Journal
Articles
The landlord’s son
THE LANDLORD’S SON arrived unannounced, just before dinner. Mia saw him from the window as he crossed the paddock...
This woman’s work
Life seemed easier – in the Tampon ads – like go roller-skating or scale a mountain with a heavy...
Conditions of Entry
Thirty lines max, it says. Only twenty-nine left as some wag might have quipped but who’s counting? All bags must be opened for...
Spirit Mama Bali
for Dessi, Thinker Nails (Ubud) Spirit Mama Bali wears a wet shirt. Her honey amber coconuts are unrepentant, and the crescent...
Libretti
You spend your Centrelink payment on a dinner package to the opera. Madama Butterfly. You rent a suit, tie,...
Hello weary traveller
your coming was whispered to me, long-long ago my heart warms and sizzles to have you folded at my roots your arrival...
Year of the Snake
celebrate the Year of the Snake with Penfolds! Marshall is marking this Lunar New Year with a special edition Emberton III speaker new...
Shopping at Babel
All civilized states have considered it their primary duty to provide for equal weights, measures, and coins – REPORT FROM...
Menopause™
Because I was not yet forty-five, my doctor asked the pathologist to look at my fertility hormones. The results showed that while my ovaries were still producing oestradiol, the strongest form of oestrogen, my levels of follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinising hormone were high. These results indicated I was perimenopausal – I would likely go through menopause sometime in the next two years.
Wanting it all
I’m really interested in why we want these things. I know I’m personally drawn to clever marketing – the kind that makes you think, ‘If only I had that thing, maybe then I’d feel complete’, or ‘Once I get it, maybe the wanting will stop.’ But, of course, once we’re in that loop, it’s never enough. As soon as the package arrives, we’re already craving the next fix.
Undisclosed funds
In 2022, the American culture writer Jordan Calhoun penned a column in The Atlantic that I still think about. In his piece, Calhoun recalls the financial precarity of his college years, where he began ‘the first of many adventures being surrounded by people I felt were rich while I pretended not to be poor’: stealing food when his study allowance ran out, scanning the pages of textbooks in a bookshop when he couldn’t afford to buy his own copies. No one he knew talked openly about their income or spending habits – so as Calhoun grew older and sought to overcome his ongoing struggles with money, he turned to pop culture in the hope of gaining insight into what ‘“normal” finances’ looked like.
Rent-a-grave
Renewable or limited grave tenure is considered a niche burial option by the few cemeteries in New South Wales that offer it. I hadn’t heard of it until I began looking into sustainable deathcare after a conversation with a friend about water cremation (or alkaline hydrolysis): a process whereby the body is broken down in a steel vat of hydrogen peroxide and water, heated to 93 degrees.
