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

You will be seen now

PoetryI saw a fin- ger loosen the zipper,the bag’s tan exterior animated by teeth.  Beneath knuckle-white shades, faces surfaced–witnesses in a waiting room.  Pareidolia or paranoia?Malice etched in putty. Everything...

An image of a lush forest at sunrise. The tall, thin trees are cast in shadows as the sun rises in the background.

From the hills of Killea

Non-fictionShe lived alone with five horses, five dogs, three cats, three geese and two ducks. She had escaped Manchester under Thatcher, gone off the grid in Tipperary and never returned. She said mass suicide was the only answer to climate catastrophe. She was the most interesting person I had ever met. Before dawn, I would write. By daybreak, I would find a pair of wellies and then muck out the stables, wheeling huge barrows of horseshit across her yard to a pile the size of a fire truck. There was little time to rest. The stove needed to be fed, constantly, with bricks of peat to keep the house warm. The horses needed to be given hay five times a day. The geese needed guarding from the foxes. I learnt to care for animals, to give them my attention.

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...

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