Know thyself

Confronting fate through mythology and science

Featured in

  • Published 20250506
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-07-4
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

THE FIRST TIME I left Australia, I was six years old. My parents took my sister and I to Greece, the original home of our grandparents and great-grandparents.

My first memory of this journey is seeing the Parthenon glowing in the sunset while drinking portokaláda (orange soda). We visited my great uncles and aunts and our cousins in Halkida, on the island of Evia. 

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Reluctant farewell to a trusted companion

I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Natural History, basically anywhere that allowed strollers. I spent a lot of time in Barnes & Noble on 86th (which is now, depressingly, a Target). There was even special stroller parking on the kids’ level.

In fact, I didn’t really go anywhere that I couldn’t get to with the stroller. The children and I only left Manhattan a total of nine times the entire year (three times to go to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, twice to go to a Greek restaurant in Astoria that had an extremely high Zagat rating and was very good, once to go to the Bronx Zoo, once to go to Brooklyn to see what all the fuss was about, once on the train to Boston and once we hired a car to drive to Washington, DC to spend Easter with friends). That was it.

Here was the thing – the red double stroller gave me the freedom and security of knowing that I could go outside with both children, be completely prepared with all my accessories and baby/toddler supplies and everything would be okay. If I could make a plan to leave the apartment and walk there with the stroller, I would do it.

More from this edition

When the ships become water nymphs

Poetry Swans that are almost swans, sharp-tongued fruits,  mocking sheep farmers whose faces grow woollen, dancers at the bush-doof manic to their portable generators – changes come swift...

Hidden tracks

Non-fictionYoung and Kucyk are as good at tracking down hard-to-find people as they are at tracking down hard-to-find music, although sometimes they do reach dead ends. Their methods aren’t particularly advanced and are often helped by luck. Sometimes they’ll raid the White Pages. Sometimes they’ll search for relatives of musicians online. Sometimes – as in the case of another song on Someone Like Me – they’ll scour through five years’ worth of archived weekly newsletters from a Seventh Day Adventist Church in the UK and Ireland and spot a tiny article that contains the full name of a mysterious musician they’re trying to find.

Bypassing the gatekeepers

Non-fiction IN THE OPENING scene of the Copa 71 documentary, we see US women’s soccer great Brandi Chastain watch archival football footage on an iPad.  (Chastain...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.