the question of what to do with him.

"You can't just let him go, Eve. You have spoiled him for the wild. He will stand no chance against an older bull or one of the Sami." He stared directly into my eyes, "He will be killed for meat and hide. It would be kinder just to let me do it."

I conceded that Rudolph was now too tame to fend for himself and, while I wanted to keep him purely as a pet, I knew our supplies were scarce enough that we could not justify such a luxury.

"What if you were to use him to pull the sleigh?" I implored, seeking compromise.

He exhaled deeply. "He is too young, he is not as strong as the other reindeer. It is a long journey, you know."

These practical concerns of Nikolaus were no match for my continued supplications and Roland's large, dark eyes, bordered by long lashes, which gazed beseechingly at his father. And that is how Rudolph actually came to be tethered to the sleigh that first Christmas Eve.

While Rudolph's antlers were still very small, the other reindeer—all much older bulls—had already dropped their antlers by that time in December, automatically placing Rudolph at the top of the pecking order. It was this fact of nature and not his legendary glowing, red nose that gave him the honoured position at the front of the team. Though I proudly waved goodbye to Rudolph as he lead this fantastical procession through the air, flying through the night skies that Christmas, and for the next four years, I later came to question my insistence with Nikolaus and now regret my own complicity in creating the myth of Rudolph.

Rudolph knows nothing of this and bears me no resentment. Instead, he has never forgotten that it was I who restored him to life and has treated me as his mother ever since. Outside the window, I watch my baby play, tossing the small toy elephant in his mouth, a one-time favourite of Roland's, before something grips my chest and the familiar pain spreads through my limbs.

That first Christmas, Roland was just 15 months old, too young to comprehend where we were living or how strange our way of life really was. I tried to make the best of the inhospitable climate. First came the six black months of winter darkness and extreme cold. I quickly gave up my dangerous outdoor walks and stayed inside, keeping the cabin warm with a permanent fire and stories of tropical Sri Lanka. Roland sat at my feet, spell-bound, as I conjured up worlds of brightly-coloured flowering plants and an array of animal species that never would have fit onto Noah's Ark. He wanted to hear about all of them, from the lizards and snakes that rustle companionably in the shrubbery as you pass to playful Red Faced Macaques and the magnificence of elephants, leopards, and, my favourite, the Ceylon spotted deer.

Did you know Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of endemism in the world? Almost one quarter of the flowering flora and one sixth of the fauna are unique to that small island. In contrast, the biodiversity of the tundra biome is the lowest in the world. A mere handful of plants and mammals choose to make the North Pole their home, and while millions of birds migrate there each year for the marshes, they at least are sensible enough to leave at the end of each season.

With the March equinox, the sunrise came and, with it, six months of blinding white light. Setting our routine by the clock on the wall, we hid behind heavy curtains at nighttime and during Roland's naps, wearing eye masks to shut out the sun. Most days, Roland and I followed Rudolph outside, mindful not to fall into any bogs, as he meandered through the soggy tundra, looking for clusters of sedges, lichen and the delicate herbs and funghi that he favoured. Roland played with his red and yellow painted boat in the small streams that formed at this time of year while I wove garlands of leaves to make him a crown.

Welcome interruptions to our isolation were the sacks full of letters to Santa from children all over the world, as well as the large parcels that arrived sporadically from my mother. Addressed in her flawless handwriting, then double wrapped with tape by my father, they were filled with small toys and gifts for Roland, as well as tea, spices, preserved brinjal and other condiments for me, an edible reminder that I was still remembered and loved, if not approved of.

There, on my single burner, I produced delicious curries, at first just delicately spiced, then, once Nikolaus and Roland were accustomed to the heat, I added chilli and chose freely from the dazzling assortment of flavours of the Sri Lankan kitchen. When my stocks of cashew nuts, chickpeas and lentils ran low, I reluctantly supplemented our vegetarian fare with curries made from frozen reindeer meat. With a base of onions, garlic, ginger and curry leaves, the overlaying perfume of cloves, cinnamon and cardamom, or the more pungent aroma of fenugreek, coriander and garam masala drew Nikolaus in from the workshop each evening for dinner. Occasionally, we even hosted small gatherings for some of Nikolaus' friends, those men who helped out in the workshop when needed—Santa's elves, as you might imagine them—but really just his drinking cohorts; a hardworking, hard-drinking crew of misfits who, like me, had found themselves trapped in this mythical place.

Nikolaus' past remained a mystery to me. Though we communicated in English, I suspected that, as with me, this was not the native language of his homeland. He never spoke of his parents or of where he was born, or how he had come to this place, or even how long ago. He spoke few words of any kind, in actual fact. But after the loud, demanding voices of my childhood and the self-important drone of the academic world, I rather welcomed his silence. In any case, I had a little boy who made enough noise for all of us, and with whom I could talk, sing and laugh as much as I wanted.

For a little over two years, we continued in this way, falling into the rhythm of this extraordinary life. It was on a winter afternoon in October when I was busy in the kitchen, making curry for the crew that night when it happened. As the mustard seeds popped in the sizzling ghee, I thought of Roland, who loved to echo their tapping sound on his toy drum and, turning off the flame, went to the workshop to check on him. Nikolaus and a few of the men were hammering away, engrossed in their work, and did not even raise their heads as I opened the door. Roland was nowhere to be seen.

And so it happened. While Nikolaus, ever attuned to the needs of nameless children throughout the world, was busy making toys for them, his own, precious, three-year old son had wandered unnoticed out of the workshop.

"Nikolaus," I screamed, as I searched inside cupboards and anywhere else he might have hidden, "how could you let him wander outside? You were supposed to be watching him!"

He looked at me, his pale blue eyes watering, dissolving before me, while my own tears hardened into sheets of ice.

"But the toys," he whispered, twisting his hands, "I was so busy, I still have so many to make this year." His voice trailed away.

We searched everywhere inside the workshop, then outside, using torches to carve tunnels of light into the black obscurity. We called his name over and over. There was no reply but the wind, howling back at us, and my own sobbing, raw and guttural. One of the men fetched his team of huskies. I handed over Roland's pyjamas so the dogs could get the scent, but the only thing they located was the little red and yellow boat. Hours later, and hundreds of metres from the workshop, we finally found him.

I had read of people recovering from hypothermia, of children who had fallen into icy waters being revived one hour after losing consciousness, and that until brain death has occurred there might still be a chance. We tried to warm him, with blankets and hot water bottles placed in his armpits and groin. I attempted to resuscitate him myself, desperately recalling the steps I had learned years ago at school, willing my breath to enter his body and ignite his own. But he could not be woken.

Until Roland died, I never knew such pain. This pain has no beginning and no end. It starts in my chest, near my heart, then expands in ever-widening circles until no part of me is spared. Cruelly, it reminds me of childbirth. When Roland was being born, I remember the midwife explaining to me that the uterus has no nerve endings to be able to feel pain, and that the trauma of the contractions instead triggers a referred pain to another part of the body. For some women, this brings immense pain to the lower back. For me, the pain travelled unbearably down the sides of my legs, more punishing than the relentless whirring and sharp penetration of the tattooist needle, though the agonising mark left by childbirth cannot be seen by others.

That day, I despised Nikolaus for his silence, for the inadequacy of his reply, although for a long time afterwards I too stopped speaking, numbing myself in alcohol and entering a kind of living death inside the four walls of my bed. Difficult to comprehend, my only connection to the living world came from intervals of lovemaking with Nikolaus in the hushed early hours of the morning. Honouring the loss we shared, the feel of his warm flesh upon my own reminded me I was still alive. "Please stay," he would whisper, as his body shuddered against mine.

I know now that after Roland died, I should have left, but before I could make my way towards this conclusion I realised I was pregnant, only to miscarry weeks later, my tears mixing with the blood that pooled below me, a liquid representation of my grief.

After that first miscarriage came a second one, and then another pregnancy, terrifying in its insistence. While the two lives before had been conceived and lost in the cold, black darkness of winter, this last baby was conceived in June, in the light and relative warmth of the summer solstice. As my body continued to swell over the months, I began to believe that our fortunes had finally changed. Celebrating each passing week as the achievement of another great milestone, I longed for the day when I would hold another child in my arms.

Let me pause for a moment. The familiar pain, once an enemy but now one of my few companions, has taken hold of my chest again and you must wait a while.

Through the window, another monstrously large cruise ship is passing, a common sight at this time of year. The tourists are taking happy snaps of the archipelago and of my island. Imagine if they could recognise Rudolph and could know who I am. But this will never happen. How could they, or even you, reconcile the reality of me with the white-haired, fair-skinned, plump and kindly Mrs Claus of their dreams?

Looking back to my younger days as a student in England, having completed my post-graduate studies in international politics, I recall my motivations for deciding not to return to Sri Lanka. Though beautiful, it remains a land smeared by colonial values, inequality and turmoil. Instead, I wanted to explore new places, new truths, and was drawn to the contrast of northern Europe, its liberalism and emphasis on individual freedom.

Here in the archipelago, for example, we enjoy Sweden's _Allemansratt_ , 'the everyman's right' law, which gives anyone the right to go ashore on private ground not immediately near to a building, to walk, have a picnic or even to camp. In high summer, many small boats pass by us, along with the large cruisers and commercial craft from the Baltic shipping route, and the mostly Swedish occupants can frequently be seen making stops on neighbouring islands. We miss out on such visitors here because our island is so small, consisting of just the cottage itself, a few trees and the surrounding tended gardens. Only once did we have unexpected company, two years ago, when the sea froze over for several weeks. Then, people could be seen skating or skiing from one island to the next. What a sight to witness! Even Rudolph and I ventured a hundred metres or more out into the mirrored surface, surprised to turn around and see our cottage and its familiar views from a different perspective.

But I digress again and should return to my story.

My pregnancy continued to advance, and with it, my hopes. Finally, one day, near to term, I woke in the night to the welcome presence of early contractions, recognising their touch. As the hours went by, my waters broke and the contractions grew stronger, until I was riding each wave of pain like a foolhardy cowboy as I entered the solitary world of labour.

I remember moaning, at first self-consciously, until a part of me was somehow released from my body and become an observer in the room. This part was appalled to hear the animal-like sounds coming from my lips and to see the posture I had adopted, on all fours. For hours or days I thrashed about on the narrow bed as Nikolaus looked on, wide-eyed and helpless, until I saw him leave, returning some time later with a woman. I recognised her as the mute sister of Nikolaus' longtime drinking companion, Tyko, though she had never ventured to one of our evening gatherings.

Guiding me with her eyes and her hands, she compelled me to push, and I watched, spell-bound, as that tiny, vulnerable form was forced out of me into the world, another boy, like my Roland. In the shock of that miracle, I returned to my body, ready to welcome my baby to life, when I looked at the faces of those in the room and knew that I was too late. The passage from the gentle environment of the womb to the harsh medium of reality had been too long, and he had not survived the journey.

My body, which had nourished this life for nine months, making a baby out of something so small, filling him with oxygen and nutrients, and providing a safe place in which to grow, had failed him in those final moments before he was to enter the outside world and take his first breath.

I named him 'Mikael' and held him for two days in the bed with me, refusing to let him go. Only when I felt sure that I had given him something of myself, some warmth—and love, I hoped—to take with him, did I bundle him in a soft cloth, wrapped in animal skins, and went outside with Nikolaus to bury my child.

"Here," I murmured, as I crouched down in a sheltered position on the western side of the cabin.

Nikolaus struck the icy ground with his shovel, grunting as the force of the impact caused the shovel to reverberate, almost bouncing out of his hands. He swore under his breath then tried again, clenching his teeth and gripping the tool more tightly with his gloves.

"Now, this time!" he exclaimed, over and over, as he thrust the shovel down, but failing each time, while my hand flew to cover my open mouth and I continued to gently rock the baby, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

The winter was especially harsh that year and though we were just days away from the March equinox we soon discovered that the ground was still frozen hard. No matter where Nikolaus tried, he could not break the earth, and in that moment the full horror of my situation came to me.

It was that place, you see, the cold and the darkness of that place, that lead to his death, to all their deaths. Even in the womb, you need sunlight to live. No life can be sustained there, I am sure of it now. It is a land of fantasy and myth, and real people have no business being there.

I should never have brought Roland to meet his father or let myself fall in love with this strange, impenetrable man. I should never have agreed to stay there with him in the North Pole, sharing our lives with a myth already claimed by millions of others and with no room for us. We are all, to some extent, imprisoned by the expectations of others, the image of us they hold in their minds, and foolish as we are, we try to live up to. But for me, Mrs Claus, these expectations had consequences not even I could have imagined.

The kettle is whistling—the sound of my childhood—and as I pour myself a mug of strong tea I am struck by the irony that I should have come to these northern lands seeking freedom and to forge a new identity for myself, only to be trapped in a myth, exiled from the living, with my identity prescribed to me.

After I left Nikolaus and came here to my island, for many months my dreams were filled with images of me being compelled back to that place, dragged there against my will—not by Nikolaus, who, in the end, did not try to stop me from leaving—but by your expectations. Since then, the dreams have stopped, and I have come to realise that the myth can continue without me. My presence is not important and perhaps no one cares to hear my voice.

Outside the window, Rudolph has come back in from the sea and is rubbing off the last of the soft velvet coating from his antlers against a rough tree trunk. By this time in summer, his antlers are fully grown and almost completely hardened. Long revered by Chinese medicine and other ancient cultures, you may be as amazed as I was to learn that deer velvet is the only mammalian organ to fully regenerate every year. Not just the cartilage of the antler itself but the supporting tissues and blood vessels, all of this—defying logic—growing up to two centimetres each day.

In a few months, in November or December, I will grieve as Rudolph drops his antlers to the ground, but will keep my faith through the rest of the winter until spring, when a new set of antlers will begin to grow. Starting small, I will rejoice as they grow larger, brazen and magnificent in their curved form, refusing to be contained or disciplined into straight lines. As I marvel at this miracle of nature each year, I know that Nikolaus was wrong when he said there were no second chances.

One day, years into the future, when Rudolph dies—if you will permit him to—I will leave my island and return to the equator. I will make a new home for myself in a land where the sun shines all year; not Sri Lanka—I cannot go backwards—but somewhere I can start afresh, in a place of my own that no one has written about.

Feature Article

FROM TRASH TO TREASURE

**Ishbel Cullen**

"Behold this compost! Behold it well!"

_This Compost,_ Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

He cradles the worms in the palm of his hand and teases them with his forefinger. They squirm in discomfort on his cool dry skin. "They're really very sensitive beings," he says as he loosens his grip and allows them to fall through his fingers. They land on the heap of fruit and vegetable scraps below—their home, his worm farm. Bhuva Awasthi, secretary of the Macquarie University organic garden, holds the humble earthworm in high esteem. They're doing him a great service in decomposing his food waste. The compost pile at the garden serves the same purpose. Using worm farms and composting methods to deal with organic waste is not new. Indeed, composting is said to have its origins in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian societies. So what is it about worm farms and composting that's so good? What's all the fuss about?

To appreciate the value of these techniques, we must understand the process. To explain, Bhuva leads me to the far edge of the garden, where a row of bathtubs lines the back fence. The rust-stained bathtubs have been converted to worm farms. You wouldn't know it but inside a transformation is underway. Each tub is at a different stage of completion. Bhuva explains the finer points of worm farming to me. He stresses the importance of drainage, moisture, light, air, and feeding the worms the right foods. He lifts the sheet of corrugated iron and uncovers the contents of the first tub. A great tangle of earthworms is revealed. They are eating their way through yesterday's kitchen scraps at an impressive rate. As it goes in one end, it comes out the other. When all the food waste is consumed, the feeding frenzy dies down; the worms depart and leave a tub full of worm poo. This is the real prize. It's politely termed 'castings', but Bhuva refers to it as 'black gold' because of its power as a natural fertilizer.

On the lower oval at Elanora Heights Primary School a different type of controlled decomposition is occurring in the school's composts. Similar to Bhuva's bathtub system, but in more conventional-looking black plastic bins, there is a series of eight composts, all at different stages of decomposition. Teacher Jenny Cullen removes the lid of number four and invites me to submerge my hand. As my fingers sink into the compost, they begin to tingle with the thick organic warmth. The heap appears completely still, yet the heat I felt at the heart of this compost indicates that it is actually teeming with life. Microbes are busy feasting on the apples and bananas lovingly placed in lunch boxes a few weeks earlier. As I massage the compost in my hand, I feel twigs, leaves, and cardboard as well as fruit and vegetables. I can also see paper bags and sandwich wrap on the surface.

These features are the key differences between a compost and a worm farm. A composting system includes a wide variety of ingredients. Most critically, compost requires carbon-based components such as leaf litter or shredded cardboard as well as nitrogen-based food waste. The decomposition process also differs, with composting employing a great diversity of organisms. These include a range of microbes during the 'hot' phase, as well as beetles and worms during the final stages. A compost also requires watering and manual turning to aerate. Jenny explains this as we progress to the final bin, which contains three-month-old finished compost. She opens the lid with great excitement and presents the end product. Its content is dark and velvety, with a fertile scent.

Worm farming and composting differ in ingredients and process, however they operate by the same principle. Through controlled decomposition, they turn our 'waste' into useful natural fertilizer. Worm castings and compost improve the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of soil through adding nutrients, improving drainage, structure, and reducing pathogen organisms in the soil. This is why Bhuva is so eager to have it on his vegetable patch.

When we don't compost our food waste or use it in a worm farm, we squander its potential to be transformed into the 'black gold' Bhuva speaks of. We literally throw it in the rubbish. With 65% of all soil on earth showing signs of degradation, composting and worm farming present an opportunity to return nutrients to their source. In the Australian context this is especially relevant, where fertile soil for agriculture is so precious. Indeed, composting is also viable in large-scale farming, where it can reduce reliance on synthetic fertilisers.

Although Jenny uses her finished compost on her own small crop of lettuces in the school vegetable garden, she values the process of composting even more than the end product. The students are involved at every stage of the compost's development. They witness the transformation from waste to valuable fertiliser and its return to the garden to help grow new food. This process serves as a powerful illustration of the natural nutrient cycle. She hopes that as the children come to appreciate these connections they will "view resources as something to be consciously thought about and used carefully." She also hopes that they will learn that "there are real consequences from your small daily actions."

By introducing composting, Jenny has also reduced the quantity of landfill waste produced by the school. When food waste is discarded in landfill its power as a positive force to return nutrients to the soil is lost and instead it becomes a toxic source of pollution. This is because when organic waste is put into landfill, it decomposes with no oxygen, causing large amounts of natural acids to be released. These acids mix with the other waste products in landfill and produce a toxic leachate, which pollutes surrounding groundwater reserves. In addition, this process of anaerobic decomposition produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Not only is organic waste in landfill an environmental disaster, but also a waste of precious landfill space, which is in increasingly short supply.

For Emma Lynch, Senior Waste Officer at Manly Council, these issues are of major concern. Landfill sites servicing the Manly, Mosman, Warringah, and Pittwater local government areas are predicted to be full by 2014. With food waste constituting 45% of all household garbage, averting it from landfill is a high priority. The council holds free composting and worm farming workshops, which are regularly booked out. Emma comments that although there is a lot of interest in composting there "will always be some who think compost is dirty, they think it's going to harm their children."

Composting at home will never sufficiently reduce pressure on landfill, so from 2014 all four councils will start regular food waste and vegetation collection. The council will also deliver a free kitchen tidy and cornstarch bags to every home to collect compost. The food waste and vegetation bin will be collected weekly and taken to an industrial composting facility at Kimbriki Tip to be processed and then sold. In this sense, composting has also become an economically attractive option. For many councils, it is the perfect waste solution.

Such changes mean that regardless of whether people choose to start composting at home, separating food waste from general waste will soon become a part of everyone's lives. So creating a public that understand the value of worm farming and composting seems more important than ever.

While Jenny and Bhuva will welcome food waste collection by council, they maintain that there is something special about producing your own compost or worm castings to put on your block. This process can be profoundly satisfying. Jenny believes that, "There are very few times in life that you feel that you are part of the mysterious process of creation and transformation." In this sense, she likens tending her compost to nurturing a baby. Bhuva also finds using his worm castings in the garden enriching, saying, "When I work with the soil, I get close to where I came from, because we all come from soil." For some, the cyclic logic of composting seems to be philosophically engaging.

The benefits of worm farming and composting are compelling. Not only do they create a valuable, nutrient rich resource to enhance the quality of our soils, but also prevent our food waste from going to landfill. This reduces groundwater pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Composting and worm farming can also be personally very rewarding. In the face of so many complex environmental problems plaguing our world, composting and worm farming offer a refreshingly simple solution. It just makes sense. So perhaps we should all befriend our unassuming earthworm and microbial companions and harness their enthusiasm. They are just waiting to turn our trash into treasure.

Feature Article

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

**Jessica Leigh Kirkness**

There are some things we don't talk about. Some stories we do not tell and some we do not get to hear. There are some scars that lie submerged beneath layers of clothing—out of our daily view, relegated to the peripheries of our consciousness.

Alexander Van Dijk has a scar. It is seven centimetres long. It sits on the left side of his chest, and is the only visible evidence of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) that almost took his life three years ago today. Alex is only twenty-five.

During the early morning hours of the 18th April 2009, at the age of twenty-two, appearing healthy, leading an active life, and having no history of serious illness, Alex suffered a Sudden Cardiac Arrest during his sleep. Paramedics worked on Alex for over twenty minutes before they managed to jumpstart his heart.

"I didn't think he would make it to the hospital," his mother Cheryl tells me. "They tried so hard to get a heartbeat, but we all thought he was dead. I thought I'd lost my little boy."

When Alex was finally admitted the ICU, he lay in a coma for two weeks while his grieving friends and family prepared for his imminent death. Alex miraculously survived to tell his tale. Many others like him have not been so lucky.

'Sudden Cardiac Arrest' or 'Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome' takes ten young lives every week in Australia, and its first sign is, more often than not, death. Though a large majority of sudden cardiac death cases in the young (16-35 years) are found to have a structural cause, (i.e. an underlying structural cardiovascular disorder), the remainder of these deaths go unexplained even after post-mortem. Nearly 30% of young sudden deaths have inconclusive autopsies. But as molecular cardiologists at Sydney's Centenary Institute have recently discovered, many of these deaths result from genetically inherited arrhythmogenic or 'electrical' problems in the heart. These cannot be detected in regular autopsies. Cardiologists at the Centenary Institute thus speculate that the actual number of SADS deaths is much higher than our statistics currently reveal.

Dr Steve Meaney is a senior emergency medicine physician at Nepean Hospital. In a twelve month period, he reports to have witnessed three young men under the age of twenty-six admitted to his emergency department following a sudden cardiac arrest. "When cases like this present themselves, we are looking basically for four things: Brugada syndrome, Long QT syndrome, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) and Ischemic heart disease," he tells me. These are all underlying causes of Sudden Cardiac Death. But sudden unexplained death in young people can be caused by a number of primary arrhythmogenic disorders. Clinicians and researchers are finding that there are hundreds of disease-causing or contributing genetic mutations that can result in Sudden Cardiac Death in young people. Brugada is one example: a genetic disease affecting the sodium channels in the heart, resulting in the heart's failure to conduct properly. Or Long QT syndrome: a hereditary cardiac ion-channel disorder that predisposes individuals to sudden cardiac death. HCM is another: a condition where abnormal thickening of the heart muscle causes the heart to work less efficiently and can result in sudden cardiac death.

Dr Meaney explains, "In South East Asia they call this sudden cardiac death phenomenon 'the thief in the night' syndrome and I guess that's basically how it presents itself. Young people, more commonly men, go to sleep, struggle to breathe and then abruptly, and seemingly without explanation, die. Subsequent autopsies and examinations reveal nothing physically wrong with the patient. There is no apparent cause of death. It can be pretty baffling for those involved."

Alexander is still in the process of undergoing extensive genetic testing. He has tested negative for all the major syndromes related to Sudden Cardiac Death and his search for his 'faulty gene' continues. Had Alexander not survived, his family would most likely have no explanation for his death, and like so many other SADS families, would still be grappling for answers.

However, knowledge about SADS and SCA in young people is steadily on the rise.

"We can now detect and diagnose Brugada syndrome through our ECG [electrocardiogram] machines," Dr Meaney tells me. These machines measure the electrical waves of the heart and can detect certain anomalies in the heart's ability to conduct signals. "We had a guy come in an ambulance last week, who was in cardiac arrest, and with our technology we were able to diagnose him with Brugada Syndrome on the spot. That was really lucky timing, though."

The discoveries made in the work of medical practitioners and researches are also providing hope for family members of SADS victims. Expert cardiac and genetic testing is now available for SCA and SADS families. As many of these sudden death syndromes are genetically inherited—patients diagnosed with HCM for example, have a fifty percent chance of passing on their genetic mutation to their child—such testing is a huge relief to family members who may also be at risk. In the event that a genetic flaw is discovered, an Internal Cardiac Defibrillator (ICD), which measures and controls arrhythmias, can be implanted in the chest to protect against SCA.

Alexander's scar is the result of ICD implantation. He pulls down the collar of his shirt to reveal the sliver of crinkled pink flesh which brands the curve of his pectoral muscle. I bristle slightly, despite my best attempts to remain straight-faced. He must have preempted my shock, because without looking up he starts to explain:

"I like to think of my scar as being Harry Potter-esque." He grins at me. "I cheated death and now I have a scar to show for it."

"It still looks raw!" I say.

"Yeah, It took a long time to heal, actually. It got infected and I had to see several doctors and dermatologists before it closed up."

But the scar is not the only legacy this experience has left.

For those who survive SCA, the road to recovery is rarely simple or easy.

A cardiac arrest can cause an extreme change in the life situation of afflicted individuals and their families. According to research undertaken by health-care sociologist Angelo Alonzo, the emotional stress caused by cardiac arrest cannot be underestimated. Patients may struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, and feelings of anxiety, anger, and a deep fear of a second attack. Furthermore, the individual may have to deal with an altered conception of self and may experience a sensation of powerlessness and loss of control over one's life. Hospital visits and rehabilitation programs can also be traumatic for all involved.

As Alonzo explains, "Initially there is the trauma of the insult to the myocardium or heart muscle... then there is the fright and overwhelming dread of the potential loss of life... Over the long term, becoming a cardiac patient, going to cardiac rehabilitation... and experiencing repeated physician consultations and medical regimens, can all become part of the secondary trauma."

Alexander's case is no exception, but his has an added layer of complexity. Because of the twenty minutes it took to re-start his heart, Alex's brain was deprived of oxygen. As a result, Alex's brain is damaged, taking some of his vision and affecting some of his fine-motor skills and balance. He also had to learn to walk again. Three years on, nobody would ever guess what he's been through.

He remains upbeat. "I was really lucky to come out alive frankly. The doctors told my family and friends that I had a five percent chance of surviving my coma, and that if I did wake up, I would be ninety five to one hundred percent brain-damaged. So compared to the prognosis I think I did okay."

When Alexander was discharged after two months of recovering in a hospital bed, he had to go through a process of intensive physical therapy. "Going to the rehabilitation centre petrified me," he tells me. "I didn't want to leave the hospital. I felt safe there. I started to resign myself to being 'crippled,'" he says, pausing to reflect. "I really felt like an invalid. I kinda was actually. I couldn't walk at that stage."

He tells me about the shock he experienced upon waking up in a hospital bed. His first memory is of a dream he had, presumably in the hospital. In the dream he was travelling through Asia with his girlfriend. When he awoke and found his reality was much different, it took him a long time to come to terms with his situation.

"Because I was so young and I'd always been really healthy, [SCA] came as a complete shock to me and especially to those around me. My parents and my girlfriend were probably the worst affected. My girlfriend was the one who found me. She was only nineteen when it happened and she's only recently stopped having nightmares about it. My Mum was a complete mess, too. I think that was the hardest part. You know, watching them go through it." He goes silent, allowing me a momentary glimpse of his pain.

Indeed, the experience of families, friends, and spouses can be equally, if not more traumatic—something that becomes explicit as I speak to Eliza Black.

Eliza's story has many a parallel with Alexander's case. In September of 2010, Eliza's brother Marcus stopped breathing in the middle of the night. He had suffered a Sudden Cardiac Arrest in his sleep. He was twenty-three at the time.

"There were no warning signs," she tells me. "He was perfectly healthy one minute and the next he was in hospital. He was lucky to survive."

Eliza's parents are doctors. There is no family history of heart disease. Marcus was healthy. He was a P. E. teacher and seemed fine right up until he went to bed that evening. Marcus has since been diagnosed with Brugada Syndrome and he also has an ICD to protect him against further attacks. But Eliza lives in permanent fear of a repeat attack. When I ask her about her own response to her brother's illness, she shifts in her seat.

"Me? I'm fine. I mean I get teary sometimes. I guess that's just grief, though... Plus the ICU doesn't bring back great memories."

Sociologist Arthur W. Frank has written, "A heart attack is a moment of death. Once the body has known death, it never lives the same again."

Indeed, Alex and Eliza have sat with death. So have their families and friends. They will never live the same way again. In fact, Alexander vows not to.

"Don't get me wrong," he says. "It was horrible... for everyone, but I'm determined to succeed in life now. Who knows where I would be if this didn't happen to me. It's because of the obstacles I've had to overcome that I'm so motivated. It's only made my willpower stronger."

In the years Alex has spent recovering he has managed to complete his degree in Audio Visual Technology and Media. He wants to make films "when he grows up."

"Maybe you can make a film about your own life?" I suggest.

"Yeah," he says, "Maybe I'll call it _The Man with the Bionic Heart_."

"Bionic?" I ask.

"Yeah!" He points to the ICD beneath his shirt as justification. "I'm pretty indestructible with this thing. It could be like a superpower!"

I laugh.

"Don't laugh!" he says. " I _am_ indestructible. Next stop: World domination!"

Feature Article

BIOGRAPHY OF A TRAIN WRECK

**Genevieve Giles**

Marcus smokes cigarettes the way they are meant to be smoked. He smacks his lips on the small cylinder strip he is carelessly holding. He inhales loudly, closes his eyes and absorbs the smoke as if he were ingesting some kind of magical, life-saving elixir. Exhaling loudly, he makes smoking look like something out of a film from the 1940s, when it was the epitome of class. But this is reality. There is no sepia wash and gentleman in the corner playing a gentle tune on a piano. The cigarette smoke haze clears to reveal a lonely, depressed, tired young man. Marcus hunches over and absently taps ash onto his worn Converse sneakers.

The sneakers are teamed with a smart, grey business suit. Despite the fact that Marcus has not picked up a guitar in 18 months, and has vowed never to again, the musician within still creeps through in dots and dashes throughout his life. But it's only minimal. Marcus suffers from depression.

After his band The Train Wrecks broke up, he lost the fans, the crazy adventures, and now has to face life on the other side of the stage, living life just like everyone else, looking around in awe. Marcus now feels his life is empty and spends his days managing a decrepit bowling club nestled in a park in Clovelly. With the exception of a few elderly lawn bowls fanatics, very few people know of the bowling club's existence.

It's an odd reality to see Marcus looking so defeated. Upon listening to the stories of Marcus' days being in a band, glimpses creep through of his former insatiability to conquer anything life threw at him. I write this article in total disappointment that someone as formerly passionate as Marcus has "let the bastards get him down."

At age fourteen, Marcus held the title of self-proclaimed " _Street Fighter_ Champion of the Universe." Growing up in the early 1990s in Minchinbury, Marcus' quick reaction time plus the knowledge of all the best button combinations on a Super Nintendo controller meant he annihilated all the boys in the neighbourhood who tried to challenge him. However after a few years of being a Video Game deity, Marcus began to notice that he and his mates were complete and utter... dorks.

"Video games, regardless of how proficient you are at them, don't attract girls. That's fine when you're nine. Girls have diseases when you're nine. But when you're seventeen, you start weigh up your title as _Street Fighter_ Champion of the Universe and your lack of sexual experience, and your priorities change. All a part of growing up. _Street Fighter_ gave me amazing hand-eye coordination. So I thought to myself one day, 'why don't I try to transfer this skill to a guitar?' Chicks dig musicians!"

And that is exactly what he did. After only a year, Marcus was asked to join his first band. While he attended to his gaming consoles every so often, his newfound skill opened up a much larger universe than the Street Fighter one he had previously reigned over.

Eventually Marcus formed his own band, The Train Wrecks. "The band was known for its sense of brotherhood. All five of us were brothers... from other mothers. Every other local Sydney band on the scene, their members were usually not tied to just one band. No one in The Train Wrecks was allowed to be musically polygamous. The band was our relationship. Well, everyone had a girlfriend outside of the band, but The Train Wrecks would always come first, even if it was unintentional... We were so much more than just musicians playing together to expand our music skills. We expanded our fucking horizons. When we weren't performing we were down at the studio talking shit and playing cards. We were the best men at each other's weddings; we shared and slept in a van for six weeks while we toured the east coast of Australia."

But it seems that this closeness is the very same thing that broke the band apart. Upon meeting Marcus, you soon realise that he is a passionate, eccentric, extremely extroverted person. He poured everything into The Train Wrecks, including his money, time, and creative ingenuity. But there was a massive down side to this—his relationship with his girlfriend Michelle fell apart.

"I really, really regret not putting in more effort with Michelle. When the band broke up, everyone else focused on other things—their relationships, their jobs, and their friends. I put all my eggs in one basket with The Train Wrecks and I found in the end I had none of that left."

From the way that Marcus is living his life now, one would think that the band split up over a sea of drug-fuelled feuds and "creative differences" but it was a fairly amicable split—four out of the five members of The Train Wrecks had by this point had become exhausted by the demanding touring schedule, and were beginning to want to focus more on more stable careers. Some were married and wanted to start families. The crazy adventures and the wild experiences with the band now began to cease for Marcus, whose focus was the polar opposite.

I asked Marcus why he didn't just simply form a new band. "If I want that same kind of life, I would have to resort to playing with younger musicians. I'm stuck in a strange kind of limbo. No one wants to see a bunch of thirty-something men carry on like eighteen-year-olds anymore. Just as much as they don't want to see a bunch of eighteen-year-olds playing songs with a thirty-four year old. Either way you look at it, its creepy! I don't want the life that every other thirty-four year old has, but I don't want to try and fit in with kids of a different generation. And people wonder why I have trouble sleeping at night. I spent the bulk of my time for years doing mad shit. Playing in sold out venues. Having adventures. Running away from cops. Sharing joints with talk show hosts."

At this point Marcus retrieves his iPhone from his pocket to reveal a blurry picture of a well-known talk show host, eyes half-closed, mouth half-open. He has a joint dangling from one hand but has the familiar dazzling, toothy smile plastered across his face, albeit wobbly.

Amongst the cheap metal chairs and plastic picnic tables, Marcus smokes cigarette after cigarette and sips at espresso shots. Even the way he takes his coffee is exponentially cooler than everyone else. "This place [the bowling club] was only supposed to pay the bills to fund the better part of life. Now its all I've got."

Marcus hasn't slept more than four hours in a night for over a year. Like everyone in the music business, he was once a recreational cannabis smoker. Marcus now lives a strange half-life. He relies on the drug to both help him sleep and get him through the day at work.

"It gets so lonely here, it's so nice to have some company. I work with a lot of shit heads who think that the world ends and begins with the ClubsNSW industry, and think that what they do for a living is really important and impacts peoples lives in a massive way, but at the end of the day, all we do here is house the lonely, the bored, the misfits and the old for a couple of hours whilst they willingly, and stupidly surrender their wages and pension cheques to the poker machines...That aside, I really love it when they come to talk to me, just to break up my day a little bit."

Marcus is thirty-four years old. By no means is his life nearly over. The break-up of his band has left Marcus feeling as though he has no reason to go on. It is sad to see someone unexpectedly give up so easily. The signs of his dissipated vivacity do creep through, in unexpected ways. The bowling club he manages turned over the best figures it has ever had. Stock wastage is at an all-time low, and bookings for functions are at an all-time high.

"I guess I just focused all of my otherwise stagnant energy into the my job. My bosses had no hope for it. I want them to see it as 'The Little Bowling Club that Could.' Plus, I have nothing better to do."

I unfortunately cannot sit back and write paragraphs upon paragraphs about how Marcus turned his life around and how things dramatically improved for him. He still drags himself to work everyday, Converse shoes and all. It is a common trend amongst former musicians to develop forms of depression and anxiety, of varying degrees. It is difficult to grasp the extent that the effect of fame and success in the music industry has until it is taken away. There are organisations out there—like SupportAct—that specifically assist struggling musicians in times of hardship. Marcus seems to reject the idea of seeking help.

"I am not struggling financially. I am not about to jump off a bridge. Something will come along, it always does. I just hope next time I will be smart enough not to rely solely on it to fuel my life."

If nothing else, rising musicians can take from Marcus' story three lessons: The music industry is a hard place to be in. Everything can end suddenly and you can be left, as Marcus was, with no idea what to do next. Hand in hand with that is the importance of not putting all your hopes, dreams, energy and money into your band. As close as you can be with your band members, human beings will mostly become more pragmatic with age, so dreams, wants and needs can change in a heartbeat. Upon speaking to Marcus, he cursed himself for not properly learning that lesson when he ditched his Nintendo controllers for his guitar, several years ago.

But perhaps it is most essential not to entirely forget and reject what got you there in the first place. As I am leaving the bowling club at the end of the evening, I offhandedly ask Marcus what his plans were for the evening. He grins for the first time since I started the interview and answers:

" _Street Fighter."_

Travel

THE NATION OF POETS

**Valerie Wangnet**

On the eleventh of September, a Tuesday morning, the city woke up to the image of smoke and burning buildings. I'm not speaking of New York—this was in 1973 when a military coup orchestrated an attack on the city of Santiago, Chile. President Salvador Allende was assassinated and his left-wing government fell into the hands of the violent dictatorship of General Pinochet.

The event happened on the same day of the week and month—and at almost the same time in the morning—as the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers. That this coincidence serves for most people as only an interesting piece of trivia (at best) is not surprising. The thin strip of land at the tail of South America rarely appears in international headlines, save for a few earthquakes and a recent mining disaster. The very name of the country translates from the Indian word for "end of all lands," and it's certainly true that no one passes through casually. With its name routinely mispronounced and its flag often confused with that of Texas, Chile seems to be familiar only to soccer fanatics and wine connoisseurs. For people like me, however—softhearted, romantic, and dreamy—Chile is the nation of poets. With literary heroes and Nobel Laureates like Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, and volcanoes by the names of _Pirepillan_ (demon of the snow) and _Petrohue_ (land of the mists), it's no surprise that the country has earned its place in the hearts of literature lovers. And in a nation shaped by the devastations of a violent regime that gave rise to new artistic pulses and literary movements (deemed the "destroyed generation"), the notion of being in a civilization of poetic souls compelled to lyrical despair is both moving and seductive.

On my travels there last year, my high regard for the country's 'poetic soul'—its sensitivity to life, beauty, and humanity—was both lost and rediscovered in a new and surprising form.

The acclaimed Chilean author Isabel Allende wrote that in Chile you lift up a rock and, instead of a lizard, out crawls a poet or a balladeer. She attributed this to the landscape, claiming "no one who is born and lives in a natural world like ours can resist writing poetry." It's certainly hard to argue with that. Arriving in the country's famous Lake District, I quickly began to understand the source of inspiration for many love-struck writers.

On September 9, 2011, I arrived by bus at one of the lakes in the south of Chile. Despite the regular influx of tourists, the view of the forests, waterfalls, blue mountain lakes, and snow-capped volcanoes remains startlingly pristine. In September the air is cold and you can see your own breath escaping in thick vapors, but beneath the skin, extraordinarily, your blood froths with warmth. My personal and very unscientific explanation for this phenomenon is that the scenery of thermal hot springs and active volcanoes, with all their associations of steamy passion and hot-tempered romance, tricks the body into warming itself against the harsh climate.

When our group stepped down from the bus, the digital cameras remained strapped around necks, and for a long moment, everybody was silent. This wasn't a place to be photographed. There would be no satisfaction in simply snapping a picture, because the magic wasn't in the vision itself, but in the _feel_ of the place. The mountains and lakes lived and breathed in this part of the world, and demanded not duplication, but interpretation. Every murmur, howl, and whisper produced here among the tangle of branches or from the bellies of volcanoes needed to be listened to and then deciphered. The occupation of listening to the land, of trying to understand it and extracting meaning from it was not that of amateur photographers but of poets.

I began to understand then that it is not the beauty of the land that compels one to this pursuit of meaning. There are many beautiful places in the world that can be captured with perfect adequacy by a trigger-happy tourist with a camera. The feeling of the Lake District is one of isolation, the very end of the end of all lands, which forces you to pause and reflect. This is what had perhaps encouraged writers like Neruda to discover things in the mundane. His fascination for everyday objects displayed in his _Odes to Common Things_ —tributes to a loaf of bread, to a table, and to an artichoke—reveal a deep reverence for ordinary things that would be meaningless to most people.

The richness of Chilean poetry can perhaps be attributed also to the staggering diversity of the country's landscape. From the most northern tip of the country, where the Atacama Desert, the driest part of the world, separates it from the rest of the Americas, to the very south, which leads to the solitudes of Antarctica, you have two very different worlds. In the Lake District, spending a night in one of the tourist cabins and away from the heated visions where the cold creeps into your bones, it's almost impossible to imagine the conditions of the north. This uniqueness and isolation from the rest of the world may be the reason for the country's strong sense of nationhood, as well as its bond and passion with the soil. Almost every local seems to either boast or dream about owning an estate of land, a sentiment that perhaps goes back to the native Mapuches.

In Lago Budi, a region within the Lake District, I attended a poetry reading by a native Mapuche. I regret that I cannot offer a proper translation, but I did manage to join a group of tourists afterwards and listen to him speak in English. His name was Ramon Gomez, a tall man with a broad face and high-set cheekbones. Having seen him from a distance perform on stage with the calmness of a hundred-year-old spirit, I was surprised to find up close that he smelled of tobacco. Thinking back now, I'm not sure what I was expecting the man to smell like. What I supposed I sensed was that the poet and the man seemingly lived within him separately.

I asked Ramon what the main difference was between the poetry of the European settlers in Chile and that of the natives.

"Poets like Neruda," he explained, "perpetuate simplistic, colonialist forms of seeing and knowing the Chilean ecology. Mapuche poets instead write about the confusion, the diversity, and the dynamism of their environment."

I was stunned by the criticism of my most beloved poet. Recognizing this, he continued to explain:

"The Mapuche poetic tradition is shaped by poems that are inseparable from the speaking voice. The form and length of a poem is determined by one's biological limitations, such as how much breath you hold in your lungs. This way you also perform in the presence of other people, spirits, and animals."

The early practices of Mapuche poetry reveal a very real connection between the land and poetry in Chile, something that the later post-colonialist poets had no doubt discovered.

After a few drinks, Ramon then offered to deliver a lesser-known poem of his, asking us to stop straining to understand the words but to pay attention to the voice and spirit of his delivery.

Ramon took the stage, again taking an ancient form, and began to recite his words with a scorched throat. I listened to his pauses and breaths that seemed to tear down the very scaffolding of poetic meter but produced the essence of the land that he had spoke of—the confusion and dynamism that were delivered not by words but by the tremble in his voice, the difficult pauses, and the deep releases of breath. When he finished, he walked toward us and explained that what we'd heard this time was different than anything we could ever find in post-colonialist poetry.

"This is _duende,_ " he said.

The concept of _duende_ , originating from Spain, is difficult to translate into English. The word itself means "poltergeist": a dark, spiritual component of art. In a lecture Garcia Lorca explained, "The _duende_ is not in the throat: the _duende_ surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet. It's not a question of skill but of a style that's truly alive. It's in the veins. It's of the most ancient culture of immediate creation."

The _duende_ refers to the profound feeling one receives upon demonstrating or witnessing art that brings the person face to face with his or her own mortality. Its presence can be made in all the arts, but where it naturally creates most space, as in music, dance, and the spoken word, the living flesh is needed to interpret them.

"This is because the living flesh have forms that are born and die, perpetually, and raise their contours above the precise present," explained Ramon. "Post-colonialist poets use too much intellect when writing about the landscape. Intellect is the enemy of poetry. It limits too much since it burdens the poet under the bondages of aristocratic fineness."

Lorca spoke of the same thing, where the poet forgets that he might be "eaten suddenly by ants" or that "a huge arsenical lobster might fall on his head."

That evening I learned the differences between the two types of poetry in Chile. Although both the Mapuche and post-colonialist writers were inspired by the same landscape, their interpretations and understanding of it were very different. To better understand the post-colonialist voice in Chilean poetry, I knew I had to travel to Santiago de Chile—the glorious product of colonialism.

In the metropolis of Santiago, the landscape is very different. There is no shortage of fancy cars and high-rise apartments. In the distance, a string of mountains and volcanoes can be made out, only when you squint through the thick smog, which locals claim have killed infants and the elderly in their sleep. I spotted a café nearby with a foolish, romantic expectation of artists and philosophers huddled in corners and immersed in heated discussions about literature and politics. This was Chile, after all. Instead, there were women sporting tight mini-skirts and stilettoes serving short blacks to ogling middle-aged businessmen. These cafes are abundant throughout the city, known as _café con piernas_ (coffee with legs).

The sonic density of the city is made up of overweight men shouting obscenities at every woman who dares pass by ( _"ay, mihita rica!"_ ) and teenagers in automobiles competitively blasting _reggaeton_ (a repetitive combination of salsa and rap music) through cheap car stereos. Was this the out-of-touch colonialist air that Ramon had lamented?

Meeting locals isn't hard in Chile. If you point at a place on a map, a complete stranger will walk three blocks with you to make sure that you reach it. Santiago locals are very curious about tourists, and the first thing they want to know is how much you love their country. Every one had to make sure that I'd sampled the local wine, attended a soccer match (to witness _real_ football), and visited the mountains in the south.

Despite the seemingly out-of-touch environment of Santiago, there is still a deep reverence for the land among its citizens. Locals make regular trips to the south with their families, and boast about the sturdiness of their relatives who have braved the harshness of the north by taking work in the mines. Allende wrote, "We Chileans still feel our bond with the soil, like the _campesinos_ we once were. Most of us dream of owning a piece of land for nothing more than to plant a few worm-eaten heads of lettuce."

In addition to this respect for the land there is also a sense of both reverent fear and vicious defensiveness when it comes to the country's climate. When I asked locals about the difficult climate, floods that leave hundreds dead, thousands injured and the economy in ruins, they responded with grave speeches but a glint of excitement in their eyes. At the same time, nobody admits to needing heating or air conditioning—that would be admitting that the climate is not as perfect as they say it is. On a freezing taxi ride back to my hotel, the driver refused to turn on the heating, trying to control the chattering of his teeth. To Chileans, a proud people who love to boast about their great land, the climate alternates only between disastrous states of emergency and absolute perfection. That they see their land as either nurturing or vindictive personifies it. One is reminded of the ancient Greeks, who saw every turn of the climate and the land as the divine intervention of the gods.

Although the city of Santiago differed greatly from the south and its spectacular lake districts, there was still a clear bond between the land and its people. However, my search for the nation's "poetic soul" seemed to have ended with Ramon. There I learned that it was not the bloody history of country that compelled people to speak so earnestly and passionately through verse but rather the land in which they lived, something that the rise of buildings and concrete had taken away from this part of the country. On my last night in Santiago my cousin and a few of his friends invited me to celebrate my travels experiencing the nightlife of the city.

In Santiago everything opens late (about eleven in the morning) and stays open past midnight on any day of the week. When I met up with the group, I was embarrassed to learn that I was ridiculously overdressed.

"Why are you wearing heels?" inquired Sara, my cousin's girlfriend.

It was useless trying to explain that in Sydney girls endure the absolute torture of dancing and parading around six or seven hours straight in the most difficult footwear conceivable. After a few hours of drinking and dancing, I discovered why.

At five past midnight, the group (along with three other people we'd met at the nightclub) jumped on a bus and headed to a nearby lake, stopping briefly for a box of local beer and then at one of the boys' places for three fishing rods.

Until four in the morning we sat on the bank of the lake in near darkness. It took a while for me to realize that the objective was not to actually catch any fish (something the group waited patiently for me to learn how to do, watching me attempt several techniques in vain), but to get away from the city and all its noise.

Ricardo, my cousin's younger friend, with two metal rings pierced through his bottom lip, asked me if I was enjoying Chile.

"It's beautiful," I answered vaguely, "I loved the south— _muy bonita_."

The boy stared into the distance. I couldn't make out if he was smiling or frowning. After a long pause, he spoke:

"Night, snow, and sand make up the form of my thin country, all silence lies in its long line, all foam flows from its marine beard, and all coal covers it with mysterious kisses."

At last, I thought, I have reached the nation of poets.

Travel

STATESIDE: BOSTON, MA

**Hannah McNicholas**

Before she died (cancer, of course—when they go too young it's almost always cancer), my Godmother told me that people only travel because they're restless. They're looking for something, or they're running from something, or they can't keep their feet on the ground. I wondered why I was travelling.

We left Manhattan in the morning rush, crawling north off the island with the AC blasting and Marvin Gaye crooning at us on the radio. My brother Mick poured over maps on the tiny screen of his phone, plotting our route to Massachusetts via Rhode Island and New Haven. It was an easy, uneventful drive. Even with a long lunch break in Providence and a tour of the Yale campus, we arrived in Boston mid-afternoon, just in time to get caught in the post-work commuter rush.

As quickly and passionately as I had fallen for New York, Mick fell for Boston.

Standing on the wharf outside the New England Aquarium, where the air smells of salt and ferry fuel, I thought about how vivid Boston was. The city is a different kind of bright, far from the dazzling hyper-reality of Manhattan. Without the confines of an island, Boston has had room to sprawl and breathe. Footpaths are dotted with young trees. Clear sunlight trickles down between buildings. There is more space for the sky.

Boston is red brick and cream trim and neat green lawns, towers rising almost unobtrusively from their colonial foundations, past and present bleeding together. A cradle of contemporary America, the city lies low on its famous harbour where shiploads of tea were sacrificed in the name of freedom, in the shadow of Bunker Hill where the colonials suffered a defeat that would define the revolutionary spirit.

Irish immigrants were Boston's backbone, of which their descendants are fiercely proud. The influence is palpable—souvenir shops overflowing with Celtics memorabilia and obnoxiously cheerful leprechauns on shot glasses. Mick, a long-time Celtics fan, revelled in the shamrockery. I was still mourning the loss of New York, nursing a deep, phantom ache I knew to be irrational but which I couldn't quite shake.

My first few hours in Boston were spent aimlessly wandering the downtown Quincy Market. The open-air mall was humming with mid-summer busyness. Locals with strollers and toddling infants on leashes mingled with high-schoolers relishing their temporary freedom and college kids on break from nearby Cambridge, from the hallowed halls of Harvard and MIT.

Mick, notoriously irresponsible with sunglasses, had been squinting against the glare since he left the last pair on the Staten Island Ferry three days before. He stopped at a street vendor and bought a pair of knock-off Gucci shades for ten dollars, the flashy gold-tinted type usually seen on frat boys on spring break. He looked unashamedly ridiculous. A man in red and white candy stripes sold us fried dough with a practiced salesman's smile and enough powdered sugar to turn our blood to syrup. Mick eyed it speculatively, oil already seeping into the paper plate, shook off the excess sugar, licked his sticky fingers and left smudges of powder on his chin. "No dessert tonight," he said. He sounded like our father.

The sun set late. Dark settled softly over the city and fairy lights strung through the trees and across awnings flickered to life. Street performers came out in full force, a duo of acrobats juggling atop unsteady ladders battling for an audience against a prodigious young violinist and a band of teenagers playing covers of The Doors.

We met up with the others at Dick's Last Resort, the sports-bar-cum-restaurant the Brisbane Boys insisted on trying. It was one of those gimmicky chains of eateries that Americans seem so fond of, over-crowded and under-staffed with scowling waiters whose jobs seemed to consist of yelling at diners and shooting straw wrappers across tables. The braver patrons sported oddly phallic hats fashioned from paper tablecloths and scrawled with surprisingly creative insults. _My first husband was Caesar_ on an old woman so deeply wrinkled that her eyes were lost in folds of liver-spotted skin, quietly explaining the joke to her sandy-haired grandson. _Fake blond real dumb_ had been given to a cheerleader type in an MIT sweatshirt. Her boyfriend was laughing. She was not.

There was a two-man band crammed into the corner playing too loudly through aging amps, backlit by flat-screens replaying a Red Sox game. The drinkers at the bar cried and cheered like they don't already know how the game would end. Mick fought his way to a row of empty seats, six-and-a-bit feet of rugby-honed muscle clearing a path through the melee. He had always taken well to crowds, wading in and holding his own against the tide. I could, too, on my good days, but today wasn't one of them. I clung to the belt loop of Mick's jeans and let him drag me along, my shoulders hunched up and head down, hoping no one would touch me.

The long bench table was already half-filled with college boys who seemed more than happy to have new company, especially once they discovered we were Australian. Wedged between Mick and a Harvard boy named Andrew, I ended up ordering a salad.

Andrew should have been impossible, a mystifying mix of footballer's build and maths major's wardrobe. "You're from Australia!" he cried. He seemed extremely excited by this, but then he _was_ on his third Coors of the night. "But you sound like us!"

Listening to the flattened vowels and soft 'r's of his thick Bostonian accent, I realised he was right. He sounded like us.

"So you're here with your boyfriend?" he asked, and I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. I got the feeling I would be answering this question a lot over the coming weeks.

"No. Mick's my big brother."

Andrew had the sense to look abashed, but it quickly gave way to something like awe.

"I have three sisters," he laughed. "I don't think I'd have the guts to travel with any of them."

I laughed with him, but I'd been worried about that very thing since we got on the plane in Sydney.

When Mick and I were kids we used to drive north every summer to spend Christmas with our mother's family in Queensland. We were piled into the car well before sunrise to pass twelve hours playing 'I spy', working through puzzle books, and fighting over the last pair of AA batteries for our cassette Walkmans. The holidays themselves had always been wonderful, but my memories of the long hours on the road were less fond. Most of all, I remember the fatigue and the backache and the boredom.

The last time we'd driven anywhere we were fourteen and twelve and he'd beaten me with his pillow for stealing his last Chicken McNugget. Now I was going on a six-and-a-half week road trip across a foreign country with him. For a moment I couldn't figure out what had possessed me to think this could be a good idea.

My Caesar salad arrived, mostly Caesar and not much salad. Andrew took another swig from his glass. "So where are you headed after Boston?"

"Quebec," I said, thinking ahead. "Montreal, Toronto, Cleveland, Chicago, South Dakota, Wyoming, through Yellowstone, Salt Lake, Grand Canyon, Vegas, and on to California."

He blinked at me faintly, his drink forgotten. "How long are you here for?"

"Six weeks," I answered, thinking maybe I had offended him but not sure exactly how.

He shook his head disbelievingly and I grew more confused. It must have shown, because he laughed and raised his hands in mock surrender. "No, no, nothing's wrong," he said. "It's just funny. You're going to see more of my country in six weeks than I've seen in my whole life."

I didn't know what to say to that. I couldn't conceive of living a matter of hours from cities like New York and Washington and Chicago, miles from the border of a whole other country, and never wanting to leave, never even thinking to. What he saw as comfort, I saw as stagnation. I wished I could feel as comfortable as he did in the place he was born. I wondered what it must be like to be so assured that you belonged, to feel that you were exactly where you were supposed to be.

I thought back to my Godmother's words.

Then again, I thought, my Godmother was a flight attendant. She should talk.

CONTRIBUTORS

**GREGORY BROWN** once lived and worked in Dublin.

**CLAIRE CATACOUZINOS** is Australian Greek and finished her undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree—double majors in Writing and Ancient History—Greece, Rome and Late Antiquity at Macquarie University in 2012. She is currently undertaking the Masters of Arts in Creative Writing at Macquarie from 2013-14. She enjoys writing and reading Historical Fiction focusing on ancient societies and Young Adult Fiction focusing on multiculturalism in Australia. Her blog clairecatacouzinos.wordpress.com is where she updates with new material about her novel writing, work in progress short stories and research. Her story has been cited at the website of the Helike Project (http://www.helikeproject.gr).

**GEMMA CHEW** completed her Media degree in 2012, with a major in writing. She is currently in her fourth year of Law and will graduate in 2015. She hopes that writing on the side will brighten up her legal career, and in the meantime she can be found on her blog: andgeesaid.blogspot.com.au

**ISHBEL CULLEN** enjoys observing the world around her and trying to understand what she sees. This pursuit has seen her enrol in a Bachelor of Science (Resource and Environmental Management) at the Australian National University in Canberra. She also studied cross-institutionally at Macquarie University for the first semester of 2012. Her interests are centred on the interactions between nature and society and exploring how we can live more harmoniously within our environment. Ishbel appreciates the power of effective communication, especially expression through the written word. She hopes to develop her writing as both a professional skill and a personally enriching activity.

**CARRI FISHER** is passionately interested in writing, culture and literature, and is also doing a psychology degree.

**NICHOLAOS FLORATOS** is a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Macquarie University studying writing and cultural studies. Nick prefers to think academically about most issues and is particularly concerned with matters of identity. Nick typically writes realist poetry and fiction but is currently looking to explore the fantasy genre. This year, he has dedicated himself to creating or editing one story or poem every day in order to develop a more potent style and to establish a habit of daily writing.

**NICKY GANGEMI** currently lives in Ryde with her husband Steve. They met playing Ultimate Frisbee and continue to love the sport and play in local competitions. Nicky graduated Macquarie University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts, Major in Media. She enjoys writing non-fiction pieces that reflect on social trends and the effects they have on our lives. She is currently doing an apprenticeship with CROSSWAY Anglican Church in Carlingford, training in Christian ministry and using her writing skills to put pen to paper and discuss subjects that are relevant and engaging for this audience.

Following a successful ten-year career in marketing, **KYRA GEDDES** began an Arts Degree at Macquarie University with a major in English. Her story, a post-colonial, postmodernist re-imagining of the Santa Claus myth inspired by a holiday cruise on the Baltic Sea, was her final assignment for ENGL304.

**GENEVIEVE GILES** is a 3rd year B. Arts (Media and Communications) student. She recently obtained a position as a Content Editor for a locally-owned website company.

**KATE GUNN** is a recent graduate from Macquarie University, having received her Bachelor of Media Degree in late 2012. She has always enjoyed writing, whether it be for pleasure or study. Currently, Kate is looking towards a career in writing, and is looking for a job in copy-writing or content writing. She would also like to go back and complete her Masters, or to undertake a second degree. Kate is a prolific reader and admires novelists F.Scott Fitzgerald and J.R.R Tolkien. In the far off future, she hopes to write fiction and aims to have her stories published as novels some day.

**JESSICA LEIGH KIRKNESS** studied MAS310 and MAS311 in the Media Department.

**ROB MacKENZIE** graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in Media in 2012. During his studies, his writing style focused on experiences, whether his own or those of others. His writing has addressed homeless people using Parramatta Mission's services, travel stories, and memoir writing. These stories involve lots of interviews and research, and his style developed during internships with _The Global Mail_ (Walkley Awards finalist article), Channel Nine News, and Transplant Australia. More recently, Rob's writing talents have been put to use at 2SER as on-air presenter, where he continues to share people's stories through interviews.

**HANNAH MacNICHOLAS** is in her third year at Macquarie studying a Bachelor of Arts majoring in writing. While passionate about creative writing, she dabbles in screenwriting, playwriting and journalism, working as a reporter for student publication _Grapeshot_. She hopes to one day be a published novelist.

**CHELSEA-RAE O'CONNOR** submitted her piece as the final memoir assignment in MAS311.

**S. K. RILEY** is a beached mermaid with Indigenous Australian roots. Formerly a Writing Major, her stories have appeared in several travel and non-fiction anthologies. She is currently editing a forthcoming collection of Australian Indigenous writing and completing a Media degree at Macquarie University. Riley writes from a whale songline north of Sydney.

**VALERIE WANGNET** has recently completed her Communications degree and is working in an animal welfare group in Sydney. She writes mainly creative non-fiction and has yet to publish any other forms of work. Valerie is currently focused on establishing ThinkKind, an organisation aimed at promoting humane education in Australia.

**AMY WAY** is a third year writing and modern history student. She lives on the NSW Central Coast and has worked in Pharmacy for four and a half years. Amy is considering doing a Masters degree in Writing and hopes to continue writing post-graduation, either as a profession or pastime.

**OLIVIA WHENMAN** is a third year Bachelor of Arts—Media student. She is an editor at Macquarie's student publication _Grapeshot_ and writes for various other online publications in her spare time.

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