Staying faithful to Earth
A meditation on our planetary kin in the universe
Featured in
- Published 20241105
- ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
- Extent: 196 pp
- Paperback, ebook, PDF
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
The octopus within
I’ve now watched quite a few doctors sketch my thyroid on office pads, something they all seem to love to do, relishing that butterfly shape, the two spreading wings. They do shade-hatching on the left or right lobe, colour in a dark circle to represent the tumour and draw four little dots for the parathyroid glands. I have started to look forward to this moment when a medical specialist transforms suddenly into an artist, taking pride in their drawing, picking up a special pen with a thin black nib, concentrating on making this invisible organ real to me. They are maybe unaware that through their own idiosyncratic drawing styles, they become instantly more interesting as people. They hand over the piece of paper and explain the next steps, and I take their drawings home, magnet them to the fridge beside the more exuberant pictures done by my kids, start making the necessary calls, and turn up on time to the next appointment, curious as a child in kindergarten.
Which is how I first learnt that there is an octopus within.
More from this edition
A cynic’s guide to unbelief
Non-fiction THE TITLE OF this article is misleading – because I don’t know anything. This is important to note in case you are here thinking you...
Gay saints
Non-fictionWhat is it that makes cinema, for Pasolini, sacrosanct? The answer lies in his affinity for a painter who made only one fresco. Not only was Caravaggio’s reputation restored by Pasolini’s teacher and mentor, Roberto Longhi, but Caravaggio and Pasolini have the same taste in men. Swarthy, young and savage – as likely to sit for a portrait or engage in a bit of sloppy top as to stick a knife in your ribs. You wouldn’t want to run into his John the Baptist in a dark alley (unless maybe you would). It is not just the revolutionary psychology of Caravaggio’s painting that speaks to Pasolini but his selection of subjects – his sacralisation of the scorned, the unclean, the seething subproletariat both created and rejected by an indifferent urban landscape; Caravaggio’s ‘new kinds of people’.
Tawny child
FictionCarefully, Morgan loosened the fabric. The crying increased in volume. Eventually, the small dark head of a bawling, tawny child emerged into the clear light. Morgan looked at the child with her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, as if she were considering an heirloom of unknown value. Hans took the envelope from the fingers of the man in the blue suit and tore the gold seal. Inside were five crisp, dry banknotes. The man in the blue suit told them that such payments would be forthcoming every month, and that the child’s name was Many-gift in the local dialect, but they were to refer to him as Albert and raise him as their own.
