I don’t see myself as deeply superstitious, but I won’t walk under a ladder or clean my flat on the first day of the Lunar New Year. There’s a practical element to not walking under a ladder; not cleaning my flat on New Year’s day, however, is purely symbolic.
Read MoreThe house is closed up in preparation for my research trip: power points switched to off position, stray food tucked away in Tupperware containers, pot plants entrusted to friends, blinds pulled all the way across. A friend’s car is already packed and sitting in the driveway, ready to leave for the airport.
Read MoreFor the two weeks over the Christmas break I return to my parents’ home in Perth. Each day we peel and dice a large basin of fruit salad. Baby nephews gurgling on the living-room tiles, cousins sprawled asleep on the sofas; someone will be singing in the shower while my brother-in-law and my father take apart a bike on the verandah. A tiny knife makes exacting work.
Read MoreI am afraid.
I fear the degree to which violence is proliferating across our planet and the ways in which it is manifesting in the lives of the young. And I’m afraid that we, the collective adults of the world, are not nearly as outraged by this as we should be.
Read MoreIn the summer, we don’t sleep because we’re tired.
We sleep because the distinction between the world and our bodies becomes hazy and hard to define.
The rivulets are in true turmoil; and it feels such a Tasmanian word, rivulet, as though the island's landscape requires a distinct vocabulary, a pastiche of nomenclature borrowed from the world: tier, sugarloaf, tarn, ben, quoin.
Read MoreThe coffee rock on the headland beach is a bit imposing if your Christmas was inactive. It can be an effort on a warm day. Many times you will want to stop and admire the water.
Read MoreHeat/hope/waste
And the new season sets
The new season sets in and brings gifts
Gifts of heat, gifts of rest
Gifts of faces of familiar kind
And in the season hides
I remember hearing someone say that yor breath
is the one thread that flows thru ya whole life.
Chart Collective is thrilled to announce our upcoming online publishing project, the Longer Light Series. This series of writing, photography, comic, film and music will explore the idea that our personal rituals – from the mundane to the grand – tether us to special places and particular times.
Read MoreI want to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and to pay my respects to elders past and present.
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