Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
A little too close to the sun
When this essay was reprinted on The Guardian website on 6 July 2017, the writer added the short introduction...
Still talkin’ up to the white woman
THE NAKED WOMAN is only visible when my manager’s door is open – when closed it is unclear what the...
Peasant dreaming
I’m currently doing a course on holistic farming near the southern New South Wales town of Braidwood. I had expected it to be full of ruddy-cheeked cattlemen in their forties and fifties; instead it is mostly people like me, tertiary-educated thirtysomethings who want to grow their own food to nourish their vocations. We are writers, a ceramicist and a filmmaker; a market gardener with a background in conservation; the manager of a local farmers’ market and her partner, who feeds his chooks on maggots from roadkill kangaroos.
Of monsters and men
ON A SATURDAY morning in March 2014, I found myself speaking in front of a crowd of five thousand...
Conversations with my sister
ON THE WAY home from Brisbane airport, my older sister Tammy turns to me from the driver’s seat and...
The spectator
I WENT TO a high school filled with smart kids. Kids who had been specially selected because their brains...
Today is already yesterday
I WAS BORN in 1983, the same year as Microsoft Word. It was also the year the first mobile...
A cry from the heart
I’M THE GENERATION that could spell the end of nature. I’m the generation that could farewell real-life connections. I’m the generation...
Revering the other
EACH DAY AT sunset I sit on my fourth-storey balcony in Oman and look out over the pastel-pink town,...
The bystander
The median strip led to the other side of the highway. We emerged boot-first into a flood of oncoming headlights. Screams howled from the back seat. ‘I’m dead,’ I thought. Then it hit. Another car, speed meeting speed, like two protons colliding. I didn't get the luxury of a concussion. I stayed awake the whole way through. There was a glimpse of black, a few seconds max, when my head reeled from the soft impact against the dashboard. White pinwheels spun on the inside of my eyelids. Blood flooded back into my feet and fingers. After that everything went berserk.
Under the skin
Everyone forgets that the real force behind the feminist movement was individual women’s disappointment with men. Even though equal...
To my future child
TO MY FUTURE child: Your grandmother’s mother, my wai-po, is a pack rat. I parked in her garage twice a...
