The trouble with eternity

Featured in

  • Published 20241105
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

I had a dream about the afterlife:

I died quite unexpectedly

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

About the author

Phil Brown

Phil Brown is an arts journalist and commentator, poet and author who has worked for all the major news outlets in Australia and internationally.

More from this edition

The window

FictionOne dinner, in the midst of playing with Seb in the reflection, Rudi laughing and squealing away, there came the distinct burst of a sob. We stopped in our tracks, looking around at each other in confusion until we located the downturned whimpering in Tim’s eyes and mouth. What is it? I asked, putting my hand on his shoulder. He turned and buried his face into my neck. What is it? I repeated. I don’t like them, he moaned, his hand pointing towards the window.

Staying faithful to Earth

Non-fictionIt is a startlingly new discovery that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy. Even if early astronomers (like Kepler) intuited that other suns must have planets, we didn’t have definitive proof until very recently that our solar system is not unique in consisting of planets orbiting a star. The first exoplanet was confirmed in 1992; the first exoplanet around a star similar to our sun was discovered in 1995. The latest count is over 5,000 and growing. Discoveries have stacked up so fast that astronomers and astrophysicists who used to know each individual exoplanet by name now say it’s impossible to keep track of those that exist in just one small part of the Milky Way, with thousands more expected to be found in the coming years.

Religion as resistance

Non-fictionIn their youth, my parents participated in the anti-­apartheid movement, attending meetings and outlawed protests. From birth their lives had been prescribed by the apartheid regime, from the suburbs they could live in to the beaches they could swim at to the benches they could sit on; there was little it saw fit to leave unregulated. Both of their families had been forcibly relocated from District Six when it had been reclassified as a whites-­only area. They attended Coloured schools, where they were taught by both white and Coloured teachers. At one of these schools, my teenaged mother challenged a teacher for making a racist comment and subsequently chose to leave the school when they backed the teacher instead. My father’s father was a Shaykh, his uncle an eminent Islamic scholar known across both the Cape and wider South Africa. In their youth, my parents participated in the anti-­apartheid movement, attending meetings and outlawed protests. From birth their lives had been prescribed by the apartheid regime, from the suburbs they could live in to the beaches they could swim at to the benches they could sit on; there was little it saw fit to leave unregulated. Both of their families had been forcibly relocated from District Six when it had been reclassified as a whites-­only area. They attended Coloured schools, where they were taught by both white and Coloured teachers.

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