I dived deeper than ever,
feeling less and less human
in the lake’s little twilight zone,
only metres deep but fully expecting
creatures from books to shine
through the blackening water.
As the light left me,
my lungs throbbed coldly,
meaningfully,
and fear forced retreat.
I was distraught. Teasingly,
lovingly, older relatives
made things up:
An old nymph,
a known thief
this side of the lake,
had stolen my cap,
thinking it a vessel
of what I was,
hoping to gain
some of my youth.
She gripped the cap
and prayed, but the wrinkles
only continued to blossom.
Sold, the cap became the property
of goose grandees or the plaything
of drunken bears or the crown
of Canadian Crusoes
at midnight mountaintop revelries.
In my dreams, the saga went on:
after a storm, the thing spent
an autumn up a tree. The marvel
of the season, it barely escaped
the iconoclasm of beavers,
for whom the faux-fur maple leaf design
brought to mind the fur-mad butcher men
of their past. Furious,
they made beaver history
by building a dam up a tree,
but history was spoiled
by the wind.
Such was my fancy;
and when ants did donuts
on the car window,
I saw Herodotus’ giant ants
carving out the mountainsides,
and wondered why
whoever made the myths
forgot the ants
who carved Alberta
into dappled towers,
amphitheatric not just
in size and shape but more
in the way faces grin from the rock,
short-lived characters won and lost
with the changing of the light,
webbed into each other,
Siamese cast members
forming real-time Rushmores.
I was young:
a sudden distant glint
was not just a car,
but the desperate Morse
of lost Americans
imprisoned by a cabal
of cursed bipedal moose;
howls at bedtime
were not wolves
but wolf-nursed
wild men of other centuries;
the angry bear reported in the area
was not just hungry or rabid
but a woman willed into a bear
by revanchist treefolk sorcerers,
mourning her lost breasts,
fumbling to approximate
the opposable thumb,
stirring potions, buying
caps containing humanity.
As the rental car grumbled
toward S Half Diamond Ranch,
perhaps wanting to stretch our legs,
but more likely because
we understood that
the winner would
briefly become a man,
the right to jump out
and open the gate
was squabbled over
by me and my brothers
with the wide-eyed whirl
of the brawling dragonflies,
heralds of the Canadian summer.
At that age,
I often thought about
a school project where we
tagged plastic teddy bears
and mixed them back into the bowl:
the easiest way of counting.
You could capture and release
a thousand blue dragonflies
and never see one you tagged:
for they’d sped away
to join their confreres
at the noisy nodding logs,
lounging midair at happy hour,
forming secret dragonfly societies,
I supposed, loving and hating
each other before dying
after two weeks in little graves
near the shore, abdomens
thinning into twigs,
wings whitening into petals;
or expiring on the water
and drifting into the night
like war-weary Vikings;
except for the dragonfly
which died on me,
who my brothers
and I honoured
with a proper funeral:
daisies propped in the dust,
reeds looped into an arch,
a libation of pink lemonade.
***
Yesterday, I jumped into the lake
with the nostalgia of the nymph
and the recidivism of the nymph
and the perseverance of giant ants
carving mountains and the hardihood
of the faces at the Banff amphitheatre
and the frustration of the bear woman
and the ambition of bickering brothers
and the insistence of dragonflies
who won’t stop being reborn
from twigs and petal,
and, ignoring
what books say
about underwater creatures,
I dove far down and scratched
at the spot from eight years ago,
and, sure enough, rising hugely
from the ancient mud,
disturbing the quiet life
of the seaweed, creating
little avalanches over my fingers,
the long-lost maple leaf
is brought to light,
its colours restored
by the silent pillars of sun,
and the hat and I rise
smiling to the surface.
At any given moment in time, there are countless ripples travelling through spacetime, traversing the very fabric of our universe. These ripples are known as gravitational waves, and were first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.
Almost a century later in 2015, direct evidence of gravitational waves was finally obtained when the Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detectors, located in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana, USA detected the long-awaited signal.
The 0.2 second audible signal, which was described to resemble the “chirp” of a bird, was actually the product of a black hole collision. This event occurred more than 1 billion years ago. Two massive black holes merged into one, warping the fabric of spacetime and sending ripples through the universe which were eventually detected on Earth as tiny vibrations.
The successful LIGO experiment sent its own waves through the science community. The search for gravitational waves had consisted of decades of unrelenting hard work by over a thousand physicists around the globe and billions of dollars of investment, so the news was both extremely exciting and highly anticipated.
Now you might be wondering what is next for gravitational wave research. After all, the amazing detection of gravitational waves was already accomplished in 2015.
However, in reality, the exploration of gravitational waves has only just begun as researchers continue to use LIGO and a growing network of detectors around the world (e.g. LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration) to investigate the nature of our universe. In exciting news, the ANU, as part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), will play a central role in this global venture.
Last year I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview Dr Lilli Sun and Dr Jennie Wright, astrophysicists from ANU’s Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics to gain some further insight into the current field of gravitational wave research and ANU’s new LIGO remote control room.
Firstly, could you explain what a gravitational wave is in simple terms?
Jennie: A gravitational wave is a sort of stretching and squeezing of spacetime itself. When we have mass in the universe, it causes spacetime to curve, as explained in the theory of General Relativity. A gravitational wave is like a ripple instead of just a curve that stays still.
Lilli: You can also think of an analogy like a water wave – for example, dropping a stone in water and then seeing ripples spreading out. When we have something very heavy, like black holes that collide, they trigger those ripples in spacetime.
What are your specific research focuses and what are you currently working on?
Lilli: I do mostly astrophysics; using gravitational waves to study black holes, neutron stars, and even searching for dark matter. I do a lot of data analysis to see what the gravitational-wave signals tell us – e.g. whether it tells us that Einstein and his general theory of relativity is right or if there is something unexpected.
One of my projects is about searching for dark matter particles using gravitational waves – we don’t know if they exist or not, but analysing gravitational wave signatures is one possible way to look for them. I also work a bit on detectors, working with instrumentalists like Jennie.
Jennie: What I work on is somewhat related. I’m an instrumentalist as Lilli said, so I’m an experimental physicist and my job has two parts. Half of my time I spend at ANU, working on technologies that we can use to improve gravitational wave detectors of the future. We’re making them more sensitive so they can see further out into the universe and also can see a wider range of signal frequencies. And so, I work on developing technology that basically tries to distinguish things near the detector that look like gravitational wave sources, but actually aren’t – like a truck breaking near the detector, or just air moving near it.
The other part of my job is to help improve the current detectors. Since we use light in the gravitational wave detector to measure the stretching and squeezing of spacetime, we want to have as much light in there as possible. But, because mirrors and optical systems aren’t perfect, we sometimes lose quite a lot of light, so I look at those diagnostic measurements to try to figure out where we’re losing light.
Now that gravitational waves have already been detected, what is next for the field of gravitational wave research?
Lilli: There are many aspects actually: the 2015 discovery was only the beginning. The 2015 event for two black holes colliding into each other and the famous 2017 event for a two neutron star collision are very highlighted events, but now we are collecting many more of them including some special systems. The large number of detections will bring us important information of the population.
There are other types of gravitational waves. For example, we are looking for very faint gravitational waves from a single spinning neutron star. Neutron stars are not perfect spheres, so when they rotate they can generate very weak gravitational waves, which is something we are searching for. Another example is to probe dark matter using gravitational waves. So, we need more sensitive detectors and more of them in the network.
Moving onto the ANU remote control room, what exactly is a control room and how specifically would the remote control room work?
Jennie: So, a control room is usually a room you have next to a lab with an experiment in it: usually one that needs to be in either a really clean environment, or a slightly dangerous environment. So, you set all the physical parts of it up, so you can obtain electronic signals through to your control room that tell you what is happening. And then you can do all the data-taking and analysis from that control room.
In LIGO, they have the control rooms right next to the detector because they don’t want to be walking around next to the detector while it’s running, as they might introduce noise to it. They also have a whole bank of screens which decipher how each sub-system is working.
About the remote control room: whilst we don’t have a gravitational wave detector in Australia, many Australian scientists have been involved in gravitational wave detection from the start, and so this allows us to participate in improving the detector remotely. So, you can see on some of the screens here, I have a read-out of the different sub-systems and if they’re working correctly. For example, green tells us that they’re observing data and red tells us that they’re down and need to be fixed. And this is all in real time.
That’s really useful, because before we had this, we just had the little screen on our computers, and you had to try to view everything simultaneously and it was quite difficult. My colleagues and I will also occasionally do shifts when the detector is running, because we might have to call up people in other countries. If there’s an exciting gravitational wave event, we sometimes need to announce things to other astronomers, so they can point their telescopes to certain parts of the sky.
Lilli: Although it’s a ‘remote’ control room, you can still control some of the sub-systems of the detector. It’s just that we need to be very careful, especially during observation. There will be someone in charge in the real control room, and we can collaborate with them. The advantage of having the remote control room is that it makes it much easier for Australian colleagues, as we are not close to the detector, but we can read off the real-time information in a much more convenient way, on the other side of the world.
So, the detector isn’t always on all the time?
Jennie: There’s a trade-off between the physicists who work on improving it, and the astronomers who want to collect data using it. If you improve the sensitivity, you’re more likely to see really exciting events we haven’t seen before. But if you increase the time the detector is on for, you’re also more likely to see more events. So, there are sometimes periods where we’re not touching the detector for around 18 months, and periods where there is no data collection for a year, and maintenance and upgrading occurs.
From a bigger perspective, what role is Australia and ANU playing in the further research of gravitational waves?
Lilli: Australia is one of the major collaborators in the large international LIGO-VIRGO-KAGRA collaboration. There is a large group here working on gravitational wave astrophysics and detector science. These days, Australian scientists also want to propose and work towards building an Australian detector in the future, which is pretty exciting.
Right now, we are also thinking about the next generation detectors – like what kind of design and technology is needed that can give us a one-order of magnitude increase in sensitivity, which can get us much deeper into the universe. Australian colleagues are working on both the existing science of gravitational waves, but also the future.
Jennie: In the past, Australia has developed sub-systems which are now used in the detector, contributing mirrors for example. Also, Lilli is in charge of the calibration group for LIGO, and that’s just an example, but we have a lot of staff in Australia who are leading some aspect of the LIGO scientific collaboration’s research. We’ve also been instrumental in the design of something called the Squeezer which is used in LIGO to improve its sensitivity, making the detectors the quantum instruments that they are.
Lilli: Regarding astrophysics and data analysis, there are quite a few large groups from different Australian universities within OzGrav working on the data being collected these days. A lot of studies are carried out in Australia, but we also work very closely with international colleagues.
What are some benefits of these large-scale projects, e.g. do they help bring countries closer together and encourage international cooperation?
Lilli: I think yes, definitely. These days, it’s getting difficult to do small narrow research projects by yourself. With projects like gravitational wave detectors, you have large instruments, and that involves many different aspects: you need to work with engineers on different sub-systems, theoretical physicists to understand how the astrophysics work, software engineers and data analysts for dealing with huge amounts of data, and also astronomers who do different kinds of follow-up observations. All these people are playing important roles, and they come from different countries, different parts of the world. Close collaboration is critical.
Jennie: I think it’s really useful to have these big projects, because any falling out between countries can get in the way. It also definitely broadened my horizons, as I’m from Scotland, which isn’t as multicultural. Without science, I definitely wouldn’t have travelled and experienced different cultures as much.
Last question, what’s your advice for students looking to get into this field or just interested in your research?
Lilli: I think there are lots of chances for students to talk to us and do small projects. If they’re really interested there are lots of ways to get into the field. We do lots of summer/winter projects and we also teach undergraduate courses, where we discuss gravitational waves at a more basic level. Many students are interested, and we have extended discussions and they come to us for small projects or Honours and end up staying for PhD.
Jennie: I think definitely the best way is just to email someone who works in the fields. Academics love students being interested in their research, otherwise they wouldn’t be working at a university and teaching. I’m really happy whenever a student asks me, and I think that’s how I got involved in the field too.
Lilli: Yes, definitely talk to academics and lecturers in the field if you’re interested.
Jennie: And I think that’s the same in all areas of science as well, people are super keen to tell you about their research, you just have to ask them.
Photograph of some of the screens in the control room.
Dr Jennie Wright (left) and Dr Lilli Sun (right) in the remote control room.
A huge thank you to Dr Lilli Sun and Dr Jennie Wright for taking the time to do an interview and for so generously sharing their knowledge.
Comments Off on Interview with Chri$tian Gate$ – Woroni Artist Series
Chri$tian Gate$ is an up-and-coming alternative rock and pop artist from California, USA who has recently released his debut Extended Play (EP); Why Do I Hear Breathing?. The 20 year old musician boasts an impressive social media presence and is slated to perform at Lollapalooza 2023. We sat down with Chri$tian Gate$ to discuss his debut EP, his creative process, and the importance of social media for young musicians.
Let’s start with our first question. You’ve recently released Why Do I Hear Breathing?. We just want to know what’s the song that you’re proudest of on the album?
I think Never with You Again is probably my favourite. When I first wrote it, we made the acoustic. My friend, Sarcastic Sounds, played the acoustic while we were all on a writing camp together and I had a feeling, I was like, “I feel like if I get my heart broken, I want to use this”, and then my heart got broken. So then I immediately drove to my producer friend’s house and I was like, “hey, I need to write something to this, let’s record something”, and I sat in the car for like 30 minutes. I wrote the song and I was like, “hey, can we record?” He’s like, “no people are sleeping in my house”. And I’m like, “well, what can we do?” and he’s like, “we can try recording at the park”. So then we went to the park and we recorded the whole song and somehow it sounds like it was recorded in the studio and I think it came out really, really dope.
That’s amazing. What was the hardest song to create on Why Do I Hear Breathing?? Obviously you recorded in a park for one of your songs. But was that the hardest song or were there other songs on it that you were like, wow, this is really difficult, but you’re glad that you got it done.
Most of them came together pretty smoothly. [The song] Why Do I Hear Breathing? had some issues with putting it out. Some people were not letting it happen, like holding it back, but then it finally came out. So maybe that, but everything else seemed to work out fine.
You’ve mentioned that getting your heart broken, I’m very sorry about that, was sort of your main source of inspiration. Is that sort of the whole main inspiration for Why Do I Hear Breathing? or is it just what you were feeling at the time of writing each song?
If you go in order, the EP is the different insecure thoughts you can get throughout a relationship until it inevitably ends. So each song in order are just my thoughts. And then the final song [BREATHE] is just like a bonus song about me having a twin and then murdering him and dressing in his clothes to reap his fame.
You’ve released songs before Why Do I Hear Breathing?. Did the EP have a different source of inspiration or was this just like continuing on from what you’ve started with?
I think it was pretty similar, but I’m making a new EP and that is coming out pretty soon, in the next few months. And that one has a very different inspiration. I can’t say what it is yet, but it is totally different, but it’s really cool.
So tell me a little bit more about your creative process just in general. What is your starting point when you are making a song?
I would say I start with someone who knows how to play guitar or piano really well and we just go through a bunch of different chords. Once we find a chord progression that fits the vibe I’m in, we go from there and then kind of figure out what we want to write about. Most of the time it’s true experiences that I’ve been through or those of people close to me. It’s like I’m telling other people stories who wouldn’t really be able to tell the stories themselves. And that’s pretty much it.
I’m excited to listen to it when it comes out then! So moving to more about you as a musician. We’ve seen that you are performing at Lollapalooza this year, but you’ve also performed live before. What is your most memorable live performance so far?
I did a show in Chicago and there were two fans that wanted me to sign their chest with a Sharpie. I had to sign everybody really fast and I signed both of them and they said “we’re gonna go get this tattooed” and I was like, “no, please don’t”. It was like a big giant ugly signature on their chest. I told them, “please don’t, just send me a picture of you with a tattoo artist and then I’ll come back and I’ll do it better and then you can get that tattooed”. I was gonna do it like way smaller, but they went and they sent me videos of them just getting those tatted. It’s cool that somebody would do that, but it sucks that they did it.
Are you looking forward to performing at Lollapalooza? I’ve sort of seen who you’re performing with and it’s quite a big show with big names.
I’m excited. There’s a lot of people there that I’d love to see and I got a lot of friends performing there. It’s gonna be really cool. It’s my first festival. I’ve never been to a festival before, so I can’t wait.
You found your footing in the music industry and popularity through TikTok and other social media. Do you think the value of platforms like TikTok is for young emerging artists like yourself and other people?
I think it is priceless. There’s no other way that I know of to get a similar result within a similar amount of time. It’s probably the best tool that you could ask for.
Do you have any advice for young people looking to get into the music scene?
Only do it if you really, really want to do it and you don’t care about money. A lot of the time the money won’t come for a while. If you’re motivated by the wrong reasons, your music is gonna suffer and your mental health will suffer as well.
Finally, do you have anything that you would want people to know about you?
I’m making a new EP and I’m excited about it. It’s a folk, borderline country-but-not EP and it’s way different but way different in a cool way. And I’m just, I’m so excited for this to come out.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time.
Chri$tian Gate$’s debut EP Why Do I Hear Breathing? is available to stream on all major platforms. The music video for Never With You Again is out now on YouTube.
Kneel with me, smell here: dirt turned red from white.
Look up at the open canopy, shadows
You made for us. It’s the hellfire of night
Where the ouroboros ends and rage grows.
I inherited this anger chest-to-chest with my mother,
As we watched the hillside, the eagles, burn–
Listening to the cries of ancestors
Holding hot leaden breath, waiting our turn.
Call me an animal? I’ll grow canines.
Didn’t your forefathers tell you, warn you:
Don’t bring a dog leash to a genocide.
I want to hollow out your chest, fill you
With the scorching ash of my matriarchs–
Them ones you insist you left in the past.
I often hear Western scholars preach about the ouroboros, without knowing how it feels to lose a beginning. Black Summer is the story of the displacement of my family. At 16, I wanted nothing more than to see somebody else suffer for what happened to us. I wished that the boiling force inside me — that one everybody kept calling ‘teenage angst’ — could cheat time and blow apart the hull of the first ship to touch these shores. These days, my matriarchs tell me how proud they are, that I choose to unleash my rage one day at a time.
Let yourself be whole now
With your hands in the Earth
Your feet in the crystal shallows
Your core grounded and unshakeable
Let yourself be swallowed
Taken entirely
By the evanescent tide of you as complete
With no gleam or hesitation
Saunter on
To the greatest motion with no name
Where you do not have the answers
Only the tools
To carve and make space
For your wholeness
To breathe
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 2 ‘To Be Confirmed’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Comments Off on Advocacy, Consultancy and Community: A Day With The DSA
One sunny Wednesday during the teaching break, Co Disabilities Officer, Maddi McCarthy, sat down for a chat with Woroni in their Spoon Space, located in Copland. Maddi outlined the challenges and rewards of providing advocacy for disabled students and consultancy for the ANU. From the 26th of September through to the 30th the Disabilities Students Association will be running a series of events for Spoon Week. For more details and how to get involved with the DSA, see here.
Maddi, how long have you been involved with the Disabilities Student Association (DSA)?
I got involved at the start of last year because I was a disability advocate at a res hall and as part of that I had to be involved with the Department.
What was the difference between working for the Department versus your res hall?
In my res hall people didn’t really know what disability meant. Working in a collective is very different because everyone who engages is very aware. My work in the hall setting was very much just trying to introduce what disability was, destigmatising it, and trying to make my hall more accessible because hall accessibility is a real problem. That work was really just case by case sort of helping run events and making them accessible whereas in the collective it’s institutional advocacy.
You mentioned that you’ve worked on a case-by-case basis and at an institutional level, do you think one of these offers more value to students than the other? Do you see your institutional work at the ANU actually paying off?
When the institutional level work does pay off it is very beneficial but institutional advocacy is a lot harder because it is really difficult to see that change. When it does happen it is very rewarding.
When it’s one-on-one you see the change faster and it is more gratifying in the moment. It’s a lot easier to work with someone individually versus trying to institute a systemic change. When you do actually succeed in changing something for the university it is more beneficial for more people. I guess they both have their own merits.
Has the ANU historically been uncooperative with the DSA?
Yes [laughs] for sure. We have done campaigns this year and while the people we talk to from the ANU seem to be very open, the actual changes don’t eventuate. It is very hard to make change happen at the ANU. Working with lecturers seems to be a bit easier and we see change happening there but when working with colleges or the ANU as a whole, they seem to be a little more reluctant and are sometimes quite difficult to work with. It is a bit frustrating when we keep trying to do stuff and they keep pushing back.
Why do you think they are reluctant to action your recommendations?
I think with a lot of the changes we are pushing for they are pushing back because it’s either more convenient for them or it’s a money thing. For example, the most recent thing we’ve been doing is trying to make ANU keep all classes hybrid for the near future, especially while COVID-19 is still a factor. I think for them they consider that that is either more effort or it is not benefitting them. They want to push everyone back onto campus because maybe that will mean they’ll get more money from res halls or stuff like that. For us we’re trying to push it from the perspective of ‘this is harming your students’ but when you’re working with a university whose main priority is money, profitability is a big thing. Not that they’ve ever actually admitted that to us, but I do think that’s a lot of what it is. Or they are just reluctant to make changes because it is not going to be easy for them.
With DSA Collective members, for a lot of them hybrid learning is a matter of their health and safety rather than convenience; what does it mean then to be an advocate for your Collective in that context?
For Collective members these policies literally damage us. For us to have to push for our own safety is really emotionally difficult. People who are immunocompromised or who have health conditions, for them to, for example, get COVID-19, it is not just a matter of “I will isolate for a week and I’ll be fine”. Our collective members can get really sick and have permanent health problems that result from it. To keep hearing ANU complain about effort and workload, knowing that people in our Collective that we work with are going to suffer for it, is really difficult. But it makes us quite passionate about the issues and it’s one of the things that makes us want to really do the work.
It feels like the stakes are really high in the DSA particularly.
Yes, for sure. When you have friends in the collective who tell you stories about how sick they’ve been in the past and how scared they are, yeah, it is really difficult.
It seems a large component of your job then is emotional burden.
For sure it is. Because even when it is not to do with the COVID-19 stuff – even just fighting for Education Access Plans (EAP) for example – all we’re doing is trying to access our education and we just need accommodations in place for us to be able to do that. When you’ve got all this pushback it is frustrating because we are just trying to access university. In whatever setting it’s happening in, and with whatever we’re fighting for at the time, it always just comes back to that.
Other than hybrid learning, what is the number one thing that the DSA wants right now?
One of the other things we are pushing for is EAPs. A lot of students have EAPs and we get a lot of individual advocacy come through to us where the lecturers refuse to acknowledge it or refuse to accept EAPs. We are really trying to push for EAP training and sensitivity training.
One thing we’ve noticed a lot is people who are trying to ask for EAPs are often asked to justify themselves and they’re putting in a lot of emotional labour just to get an EAP accepted, which is not something we think should be happening. That has been an ongoing struggle for years: to get lecturers to understand EAPs and to not ask students to justify why they need it. We’re working with Access and Inclusion to achieve that.
Do you find Access and Inclusion to be an effective partner?
I think they’re valuable in getting EAPs and a lot of people do have good experiences getting EAPs. There are some issues that we’ve had with them in the past, but we tend to be able to work through it with them and they are definitely a valuable resource for us. They’re the reason we have EAPs in the first place.
If we do need official ANU back up because we’re fighting an EAP case it is good to have them as a partner because they’re ANU staff. Sometimes if lecturers aren’t responding to a student perspective it can be helpful to have ANU step in to back us up as well.
What do you think the DSA means to the institution of the ANU?
I would hope it’s a good resource for them to communicate with but sometimes it does feel like it’s just ticking a box.
The DSA, or at least myself and Mira (the other co-officer), are in a lot of working groups and we’re consulted by pro-VCs [deputy to the Vice-Chancellor] and stuff like that but sometimes it does just feel like “oh we’ve talked to the DSA and they’ve approved it, we’re good to go”. We hope we are a resource for the ANU to use to make sure the work they are doing is accessible. That is what we think we should be. But a lot of the time it does feel like they think “we’ve checked with the disabled people, they’re fine with it”.
What do you think it means to ANU students in a cultural sense?
For a lot of ANU students with a disability it is still quite stigmatised to stand up and say “I have a disability” so to have a space and to have a collective with other students who are experiencing very similar things is really comforting and safe. Especially for me it took me a long time to be comfortable with the fact that I am disabled and so to have people around me who have gone through the same thing is really nice. Then having people support you and advocate for you is really good as well. It is really good to be able to go to a collective and talk about things where people can relate to you. Having a safe space where you know you’re accepted and understood is really important.
Other than those reasons why should someone get involved with the DSA?
Other than the fact it is a community, I think it is good to be involved because it’s good to have people who can back you up. If you have any questions you can come to us because we are understanding about disability and how it functions in a tertiary education institution. You can come to us for information, for the social aspect, for advocacy and other resources.
Any closing remarks?
I’d like to reinforce that disability is a wide term. I think a lot of people don’t even know what it means or if they fall under the definition. It’s so broad – mental health, anaphylaxis, food allergies and physical disability all qualify. We’re really inclusive and we’re trying to spread what that definition is and break down the stigma of what a disabled person looks like.
A girl imagines she could jump.
Despite a window in place,
and four metres of space.
Still, she imagines.
Above her,
the noise is –
Leaking.
Through his head
phones he can hear –
it.
It’s not quite a buzz –
he can hear it even though
it’s not quite a buzz and
He’s wearing his headphones and
it’s leaking.
The girl adjacent wants you to
Please excuse the pun.
As she speaks, the room
cannot find the pun.
Yet,
The room does not exist
but for his eyes,
Thinks a boy as he
lets his hand fall,
between their two chairs.
The man in the corner pulls at his hair
because he is looking at the girl looking
at the window
imagining she could jump.
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Swaying gently,
Solidly moored by a vast civilisation of roots below.
Generations of growth and decay,
Growth and decay.
Life goes on for the Eucalypts.
Slivers of bark
Suspended by svelte branches.
Slender limbs macabrely examine their former skin.
An ashen pallor to the trunk,
Smudged shades of grey and green and blue and white
By the brush of Albert Namatjira.
The ghost gum stands tall and straight on this plane and in the next.
For want of water, nurture and relief,
Pines and Firs and Oaks will wither and crumble
Under the golden sun in the red dirt of the Lucky Country.
Far from home.
Something so pale and so spindly
Should succumb to the will of the colonisers.
Nature should bend to man’s will.
And yet in my lifetime and the next, the Eucalypt is well rooted.
I remember the distinct feeling of wanting to throw a frying pan at my brother’s face in the middle of an argument, but six months later, as he visits Sydney from Melbourne, all I feel is love and the urge to give him a hug. How could my feelings for him have changed so dramatically? Was our reconciliation just a matter of time?
As my rollercoaster feelings about my brother have taught me, time is a powerful phenomenon. It is the natural path that allows reconciliation between individuals or groups. My personal guru, Justin Bieber, asks for forgiveness and reconciliation in his renowned song Sorry: “Yeah, I know that I let you down, is it too late to say I’m sorry now?” In fact, as I could tell Justin personally, it is never too late to say you are sorry, rather you just have to give the person you’re apologising to enough time to be able to accept your gesture of reconciliation. In contrast, seeking reconciliation hot on the heels of an argument is never a good idea. That’s when you really could end up with a frying pan in the face. Time allows the sting of hurt to fade. Our memories, especially of pain, don’t linger. I remember the sharp flame of the anger I felt towards my brother, but now it is distant, dim. Just a memory with no power.
Almost every adage about reconciliation expresses the common wisdom that ‘time heals’, just ‘give it time’ and ‘time softens the blow’. But why is time such a powerful healer? How does it help reconciliation? It’s more than just forgetting. Having time allows one to reflect, and this can lead to acknowledgement to take responsibility for our own part in the hurt that has occurred. This recognition is the first step to reconciliation. When storm clouds are closing over a relationship, time is the light that sheds understanding on a situation.
In Gwen Harwood’s poem, Father and Child, time plays an interesting but key factor. It is clear in I Barn Owl that the father and child share a relationship lacking in trust as the child secretly “crept out with (the) father’s gun”. However, in II Nightfall, as forty years have passed, the child reflects on the relationship, fondly stating: “what memories pack them home”. Has time allowed them to overcome mistrust and reconcile? Has it cleared the skies over their relationship? Or was there another decisive factor, perhaps the father’s approaching death?
If time was a person, death would be its older sibling. The painful experience of death, as the end of time, has the ability to force reconciliation as an imperative, in a way that time does not. Infinite amounts of time allow for an infinite number of future opportunities for reconciliation. Death marks the last and ultimate deadline for this opportunity, creating a strong incentive for forgiveness before it is too late. But why does this urge occur? We are taught at a young age, from the classic Disney movies, that there should always be a happy ending at the close of every story. Cinderella forgives her evil step-sisters, before riding into the sunset with a prince. Perhaps from childhood we subliminally believe this fairy-tale message that being generous, forgiving and reconciling with those who’ve hurt us means we might be rewarded, maybe with a prince?
When facing the end of a life’s story, with death, the concept of a happy ending through reconciliation finds expression in popular psychology as ‘closure’— the healing or conclusion to a personal loss or trauma. Why leave the story unfinished with loose ends? In terms of reconciliation, one simply needs closure to be satisfied, otherwise the pain of death is all-consuming.
However, maybe it isn’t time or death but our primal need for social interaction that allows reconciliation to occur? Ultimately if we didn’t crave connection, we would have no compulsion to reconcile. Relationships are too complex for tensions not to arise – and so we are constantly having to resolve this. If I wasn’t able to forgive my brother for always dipping his fingers in my tea, my parents would have to celebrate two separate Christmases. Humans need family; we need friends and partners in order to be happy in life. Reconciliation isn’t always motivated by love; it could be the result of our innate fear or anxiety of being alone. We have to be able to reconcile, or else we would live a solitary, and sad, life. The lonely storm cloud in a sky of blue: separate and distant.
Ultimately, regardless of why reconciliation occurs, it is a self-determined process. In Father and Child, the mistrust between the two protagonists are relatively minor, or at least able to be overcome in their eyes. But would that be true if their relationship had suffered a more serious wound? It is up to the individual to decide whether the relationship is worth reconciling; to decide whether the problem is forgivable, or even if they have the will. Do they want to wake up to blue skies instead of grey? I always forgive my brother, knowing that within 24 hours of him being home he will wind me up again. I reconcile with him on the understanding that even if his behaviour is unlikely to change, it is more painful not to be reconciled. The feeling of connection provides an embedded metaphysic map to reconciliation. Perhaps every relationship is a series of betrayals and reconciliations.
Reconciliation helps an individual progress their identity, and better understand themselves and others. Like most things in life, reconciliation is a learning experience and a choice, irrespective of the factors that contribute to it.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
I’ve been staring out this window my entire life
I see the same people and hear the same sounds
Blending into one beautiful terrifying shape
Breathing and sweating and crying
Waltzing in time with each beat of the day
The mechanical stream of what is and what isn’t
The blood and the veins of a living picture show
Peering into me as I try to contain it
This window never cracks
Although it may dirty
For months at a time without a polish
Where the figurines have no faces
And the hymns they sing are anguished
Where the sun runs away
And the sky is unfinished
The motions go on
Against better judgement
As I swim into my twentieth year
The window opens
More than ever before
And the beings and trees are angrier
Yet so loving and warm and tender
This window endures
To scold and to liberate
Embracing all grace and imperfection
Beyond the fragile prison of my mind
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.