Glass Issue 10: Down The Rabbit Hole - 2020

Why Glass?

After many an editing session ending in eye strain, at one point or another the entire team has ended up with a pair of glasses. Despite being half-blind from staring at computers in lockdown, we love reading every submission we get. Glass is about eye-opening experiences and opinions, with or without glasses.

COVER IMAGE KATLIN LITT

Acknowledgement of Country

Glass Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the Turrbal and Yugara peoples as the First Nations owners of the lands where QUT now stands. We pay respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging, and their lores, customs and creation spirits. We recognise that these lands have always been places of teaching, research, learning and storytelling. Glass Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the important role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people play within the Meanjin community.

Cultural Warning

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following magazine may contain references to deceased persons.

Disclaimer

Glass Media informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this issue of Glass belong solely to the author, and not necessarily express the views of Glass Media or the QUT Guild.

THE GLASS EDITORS

ANAHITA EBRAHIMI JASMIN GRAVES EM READMAN ASHLEIGH NORTH

Editor’s Letter

We are grateful that you were one of the 27,000+ viewers on our website this year. Across hundreds of online articles and 308 pages of physical magazine, we’ve watched Glass blossom into one of the premier student publications in the Australian Academic community. We could not possibly be prouder of what this magazine has become in 2020.

We thought, as this is the last magazine for this year, we would get each editor to share their favourite moments from the year:

JASMIN: Going to the print store in Fortitude Valley to pick up the first issue of the year ‘Breaking the Stigma’ was definitely my highlight. Our first issue was a rollercoaster of a production as we all had lofty dreams for what we wanted to achieve. I’m thrilled to say that the ‘Breaking the Stigma’ and the subsequent issues have surpassed my expectations. This is mostly in part to the calibre of submissions we received but also due to our amazing graphic designers, Aidan and Emily.

EM: My favourite aspect of the role was seeing contributors submit to multiple issues. I’ve had the privilege of watching repeat contributors develop their artistic or writing skill over the course of the year, and that has been so rewarding. QUT has a wealth of talent in the student body and it keeps getting better each issue.

ASHLEIGH: Working on Glass opened up a whole new world for me. I was a first year UQ expat instilled with all the cynicism of a bored small-town girl and convinced arts in Brissie were dead. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I’ve learnt that artists are resilient- they survive changing economies, shitty wages and conservative policymakersand that Kelvin Grove in particular is a hub for so many creative, passionate people. My greatest joy has been working with you all.

ANAHITA: The best part of being an editor for Glass is watching our contributors flick through the pages of the magazine to see their work. I remember being published in Glass for the first time in 2019 and how important that was to me, so I love that students can have a piece of themselves in print. It’s also been cool working with other creative writing groups at QUT through the Uni Writers’ Festival.

Everyone has pulled through with the submissions and risen to the challenge of ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ and we could not be more thrilled to end on such a high note. Thank you for sending us all down the rabbit hole this year, we are so humbled to have been a part of Glass Magazine’s young history.

Down The Rabbit Hole

Go down the rabbit hole, away on a tangent or into the abyss! Send us your most whimsical poems or long-form journalism about the topics you feel strongly about. This is your last chance in 2020 to submit a piece to Glass for print, make it worthwhile.

Is the caterpillar’s voice of reason a breath of fresh air in our post-modern society? Does the Queen of Hearts show the dangers of an all-knowing oligarch in an era of Big Data? Or should we embrace the spontaneity of Tweedledee and Tweedledum in anarchical abandon? We want to see poetry, photography, non-fiction, stories, journalism, essays and art!

‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ can be about pushing boundaries or knuckling down on what makes you tick. Follow the White Rabbit into Wonderland and tell us which reality you prefer...

President’s Letter

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA BRUMM

It seemed fitting that the final Presidents letter for this year would take the form of a reflection. A kind of ode to the trials, tribulations and unlikely achievements borne out of this unusual year. But I had no idea how to structure it. Maybe because this year itself has felt so haphazard and unstructured. For some reason, a laundry list of completed goals and select moments in time seemed uninteresting, self-indulgent even. So instead I’ve decided to venture down the rabbit hole in a different direction and discuss one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt this year about success and productivity and the problematic ways I’ve been taught to define them.

I can still remember how excited I was to start working at the Guild. A job I was interested and passionate about where I had complete autonomy over my own schedule and work hours. A job where the offices were on university campus and I’d have no trouble taking time off for exams and study. I thought I’d been gifted ready-made work-lifebalance on a silver platter.

I literally couldn’t have been more wrong.

Work never finished at 5pm and there was even less structure and routine in my weekdays then there was in my personal life. For the first year, every day

felt like I was stuck in a dinghy far out at sea being tossed and turned, constantly pulled in different directions by ever-changing currents. Moving at what felt like lightning speeds but with little awareness of whether we were gaining ground in any particular direction. It felt utterly chaotic and exhausting. The flexible nature of the workplace became its very downfall as the more invested I got the more accessible I became.

I was always on.

Sending and answering emails in the early hours of the morning, replying to tags and comments on online forums, responding to message requests to my personal Facebook and Instagram pages, becoming physically incapable of ignoring a ringing phone. As the months dragged on the boundaries became more and more blurred.

Finding a balance between my personal, social and work life became nye on impossible and something I know a lot of other executive and staff alike have struggled with as well. Instead of being three distinct aspects of my life they slowly but surely melded into one. My work friends are just my friends, my afternoons and weekends are spent with the same people I see for 10 hours a day during the week. My uni assignments and study are done

after hours in my office, if at all. The line between professional and personal relationships has all but evaporated and relationships and connections I held dear less than a year ago have faded away completely. All aspects of my life are now centred around work and it happened so slowly and insidiously that I wasn’t really cognisant of it until it was too late.

What I realised was that I was defining success by my work ethic and what I was able to produce and in the same stride, I was assuming that happiness would naturally be borne out of my success. For so long my perception of success was entirely based around how productive I could be. Eventually, I realised that this wasn’t a trait that had developed out of my work with the Guild, because before it was work it was my studies. I fixated on my GPA and tied my sense of self-worth to the numerical grade I received each semester to the exclusion of all else. If my GPA dipped even slightly it would devastate me. I know many university students and young graduates like me, who embark on highly competitive degrees in over-saturated job markets and have it drilled into them from day one that their success is defined by what they are able to produce and how quickly they can produce it. Our capitalist society doesn’t reward idleness, you no longer just go to your job you are your job. We are so hyper obsessed with productivity that frequently a person’s intrinsic worth is directly equated to how much they can accomplish each day. The focus is so often around your career and how far you’ve progressed in it rather than the skills you’ve acquired and the experiences you’ve had. After first-year university so few of my friends still actively pursued hobbies they had previously loved.

It’s not at all uncommon to hear graduate lawyers declaring their 14-hour workdays as a badge of honour, a testament to their drive and commitment as if nothing screams success more

than vending machine noodles for dinner in the break room at 9pm after everyone else has gone home.

This year in particular has brought us collectively to a point of efficiency fatigue. With living rooms and kitchen tables being transformed into offices so many of the distractions that permeated our day-to-day lives were stripped away by lockdown, yet even in the midst of a global pandemic, there still remained an expectation of increased productivity. After all, more time should equal greater output right? Ironically, the psychology seems to point in the other direction. Often the harder you work the less productive you are. Our brains need periods of idleness to re-focus, gain new perspectives and carve out space for different thoughts and ideas to develop. Downtime isn’t a luxury, it’s essential and it can enable us to work more meaningfully and deliberately, instead of just longer and harder. Forcing balance and perspective back into my life is a hard choice and something I know I’ll have to persevere with daily. So as I embark on my third year with the Guild and my fifth year at QUT I’ve made a commitment to myself. To spend more time laying on the beach with the sun on my skin and sand in my hair. To spend more time at aesthetic coffee houses sipping on lattes completely alone. More time day-dreaming while lying in the grass with my dog. More time playing with watercolours and less time concerned with the completed result. More time reading books in bed and less time setting alarms.

Next year, I clock off at 5.

THERE GOES TIME

BY DELILA BEVAN ZAVADSKY

Time trickles through tea Tips through spouts Try to grasp it Slips no doubt Falls through finger-tips Scorches flesh Flings you down Enfolds in mesh

Tick Tock There Time goes Whips his cane Commands tight rows Bow your head

The clock has struck Nine to five Half your luck They say Time stands still I haven’t seen such a sight Time stops for no-one Without putting up a fight

LOVE SONG 2

BY JEDD BOYAN

When banksia grows in the devil’s yard And black crows scorn red meat, When stained glass breaks into a single shard And the protesters admit defeat Then my love will come back to me

When our beds stop burning And lizards love the cold, When trumpets start learning And stories with friends remain untold Then my love will come back to me

When our cracked screens fall silent And the jacaranda blooms bright blue, When Pacific waves are no longer violent Then I will take her word as true That she will come back to me

Home –coming

WRITTEN BY KYRAH HONNER

The house shouldn’t have been able to stand in the mangroves, but it did. The mud caused the foundation poles to sway, which made the house look like it was alive, breathing. A thought struck me that it was like those abandoned cars, where the vines creep over and swallow the rusted metal. Nature taking the world back.

I shut the car door and glanced at Marnie. She looked back at me with apprehension. The gravel driveway ended about three metres away from the house, so we would have to wade in the ankle-deep muck to climb the veranda.

We held our suitcases overhead as we splashed our way to the house and I thanked my lucky stars that I packed light. Marnie tossed her own suitcase onto the veranda and pulled herself up in a fluid motion. I passed her my luggage and grabbed the bottom of the railing, preparing to heave myself up, but the rotting wood crumbled like a cookie in my hands. Marnie grabbed onto me and pulled me up with an eyeroll.

‘Thanks, tidda.’

I took the housekey from my jacket pocket –now spattered with mud – and unlocked the

front door, which screeched like an angry possum as it swung open. We peered into the dank-smelling darkness.

‘This place is a bloody death trap,’ I said. Marnie hummed in agreement. ‘Can’t believe Nan lived here, ay.’

We scrutinised the place upon entering. The small living room that doubled as an entryway had a large lightbulb dangling from a cord on the ceiling which didn’t turn on when I flicked the light switch. The couch was covered in mould, the TV was a box from the 70’s, and the rug had been eaten away by god-knows-what. The bathroom and toilet were barely usable and only one of the two bedrooms had a bedframe for its mattress. Marnie called dibs on it.

I sat on the mattress on the floor in my designated room. It was clear that this bedroom hadn’t been used for a long time. A thick layer of dust, which wasn’t found anywhere else in the damp swamp house, had settled over every surface – the floorboards, the set of drawers in the corner, the pale blue walls. I dragged my bare toes along the wooden floor, stirring up a cloud of previously untouched dust. It was

the guest bedroom, I realised. Untouched, unused, unvisited.

‘Could Nan even cook?’ I exclaimed later, when rummaging through the kitchen cupboards to find only one metal pot, poxy and busted. We had brought our own food for dinner, thank god.

‘Nan was a simple woman,’ Marnie replied, shrugging. She diced onions on a sheet of paper towel. ‘Maybe all she needed was one pot or everything.’

I didn’t reply. I just watched the water boil in the pot until I could put the two-minute Maggi noodles in. There was a strange reflection in the metal that I couldn’t see properly.

We ate dinner at the frosted glass table that sat in the kitchen, illuminated by a small candle. It was the only source of light we had found in the house, other than hundreds of mosquito coils. I could blame my uneasiness on being wary of bugs in the house, at the very least.

‘Aunty Junie would have a fit if she seen this place, ay? The gammin door to the bathroom fell onto me when I went to go toilet,’ Marnie was saying, gesturing with her fork to the hallway, where the aforementioned door rested against the wall beside the bathroom entryway.

The wind snaked its way through the surrounding mangroves and battered against the house, causing it to rock like a ship at sea and the bamboo windchime by the front door to sing. I felt like a landlubber and the movements put me off my dinner.

‘Isn’t it weird that this is all that’s left of our Nan?’ she continued while shovelling soy sauced-covered noodles in her mouth. ‘We never once visited, but this is all her. All that’s left.’

I stood up. ‘I’m going to bed, ‘night.’

She echoed a goodnight and pulled my unfinished bowl to herself. The house moaned and settled as I ambled down the hallway. A stained, tattered Aboriginal flag stapled to the wall reached out to me on the breeze as I passed.

My stomach was curled into knots, but I couldn’t place it. The hallway seemed to continue the further I went, stretching into the pitch.

I reached my room at last. I paused to glance back at Marnie at the dining table, and froze. I peered closer, my eyes straining in the dark. In the flickering candlelight, she almost looked exactly like –Nan sat primly at the table in my cousin’s place, staring at the the candle flame’s dance. She looked pretty much the way I remembered her, from six years ago. Her feathery, black hair cast shadows on her face. Her joey eyes flicked up, and we locked gazes.

My intake of breath echoed, and suddenly I was in the kitchen again, standing in front Nan like a child waiting for a scolding. Sunlight spilling through the windows made the glass table glow. I was mothballed, enthralled by the old woman who used the candle to light a cigarette.

‘Nan?’ I whispered, and the glass table shattered in an explosion of tiny frosted pieces flying up. I instinctively threw my arms over my head, but the cuts never came. Slowly, I lowered them. It was dark again, so I blinked a few times as my vision re-adjusted. I stood before the guest room.

My head whipped towards the candlelight, but it was just Marnie.

COWBOY WORMS IN THE DESERT BY BRONTE MARK

WRITTEN BY JASMIN GRAVES

On Productivity

In April of this year, as it became more apparent that we would be in a state of ‘unprecedented times’ indefinitely, my family purchased an empty garden bed, soil and vegetable seeds. The aim was not to produce enough vegetables for a six-person family so we would no longer need to venture to the store when the ‘impending apocalypse’ was

upon us. Rather, the interest was in an investment of time in a non-economic venture in the pursuit of mindfulness.

To me, these images represent a rejection of the hegemony of capitalistic productivity and a step towards ‘eudaimonic well-being’ (EWB). EWB is characterised by “meaning in life,

feelings of vitality, personal flourishing, and social relations” (Hansen, 2014). These are things that many of us have found Western society has neglected in the pursuit of materialistic, quantifiable wealth. This view has been reflected in traditional economic theory where living standards have been measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, a purely financial measurement. Psychology and economic theory now recognise living standards as consisting of more than monetary wealth. Feelings of existential meaning and shared connection have been central to the

mental awareness campaigns during the pandemic, suggesting greater attention is being paid to EWB.

The last few months have brought us homegrown tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage and kohlrabi. Benefits of the garden not only consisted of these vegetables but also the feeling of success and shared gratification from working together towards a common goal. These photos aim to capture these feelings in the hope of inspiring the viewer to be more mindful in their own lives so they too can celebrate greater wellbeing.

WRITTEN BY ADAM OSBORNE

Aboard the train to Disney Tokyo I felt like I was floating, and not just because my body was being held aloft by the strangers who had packed in after me. I squeezed my mother’s hand through a stranger’s armpit and craned my neck to check on my father and sister, flashing them a grin. Despite being squished against a railing, they smiled back. The doors opened and we tumbled out, sprinting towards the park.

Standing at the entrance, my excitement was fit to burst like pus from a zit. Despite my old age, this my first time at Disneyland. The line to get in was shorter than expected, but we soon discovered that was because all of Japan was already inside the park. Somehow, we could move around– most of the time. Sometimes we could even see, a vast improvement from our experiences in Tokyo. We decided, worst case scenario, we could just fling our limp father through the crowd like a bowling ball.

Upon entering, we were glad to see Disney too was governed by the golden rule of theme parks: enter and exit through the gift shop. We would start shopping immediately, if not for a colourfully lit fountain that demanded my attention: a multi-tiered spinning contraption that played a jingle proclaiming the park’s 35th Anniversary and shot lasers. Every tier of the fountain held a different incarnation of Mickey. This year’s limited-edition Mickey Makeover featured bold experiments with shape and colour, which is to say it was viscerally ugly. Despite this undeniable fact, I felt compelled to buy a plush of him. Fortunately, the sixty-dollar price-tag persuaded me otherwise.

As my focus broadened, my vision was barraged by merchandise: keychains, pins, mugs, hookahs, chew toys, you name it, they had it. If you wanted to, you could have replaced your entire kitchen with anniversary-themed memorabilia. The anniversary fought for dominance over the shelves with the Christmas event in such a violent display I only narrowly avoided getting killed in the crossfire.

I fled the shop having made a single purchase: the obligatory gendered mouse ears, only to discover the anniversary had seeped into every element of the park like a fart in an unventilated room.

As I tended to my wounds, the masterpieces of music that were Mickey and Friends covers of Christmas songs invaded my ears. Just as I began to ponder why the songs were in English, the floats rounded the corner, enchanting me with their flashing lights and moving pieces, carrying Mickey and Friends and white princesses with them. Wait, white princesses? I scanned the floats as well as the elves and snowmen dancing around them. The people were all white as artificial snow. You might think of this as a strange train of thought, but it was jarring. Outside of this park white people were rare as car-crashes. I wanted to give Disney the benefit of the doubt—there is no Japanese princess after all—but seeing as Moana just came out, you would think they would at least shoehorn her in. I was reassured by my sister that this was only the first parade.

For lunch, I had a chicken calzone that makes me feel nauseous to this day. At the time, I’d been craving something western, sick of slogging through seas of ramen. But now I understood: a poor imitation of something western designed purely to pander to a white audience was never going to be as good as something authentic but possibly monotonous.

Our next stop was Fantasyland. I spotted a hedge maze in the distance and was reminded to keep my eyes peeled for an Alice and Wonderland ride, my favourite Disney property. I’ve always found the movie a refreshing break from the tedium of Disney’s heteronormative storytelling. I was tricked, however, as the hedge maze in the distance existed purely to provide the illusion of scale.

We queued instead for Snow White’s Adventure, a beautifully constructed two-minute recreation of the classic film with a mere sixty-minute queue. At least I think that’s what it was, I can’t say I remember the ride.

Another parade had already begun by the time the ride was done, so I did the only logical thing: I scoured it for people of colour. My sister thought she spotted Aladdin and Jasmine, but it was difficult to confirm because they, understandably enough, were on the floor. There were only so many floats after all. If Huey, Dewey, and Louie didn’t have a float each, the fabric of the universe would likely tear apart.

After the parade, the park was emptying out: at this point only half of Japan remained. We took the opportunity to go on one last ride: the Pirates of The Caribbean cruise. I had never been interested in the franchise, but I was enticed by the manageable ten-minute wait. The ride saw us floating down a river past a luxurious lantern-lit restaurant, under bridges dappled with pirate animatronics serenading us with tales of treasure, and between ships ablaze, cannons firing. As I looked up to the starlit sky, I could hardly believe the ride was enclosed in a building. In some Christmas miracle, the ride time even surpassed the wait.

As our boat came to a stop, I only had one stipulation, and a small one at that: all the women in the ride were being chained up and sold as sex slaves. Apparently, Disney’s sanitation of the inappropriate and its embrace of fantasy doesn’t allow for women pirates. What can you do?

As we were pushed out of the theme park by thronging masses, feelings tumbled through my stomach like a bad chicken calzone: excitement, disappointment, discomfort, nostalgia, pain. I tried to reach inside myself and separate them, but they swirled too quickly, mixing until they were entrenched within each other.

What’s In A Name?

WRITTEN BY ANAHITA EBRAHIMI

My name is Anahita. So many questions but my favourite would be, ‘what did a girl like you do to get a name like that?’ Anahita was a Persian queen. So… like Elizabeth. Modern, I know. ‘Where’s that from?’ A lot of places around the world, actually. But if you mean, me, and where I’m from – I was born in Iran and raised in New Zealand. At this point in time – feeling very much Australian.

I used to struggle with the concept of cultural identity because I couldn’t simplify it. I couldn’t say I was Australian, despite living here for most my life and I couldn’t say I was Kiwi – even though New Zealand was the place where I took my first steps, and spoke my first words. Saying Iranian was fine – until I was in Iran. Despite being in a place where I could physically blend in seamlessly, I was very disconnected. Whenever I was in Iran, I was ‘khareji’. That means foreigner, different, not quite the same.

It’s funny too, being 23 and feeling nostalgia in different parts of the world. My slips of the

tongue are in Farsi, but my deepest and most well-thought conversations are in English. I say I miss home when I’m in Brisbane, but I feel a sense of relief when I’m back on the plane and slip my scarf off my head.

I couldn’t tell you what I am. I have no home culture, no home religion or home country, but my wide mixture does not make my identity any less valid nor does it make me incomplete. By no means have I turned away from my ‘roots’, rather I’ve taken what’s resonated most with me. I’m not lost, I’m a concoction of my own experiences and my relationships with the places I’ve been. I gave up on ascertaining what one culture I belonged to because I was not a perfect regurgitation of the communities I lived in or visited. I was always a mix, a blend. I used to hate the ambiguity but now I’ve let go of striving for a fixed or permanent identity. Maybe I’m wrong, and I should take history a little more seriously. Maybe I should listen to my eleven-year old self and refer to myself as the Persian goddess of water and fertility.

CREATED BY CELINE LINDEQUE

DOWN

2) You will never allow yourself to pass through this doorway.

4) A “hit” grass sport played with mallets. It was featured in a prominent 80’s movie.

3) To digress in conversation, or a trigonometric function.

8) A shrub that produces sweet smelling flowers.

10) On average this drum beats 60 to 100 times per minute.

12) Lightning can create this (or a team of QUT students).

11) A two player boardgame of strategy.

ACROSS

1) These animals sleep standing on one leg.

3) British people may own many of these beverage containers.

5) A strange world you could fall into (and a bonus track on a Taylor Swift album). 7) Arguably the most powerful piece in a ertain boardgame.

9) A single player game played with a deck of cards.

11) A worm-like creature (sometimes blue). 13) A risky trip without a destination.

THE SMUG DUCK BY BRONTE MARK

PANSIES

BY THOMAS ELLIS

A sculptural piece of a doll on its back in the garden with a hole cut in its stomach from which sprouts a cluster of pansies.

‘I lay at night upon the ground my body stretched with tension

I lay and my tension became the tension of the earth

I closed my eyes—I covered all the hill I put my fingers in my ears —my head burst into a flush of flowers and trees grew out of my belly and bowels my breasts split and under the moon water holes glistened rooted to the earth I became earth my eyes glistened upwards with thanks.’

FLUID

BY JANDI FLYNN

Spiral of nerves

Bountiful nights

Whispering stars

Decadent lights

Forgot how to fuck

Forgot how to fight

Bubbling hate Dinosaur toys

Stumbling tongues Overwrought joys

Girls kissing girls

Boys kissing boys

Kreep Club

CREATED

BY MEAGHAN SHELTON

Kreep Club is a nod to Shelton’s Constructivist heroes, especially the Russian Constructivist and trans- disciplinary artist Varvara Stepanova. We see the dancing bear, eyes wide in shock, watching the revolution. Some of us recognise ourselves. We’re not on the farm anymore, this is a club, there are the animals: the jive arse turkey, the long-necked giraffe on his promenade with the paedophile prince. It’s like the creeps aren’t even trying to hide, wearing their long hats in the street.

The bear, the artist, is looking at his black brother down on the streets, the turkey and the giraffe have turned their back on him.

But look, there is his sister: there she is, she’s put her tired polkadot dress on again, she’s holding him up. And Shelton adds the horse shoe, her wishes for good luck.

While all of us wait for that third K to drop.

KREEP CLUB, 2020. ASSEMBLAGE, FOUND OBJECTS. 280MM H X 150MM W X 70MM D

Yogini

Shelton shows us the act of creation, the Artist bending over backwards for the audience who stand in front, watching it all, in their various stages of desiccation. This is how it is all held up, the strings are showing, the Artist is making diamonds from nothing more than painted wood and the whole process is there, on display. There is even an arrow, pointing the audience to where to look; could Shelton be more explicit? She’s twisting right back around to touch her own toes! It’s good old-fashioned hard work. And what is the response from the audience? ‘and’; And? And!

Or is that the response of the Artist? Driven to create. And, and, and… Shelton made these works on the road; she is a gymnast, a trapeze artist, the strongwoman of the circus, an acrobat performing atop a moving vehicle, creating a world on the run. Not a yoga master, not yet, in the Sanskrit, the artist must remain ‘ini’ a student, but she knows that Art is work and she knows life is temporary.

YOGINI, 2020. ASSEMBLAGE, FOUND OBJECTS, COTTON, SILK THREAD, ACRYLIC. 300MM H X 150MM W X 120MM D.

The romantic poets are all bullshit artists, They claim their broken hearts Are now colourful mosaics, The pieces of their shattered hearts Now held together in intricate fashion

With the glue of their newfound ‘better’ selves.

What fucking bullshit.

A heart is just an organ - it pumps blood. It works day in and day out, 24 hours a day.

LOVE IS A BULLSHIT ARTIST

BY JAIME COLLEY

It’s rhythmic, mostly reliable, it never changes, only ages. You cannot tell me your love is centred in the heart. You’re bullshitting yourself if you tell me That your love was always reliable, that it worked 24/7, that it never changed.

Hearts are the nurses on their fifth night shift, deciding whether red bull and coffee together will cause a heart attack, but then drinking it anyway.

Hearts are the teenagers who, even after Karen asked for the size eight shoe for the fifth time even after being told it’s unavailable, still go out the back and check.

Hearts are the protesters, who suck on throat lozenges just so they can demand their rights a little louder, where holding their signs is only arm day, and boy are they ripped.

Hearts get shit done, love does not.

Love is cuddles on the couch, re-watching Twilight when you’re sick, accepting that at times we can be both team Edward and team Jacob.

Love does not demand action; love does not demand at all. It whines.

Love is a whiny bitch. It whines for touch, for back tickles, for fingers in hair, for another cup of coffee. It doesn’t take, it doesn’t even give, it only wants.

Wants to do better, wants to protect, wants to surprise, wants to smile

I probably sound like I’m hating on love.

I probably sound like I got my heart broken.

I probably sound like I’m not over it. I am.

You may think. “but you wrote a poem about love and it’s bullshit.”

Yeah, I did. But not because I am ‘not over it’ But because someone has got to call love out on its bullshit.

Love is not in the heart. Love is in the fingers. The way it stretches in the sun, The way it clamps onto another, The way it can reach and pull, tug and twist. Fingers can crack, fingers can punch, fingers can shake. My finger can trace the outline of his shoulder blade, it can press into the bread and knead it into soft perfection, it can tie balloons and balance butterflies and grip his hand. Fingers can want the way a heart cannot afford to.

Here is how I know that I am over it: Because I can stretch my fingers out, get ready to catch all that I deserve, And not feel guilty.

I would be bullshitting you, If I said I do not think of him anymore. I do. I remember the way his hair curled, and the deep oak brown of his eyes. But I remember those things the same way you remember the dream as you wake up, You recognise it for its brilliance, for its subconscious extravagance, But then, You’re glad that you woke up.

The Death of Truth

The death of truth is a tragedy that arrived to the 21st-century party unannounced; slipped inside somewhere between the celebratory toasts and clinks of champagne to a new technologically driven world. It then watched silently as chaos ensued.

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg infamously sat in his Harvard dorm room and pitched to his roommates an idea that would eventually become Facebook. Over 15 years later, his initial concept of a website connecting people across the world has 2.6 billion users globally. There is no denying that modernday society has warped social media’s original intention. Where once it was a simple means of communication, social media now has its own goals and means of pursuing them.

Over the past decade, social media has evolved into capitalism’s greatest asset. A tool with the ability to obtain any information on billions of people in real-time. This information comes in the form of data points and is a means of knowing exactly who we are, how we make

WRITTEN BY MEGHA PRASAD

decisions, and who we can become. Armed with this data, companies can now influence populations with any agenda they see fit and craft their ideal consumers. For advertisers, using this information to retain people’s constant attention is the bedrock of modern business where the consumer becomes the product itself.

Prior to the rise of technology, our identity was grounded in our belief systems, upbringing, and life experiences; all of which provided a foundation to build our potential futures. The intimate integration of technology into daily life has meant that the intersection of who we are, who we will become, and who we are perceived to be, exist in two worlds – real life and the digital realm. In the digital world, the algorithms and content we interact with not only learn about us but shape us in ways we are wholly unaware of. The alluring illusion of social media is that we are in control over who we follow, what we like, and what content we see. The reality is, no matter what free will we believe we are exercising, the data

we provide to algorithms in the form of our likes, follows, and shares lends us vulnerable to subconscious influence. The result of this is a slow, unknowing death of our individual truths; our identities are bound to what the algorithm gives us and thus an imitation of reality becomes paramount.

Aside from the death of individual truth – the disregard for facts; destruction of language and manipulation of reason in favour of emotions are all issues that have rapidly evolved as a result of the aforementioned truth decay.

Social media has a direct and bloody hand in this. The online world has made it possible for simultaneously everything and nothing to be true. Behind a screen, language can now be easily manipulated and weaponised against the reader for the writer’s agenda. Consequently, facts are no longer considered stable truths, but rather are considered opinions to be argued against. This has only been further fuelled by algorithms providing individuals with content they solely engage and ultimately agree with leading to echo chambers of hyper-polarised thoughts. Thus, as those on each pole are strengthened to believe in their correctness and virtue – the central ground of common truth has also become non-existent.

To survive the demise of these truths, the West has now fed into social media’s second sleight of hand. Vegetarianism, manifestation, and meditation are all spiritual practices that have existed in the East for thousands of years and are no less prone to the algorithms. These customs have been transformed into the health and wellness trends we see today to combat western society’s plummeting mental health. Capitalism and colonialism are long-standing allies; thus, it is no surprise that once these eastern beliefs were perceived as profitable, they were repackaged, commodified, and

commercialised with little respect for the cultures behind them. The more this content was consumed and deemed advantageous; the more technology was used to serve capitalism’s ultimate monetary goals. It is in this way that cultural appropriation becomes a trend to be mass-produced and the cultural truth from which such practices were born, is lost.

The death of our truths sits at the table of the new world in the way that uninvited guests often do – masquerading purpose where their havoc is unwelcome. Now, at the end of the party, what is left? The double-edged sword of technology is a blade that as years go by has only been proven more difficult to wield. Nevertheless, the truth may still rise from the dead. Each individual’s existence is multi-dimensional and to believe that the online world could ever capture its extent is a disservice to all that we are and all that we can be. The reality we shape for ourselves offline will never be an imitation but rather is our most authentic self in all its intricate beauty. It is only when this is understood that we realise – the truth will always be elusive yet the only way to catch it is in person.

GENTLE DAYDREAMS BY KATE SIMONS

Tangent Conversations

I will be the first to admit that I may be a little too comfortable with my roommates. For the four approximate months that all five of us have shared a living space we have had a varied range of conversations. These topics range from your less than typical romance banter to ramblings about whenever Elsa in Frozen II wears pants.

It’s almost guaranteed that when you put five female university students who are of similar age, and most of whom are studying in the creative industries, that they will become fast friends. Not one of my roommates knew the others existed until the beginning of semester one. Most people living in our apartment building are in the situation, I would say it would be for the same reason also. That reason being that as first year university students from rural Queensland towns, we hadn’t anyone we knew to share a household with when we moved to Brisbane for university. The confined space of our tiny apartment doesn’t often provide the luxury of privatary or anytime completely to yourself, therefore the introductory process between peers happens pretty swiftly. Even the more intimate knowledge of one’s self is not safe from the paper thin walls and shared bathroom spaces. Needless to say that girls who were once strangers, now are easily the people I have come to depend on.

WRITTEN BY ANNA HOLMES

However, the length of time we have known each other has not saved our friendship from the weird but wonderful conversations that most Millennial/Generation Z friendships seem to endure. From heated debates about whether we would marry or mummy Timothee Chalamet, to tense arguments about the placebo effect and whether it is bullshit or not. These conversations are usually steamed from seemingly mundane topics. Such as the Timothee Chalamet debate developed from a chat about a film analysis assessment one of my roommates had for her class. In a similar fashion the argument regarding placebos ensued because of a conversation about mental health. It seems obvious that these tangent conversations have no relevance in the everyday life of young female university students. However, I have started to observe the nature of these topics and have hypothesised a few theories about the sub-group of humanity that is cursp millennial women in university.

Theory one, we these utilise self proclaimed tangent conversations as an escape for the formality of the university lifestyle. For many of us university students, we interact with an array of professionals on a dear daily basis, many of which are in our desired field of practice, therefore, making these people potential mentors, employers and workmates.

This implies that we as practitioners are always on display for the future of our work industry. Wanting to make ‘good’ impressions, we as students subject ourselves to vicarious formalities. Such as performing extra research on a topic just to be able to say something ‘intellectual’ in a tutorial, or exerting excessive communication with said professional via email. These periods of time spent either in a class or performing work for units outside of said class, requires a student to maintain this excessive structure of formality. It is my hypothesis that students ‘use-up’ their ability to communicate in a concise, focused, ‘formal’, manner during these periods of universitywork in their schedules and therefore, any other conservations become an outlet for silly, ‘informal’ conversations. The evidence I have obtained to prove this hypothesis consists of the numerous occasions I have witnessed my roommates in online tutorials, and amendently after the zoom call has ended they are wanting to engage in a debate about whether or not Achilles and Patroclus were gay. I find my roommates need to express thoughts, that may not be relevant or appropriate in an academic setting, to each other when the class work is particularly dense. In summary, our tangent conversations are an outlet for students to express their not-so-intelligent thoughts

before having to submerge themselves back into the formalities of the academic lifestyle.

Theory two, the brains of those born in the millennial and Gen Z eras have particularly erratic thoughts. With the age of social media, also came insights into the private and personal side of society that were not usually shared in such a public manner. However, now we are exposed to everyone’s thoughts and conversations, and we can see just how erratic those of young people are. We see the Facebook pages utilised once a year for QCS memes, Instagram threads regarding making an egg more popular than Kylie Jenner and the list could go on. This is evidence that many people out there in the world are having the same thoughts and conversations as my roommates and I. Is it this innate behaviour of the human brain, that causes these tangent conversations? It’s definitely a possibility.

Theory three is that it is not the fact that we are university students or that the brains of our generation are just ‘wired’ that way, it is that we in my apartment are creatives. All the young women residing in this apartment with me almost all study a form for the creative arts, having an animator, film maker and two drama students all under one roof. Even my roommate not studying the arts was a dancer

in the past, therefore we have adopted her as a creative. This hypothesis suggests that the creative mind, no matter what age, is innately erratic and always actively the weird and wonder sides to a topic. This would explain why these tangent conversations we have become narrowed into such niched topics that are always seemingly random. Maybe, like the paragraph above but instead of age being the underlying factor of erratic brain activity, it’s a career pathway. Is it that having creative inhibitions also is intrinsically linked to having tangent conversations? This could also be true.

In all three theories they cover an intrinsic part of who my roommates and I are. We are young. We are academic. We are creative. These elements of self are what we justify our tangent conversations. Not our procrastination to think about the formalities of university conversation. Not our plaguing thoughts about what to base our next animation/film/ play off of. Not our the fact that people the internet has exposed our generation to weird and wonderful ideas, that without them we would not be able to think of these tangential topics anyway. Wherever these conversation come for I have learnt to enjoy their erraticness and I am glad be comfortable enough with four friends to share my own.

DEAD WEIGHT

BY JAK KIRWIN

Contrarian populists, the lords and ladies of manufactured authenticity, inside the minds of misled youth inside the hearts of long dead lions

Tracksuit pants, rusted dumbbells, doodles on gum wrappers, unmade beds and a new breed of porn girl that you would rather call on as a friend than as a lover.

Silent majorities, drowned babies in stagnant bath water, masked antiheroes inside the chambers of commerce inside the lungs of industry

Reality television, record players, empty cigarette pouches, mouldy shower walls and all the time in the world to care for causes that were concocted in a Montenegrin slum.

LEAVE LIFE BE BY

REBECCA BROOKS

remember December nights? when it hurt to close my eyes when my days were empty and my nights were alive. jewel studded skies became only a guise for those that pried inside my mind, pulling out my darkest threads of memory then throwing them upon me like wild dogs. remember fairy lights that made my eyeballs bleed? red, blue and green, thoughts stuck inside a screen, I became a robot, a machine, churning out indistinguishable thoughts like cheese. then there was you on my phone, I had never felt so alone, I spent my hours crafting words for you, you later threw them in the trash.

tender

SHOT BY KATLIN LITT

Katlin Litt is a Brisbane-based multidisciplinary artist in her third year of studying a Bachelor of Fine Art in Visual Art at QUT. Her diaristic work predominately unfolds through the mediums of soft sculptures, photography, and painting. The works she creates present methods of encountering the profound subjectivity of the relationship that she shares with herself, specifically delving into notions of femininity, body modification, and the domestic space through an informed modern lens.

Fruit Condoms

WRITTEN BY LAUREN MARSHALL

‘I’m sick of dating guys who only seem to last longer than five minutes when they’ve got something to prove.’ Said Erin who, while free to have this opinion, didn’t understand how ridiculous it sounded to a girl who hadn’t had any for five lifetimes. Five minutes of shit sex compared to five lifetimes of soul crushing abstinence is like Trump’s America compared to Putin’s Russia. Sure, they’re both shit, but one’s shittier in fundamental ways. And while I love Erin, and I really do, I could deal without the woe-is-me Bridget Jones shit from a girl who’s bright orange copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck sat so brazenly on her coffee table that I half expected it to deliver a speech on Mexican border walls or the do-nothingDemocrat’s plot to steal the election through a postal vote. Huh.

‘Lols? Lauren?’ Erin was snapping her fingers between my eyes in an attempt to reel me out of that drunk-trance writer state in which one composes little soliloquies around abstract composites of fragmented conversation. Erin knew when I was in this state and the way she puts up with it really is a testament to our friendship. ‘Yeah definitely, I understand,’ I told

her, and honestly, I did. It’s just the problem is if I could go back to the dick who gave me my last five minutes in Shangri-La, I’d probably chain myself to his ankle and cook him eggs in the morning.

I was sucking away at a Boag when Erin’s roommate Todd returned with his friends. I’ve started drinking beers a lot more lately. You wouldn’t believe how many men it turns off. It’s like something flips in their lower ape brain and they figure that a woman drinking man juice is either lesbian or too alpha to conquer. Trims an awful lot of the fat off a conversation when they can no longer pivot to the different types of ciders and which ones receive the holy man-chimp seal of being ‘okay.’

An additional layer of fat has been shaved immediately given that parties are limited to 10 people in Brisbane. As a result, guys are more inclined to only invite their closest friends, who are more often than not of higher quality than the stragglers who would occupy the lower tiers of friendship. Furthermore, the hosts –especially when the hosts are dudes or dude adjacent like Erin– are more inclined to balance the ratio of sexes, to avoid the ever-dreaded

male horror of the ‘sausage party’.

I knew I was in a drunk-trance writer state and I used that as an excuse to eye off Todd’s mates. Introductions had no doubt just been made but I was too focused on sausage party ratios and the lesbian defense to take any notice. One of the guys sat down beside me. He told me his name was Blake. I thought he was hot. That’s what mattered and he was actually rather pleasant in conversation, without being a try hard or cultural critic.

(Drunk-trance writer state aside; what makes one a cultural critic? Why does Wikipedia list ‘cultural critic’ alongside journalist and actual professions? How come my mum doesn’t have a cultural critic wiki for her scathing attacks on Kochie from Sunrise? What about Leopold, the homeless man that camps across from the West End library who often discusses capitalism, the tax code and, naturally, the therapeutic effects of DMT with myself and anybody else who gives him the time of day?)

Somehow back at Blake’s place. I swear to God student accommodation complexes are covert brothels/harems: Erin pimped me out, and here I am, just two floors down from her with this charming man. What did he pay her? Is he paying her ridiculously expensive rent? How else can they legally charge such high rent, if not to pay off bribes to keep cops out of the student sex-house?

Without being lewd, Blake was a really nice guy. If you’re interested, he had big brown eyes, short brown hair and a hint of stubble which gave him a dignified air of sexiness. I’ll spare you the rest because I really hate trying to visualise a sexy person described in text form and always ultimately default to producing a mental Frankenstein of Zac Efron, Timothée Chalamet and Heath Ledger parts. Anyway, Blake was a really nice guy. He was kissing my

belly and I told him I was ready, that I wanted him. And then the fucker smiled and pulled out a fruit-flavoured condom.

For a grown woman to allow a fruit condom into her body, she’d have to be as silly as a bee that spends it’s days trying to pollinate plastic flowers. I didn’t even know people used these. At best I thought they were for kids or people from the Gold Coast who had so fatally mortar and pestle’d their brains up that the cacophony of loud colours inside the packaging took on the familiar and dulling allure of play dough.

Sex is supposed to be real I was telling myself as I put my clothes back on. I’m not part of the anti-GMO crowd but I just feel as though a cock should be free of artificial colours and flavours. This is the hill I am willing to die on. What happened to men? Sex is supposed to be real. This is the chicks coming home to roost after a generation raised on the fallacy of comeand-get-it-boys pornography and instant gratification video games. Grown men buying condoms flavoured like fucking bubble gum.

‘I’m... I’m sorry Blake I’ve got to go.’ I put on my coat, nicked one of his beers and rushed out of the apartment. I was almost at the elevator when he called out. ‘Lauren don’t go! Stay here and finish your beer, let’s talk. I don’t mind that you’re a lesbian. We can just be friends!’ Jesus Christ. Men are so absurd.

EAT ME, DRINK ME

BY ISABEL OLSSON

Eat me, drink me

Dissolve me on your tongue, suck me into your lungs

Anything that makes it easy–Anything that makes me numb

Liquid oblivion or crystallised wonder?

Choose your poison, knock it back

It’s setting in, I’m slipping under Cue curtains, fade to black

Don’t be afraid, just close your eyes and be embraced

By a comforting chemical collapse into madness

All lucidity has been misplaced A hazy reprieve from such destructive sadness

Now that you’re up, you can only come down–

To be drenched in melancholy and cold sweat

So keep your head above water, keep your feet off the ground That’s it, light up– forget

I watch as the smoke curls from my lips

Clouds of bluish peace from my lungs

So readily my mind slips Slowly, then all at once

I fall Down the Rabbit Hole into bliss.

MAD HATTER’S TEA-PARTY BY JACK ROYLANCE

THE CHESHIRE CAT BY JACK ROYLANCE

Exposure

My journey with film photography has thrown me down my ‘rabbit hole’. Traditionally I study industrial design here at QUT, I work in a cushy nine to five office job and do all the usual things with friends in my spare time. I had heard about the resurgence of film amongst my late-night world-wide-web explorations, I even watched a video or two about somebody shooting uncommon film stock. So when the opportunity reared itself to shoot a weathered film camera made in 1940s USSR, I was ecstatic to try it. My first roll blew through the camera on a mountain hike up at Lamington National Park, and the results were beyond my expectations.

SHOT BY ISAAC BONORA

From the mouldy lensed Soviet camera, my long fall down the analogue film rabbit hole began. With the little experience I have with photography, I invested in an actual functioning Canon AE-1P (which has a shutter that sounds like a sneezing dog) and set out shooting. A few hundred dollars worth of film and development costs later, I have been able to pull out ideas and moods from my mind and put them down in what some would describe as “art”.

The journey has had more effects than just cool looking pictures. The act of committing to a moment in time, and letting it pass has been a healthy mindfulness exercise for myself. The analogue format proves to be a meditative exercise. Increasing my personal awareness of the moment I am in, highlighting thoughts that are racing through my head and what’s in front of me, discovering how those things may relate. And for someone such as myself, finding it hard to sit still for any length of time; an output like film photography has been essential to my personal well- being.

My photography here is from the Brisbane Botanic Gardens Dome. A place, meme’d amongst Brisbane film photographers as an ‘initiation’ into film photography because it photographs so well. Ironic really, as this is my first published work...

PHOTO

DRAIN

BY GEORGIA SANDERS

The complacent poor And complicit rich

Demand a war on peace

Oh, hollow folk, we’re such Suckers for simple pleasures And complex pains

The sky is an ashtray

I’ll open my veins Sorrow and sickness Spin down the drain

MALLACOOTA/SAN FRANCISCO

BY EMILY READMAN

Bodies crowded in a morning/evening light They hand out water/sandbags/n95’s

Pick-up trucks streaming down the left/right lane Sister is not home from work/school/hospital yet

Sweet Bay/Eucalyptus swallowed up behind them Watch the hills glow red/gold/black

Run down and down and down to the bay/beaches Sit and wait in waist deep water/in between the mangroves/in hope

Sweat in September/January heat Pray that the worst is over/is yet to come/is fast approaching

There is no heaven or hell in a wild/bush fire There is only soot/heat/a glowing sky

GLITTER AND FLOWERS BY PIPIER WELLER

#EVERYDAYACTIVISM

WRITTEN BY LIA ZAWILSKA

It’s been a year. I think we can all agree that 2020 is the year that none of us asked for. I know I’ve made many a joke about how much I want to unsubscribe from 2020! Yet, I think it’s also the year that all of us needed. As our world suddenly ground to a halt, we have been granted a rare opportunity to reflect and reconsider how we live our lives and the choices we make on a daily basis. For me, a large part of that has been recognising the value of everyday activism.

Activism can seem like a big word, especially if you’re new to the space. But it doesn’t have to be! While radical activism is still important to create significant impact, everyday activism can be just as powerful - and can be done by anyone, anytime. It’s the little choices you make everyday, from buying a coffee to listening to a podcast - seemingly small, but choices that have the potential to create a ripple effect and influence the future of our world.

How? Here’s a few ideas:

SOCIAL MEDIA

Do a follower audit! If you’re only following a certain demographic of people, it’s time to diversify your feed. Love fashion? Find some Aboriginal designers. Obsessed with travelling? Follow some LGBT+ travel influencers. Want to know what’s happening

in the world but in bite-sized and aesthetic forms? There’s so many brilliant anti-racist, feminist etc. accounts out there doing just that!

ENTERTAINMENT

Similar to social media! What books, movies, tv shows, music, podcast etc. are you consuming? It’s important to curate your entertainment, just as much as your social media. Are your entertainment choices diverse in voice? Do you have representation from different cultures, languages, sexualities, genders and abilities? Do you make an effort to consume First Nations and Australian content, or content in a different language?

FASHION

Look into second-hand and sustainable clothing! From op shops, suitcase rummages to local and ethical brands, there’s a world of fun and fashionable clothing out there just waiting for you. You could also learn how to repurpose your old clothing to give it a new lease of life, sew your own clothing or even look into hiring clothes!

BUSINESS

Try to support local businesses and creators where you can, especially those which are led by underrepresented groups such as women,

#EVERYDAYACTIVISM

First Nations or LGBT+ communities. This could mean finding a new regular coffee spot, jumping into a local gift shop for that birthday gift or popping into a cute neighbourhood arts market on the weekends.

ENVIRONMENT

Climate change is real, and climate change is scary. It’s tough to even know how to begin to tackle that one - especially since big corporations are the major polluters. But through your purchasing power, you can choose to invest in companies that are safer and better for our environment. Using containers or bees wax wrap instead of zip lock bags, starting to buy recycled toilet paper or using soy candles for your hygge fix are all easy swaps to be little more eco friendly. If you’re open to it, cutting down on meat and diary by even just a day or two can also help - and there’s plenty of delicious vegetarian and vegan local cafes and restaurant you can support while you’re at it!

COMMUNITY

Connect with your local community or create your own! Being an everyday activist can be phenomenal fun if you find others to share in your journey. Whether you want to join an organisation, find an online Facebook group or just chat about it with your friends,

becoming an everyday activist doesn’t have to be a lonely or boring journey. It can be an opportunity to connect with people you might’ve never connected before or strengthen existing relationships through a shared goal.

From weekly vegetarian brunch dates with your friends at your local cafe to finding a sustainable fashion Facebook group that shares exciting new ethical finds - if you can think it, you can either find it or create it!

The most important thing to remember though, is that it’s not all or nothing - and you definitely shouldn’t try to do all of these at once! Even if you can’t do all of these things, or even most of these, that’s okay. It’s all about the little steps, and what you can do. While the destination is important, becoming an everyday activist is more about the journey and what you learn along the way - and especially, who you bring along on that journey with you. So have fun with it, learn some new things about the world and enjoy the journey of becoming an everyday activist - for yourself, for others and for the earth!

WRITTEN BY SOFIJA PILETIC

I feel pretty in the wrong ways / like an accessory, disposable / dainty / delicate a derivative of him even gold hoops in my ears don’t belong to me or the scent of my breath / hair on my body if you’re not painted on my instagram feed I mustn’t love you the right way how am I so defined by the he’s that surround me?

any he it doesn’t matter / devotion is nauseating like prayers burnt into memories without understanding what they mean repeated while wearing the rosary worn only to be thrown away when they don’t suit the problem at hand hail Mary full of grace I’ve been playing obsolete / eloquently melting away into his personalised manic pixie dream girl leaving me no choice but to spin in circles between desperate & not enough too much of my life is spent in hesitation I care too much for the wrong things maybe that’s only because he cares too little when I don’t look so good on him

I don’t want to be yours forever ever you always say I utter stutter? under my breath

I thought, you lived in my head?

next to the teacups I collect we’re sitting on the rooftop muttering our favourite words & then it’s 10pm, you’re saying thank you in your sleep as though I just sold you a pair of shoes I do & don’t wish I could flutter away & spend the night with you I don’t think it’s about being content cause I could explode either way perhaps it’s painted on me like buttered french toast & cinnamon the deer heads & crucifixes from a childhood homes that never relinquished dead but they’re not I like to think it doesn’t acquiesce my actions as I stare at moths, intently tracing their patterns & writing them down wishing I didn’t flinch every time they settle on my paper skin guilty, but I’m not I never understood seeking adrenaline it glitters guilt every time you touch me when I buy plastic water bottles too

is it meant to be the same? because consumerism is convenient you are gentle and firm but being homesick makes me inadequate my love lacklustre when I look forward to sleeping alone and maybe that’s why I should fall away from you

& the cocktail dresses I don’t need tell me again what I need I shouldn’t use my customer service voice for you there are plastic bags floating over my head here turning into butterflies there is rubbish in the gutters but no modest underwear earrings over the floor everywhere but her ears there will never be enough pairs telephones are weird and so are beds when you look at them closely cluttered

Why Do Women Love True Crime?

WRITTEN BY HANNAH KINDER

Last year, 74 Australian women were murdered in Australia. So far, at the time of writing, 2020 has seen 37 deaths. Violence against women is one of the greatest, most widely accepted offences pervading our society, and has been described by the World Health Organisation as a global health problem of epidemic proportions. I’d describe it, in decidedly less elegant terms, as reflective of the patriarchy’s kink for control and nicely oppressed (dead) women.

Given these statistics, it may seem strange and slightly masochistic that 75% of all true crime listeners worldwide are comprised of women. Not only that, they are also the leading instigators of this content; hosting, hypothesising, and building cult-like communities fascinated with the savagery statistically skewed to befall them. Shows like the insanely popular ‘My Favourite Murder’ podcast keep listeners company while they fold washing or fill spreadsheets, detailing the precise way in which victims are hunted and killed, relishing in the sheer horror of it all.

Why are women obsessed with true crime?

The answer to this is unsurprising and comes from a very basic, primitive place: women fear being victims more than men do. By finding fatal faults in the carefully constructed armour other women had built, we can ensure that we do not make the same mistakes ourselves. The more informed we are, the more we’ve examined what set somebody off, what made them kill, what warning signs to look for; the safer and more empowered we feel. That seems like a logical, sagacious reaction, right? It’s just a matter of preparing yourself for your imminent and sadistically-executed death, no big deal. All in a day’s work! Psychologist Dr Aimee Daramus takes it one step further by describing true crime for women as “very much a dress-rehearsal”. I mean, excuse me, while I go and howl into an oblivion upon reading that. Might as well start on my vocal warm ups while I’m there, in preparation for opening night of my imminent assassination.

Of course, there is one gaping flaw in this plan. Or actually, several. For one, it assumes

that wearing your hair in a bun rather than a ponytail, or not hitchhiking on a remote highway will save you, when we both know that’s not the case. People (overwhelmingly men) not killing women will save you. No matter how many safe and sensible decisions you make, how many dark alleyways you avoid, how much you stifle your life; you’re competing against a system specifically set up for your failure.

It also fails to consider the fact that half of all women killed, are murdered at the hands of their partner. Of course, that’s not to say that violent, random acts of femicide don’t happen: Eurydice Dixon, Courtney Herron, Aiia Maasarwe, and the horrific deaths of innumerable other women demonstrate in unforgivable profusion that they do. On average though, one woman a week is killed by her current or former partner in Australia. Romance, it seems, is dead after all; and so are the women.

What this all means to say is, true crime alone cannot save you. If popping a couple caffeine pills six hours before an unwritten essay is due has taught me anything, it’s that there’s a stark difference between feeling prepared and actually being prepared. In this case, dissecting stories of pain and violence will not protect anyone in a system that cultivates this kind of behaviour.

Even so, there’s nothing inherently wrong with true crime. I’m not here to vilify the genre, nor those who enjoy it – in fact, I think I think there is immense value to be found in true crime, particularly given its predilection for prominent female voices. But it is important to recognise that this value isn’t derived from specious survival tips. You’d probably learn far more watching Bear Grylls drink his own urine, than examining Ted Bundy’s strangling

technique. Instead, the power of true crime lies in its virality.

Within a culture that values a woman’s silence and submission above all else, mutiny can come in many shapes and forms. Women capitalising on the brutality disproportionately inflicted upon their gender is an especially spicy take, though, and one I completely endorse.

The proliferation of true crime content has given women a voice, and a coinciding platform to use that voice, in a way that has never existed before. It has galvanised us to tell our stories and take back some of the power in an accessible and harmless way. Sure, we can’t seem to stem the surge in belligerence, but we can talk about it! In fact, it’s the only thing we can do (at least our therapists will be proud).

Two women chatting amongst themselves, to an audience consisting principally of other women, may seem silly and superficial on the surface, not unlike most traditionally “feminine” activities (like, you know, communicating). But in reality, it’s an incredibly powerful and liberating practice; a strident display of innovation and rebellion in the face of (not to be dramatic, but) death.

True crime is political. Until we live in a world where Hannah Baxter and Allison Baden-Clay aren’t an anticipated nightly news segment, we will continue to tell their stories. Blood, sweat and tears, whistling past the graveyard.

MOTHLIGHT

BY ASHLEIGH NORTH

There she is. The girl standing in the garden in her white cotton bedgown, pale toes buried in the damp earth pushing up young grass shoots. Digging her toes into the flower beds, exercising destructive power with glee. Even daisies have flesh and she watches another fall at her feet, pressing it against the soil until it bleeds green onto her skin. She delights in the fragility of beautiful things, and she dances as she thinks of all pretty things having skin that can be broken, nerves that can be pressed, like the way she presses her thumbs into the ripe orchard plums. With a careless flick of her wrist she can send the fruits flying, watch them bounce and bruise, wait for them to sit and soften in the morning sun until the ants and the flies settle into their skin and they are wasted. Un-savoured. They are not plucked from the trees by the fruit-picking boys, they are not consumed by the men that pay them. With one flick of her slim wrist she can condemn them to rot in the earth.

The girl in the garden smiles gently, she blinks in the moonlight. Her doll face beams. She chooses one of the fruits on the tree, the smallest, driest one. “You are mine now,” she says. She holds it in her hands, she holds it above the others, the ones she’s given to the earth. And she consumes it whole. She feels the small fruit roll down her throat, feels every inch it travels as it scrapes her inside. She wonders about its seed, deep in her belly; can she feel it there? Will it grow inside, will her body nurture as nature intends, will she swell and grow like the tree in the orchard, heavy with fruit?

Her eyes flutter closed. She stands in the garden, bunching her cotton gown around her stomach. A moth lands on her plum tree, bulbous, too heavy with eggs to fly. In the silence, she hears its wings rest closed. She wants to metamorphosize with the moon. She wants to run free in the silver light. She wants to squeeze her small fists around the moth and feel it shudder and die in her hot palms.

INNER PIECE BY PIPIER WELLER

A Wizard In Dreary

WRITTEN BY RILEY BAXTER

The Wizard was at the pub, for the pub he knew was the place that god went to hide when men were ignoring him. The Wizard went to the pub often, for he sought god often, and as a result, often came up short and incredibly disappointed, when he met with dusty mornings instead.

Two young men, more so boys, of eighteen years had been watching the Wizard since the three o’clock game, for a Wizard was a rare sight in a small town such as Dreary. Heath, the younger of the two, was a bright and handsome young man who was prone to comparisons with Charlie Chaplin (without the moustache). Finn, who was none too much a fool himself, had just placed a multi on the evening’s games, and here was his ticket;

The Panthers to beat the Titans with Tamou to score anytime, the Sharks to have the Storm, and the Roosters to have the Warriors. Easy games perhaps bar the Sharks but Morrison was doing well in the polls at the time and that had to count for something. Besides, for $10 the money could really come or go and it didn’t seem to matter.

The Wizard, the boys noted, seemed to be barracking for the Gold Coast. This became

much more obvious when the Titans, subverting all conventions, scored a try in the 10th minute of the game. Assumedly the travelling old lunatic was a naturalised fan of the club, and so, Heath thought very little of his gleeful galavanting, his rudimentary rodomontade and his unholy heel claps in his rude leather dress shoes.

Even so, the fact that the Titans had got in at all was rather controversial and Finn was determined to discover if some foul magic was at play. He approached the kindly old Wizard and asked who he had taken, in each of the three games. The Wizard looked the young man up and down and smiled. ‘Your panthers shall go white, and your Sharks shall all be zapped, and your Roosters will go the way of the Moa,’ the Wizard cackled and raised his glass in cheers.

Well the Titans got up, and so did the Storm – for we must skip the interesting game – and Finn and Heath were still trying to make sense of the Wizard despite their dead bet. ‘We beg of you O’ Wizard please explain how you picked your tips!’ Finn said, offering to buy the man a beer, a sure way to win a Wizard’s trust.

‘I get visions,’ was the reply the Wizard made,

although in truth the man simply tipped the animal or emblem he saw coming out on top in an honest fight. A titan would naturally defeat a panther, a warrior would convincingly best a rooster, and a storm may not kill a shark too often, but certainly you have never seen a shark kill a storm.

It was 15 minutes until the 7:35 kick off, and the party of three were outdoors for some fresh air and a complimentary smoke. ‘How do you get these visions?’ Finn asked softly. The Wizard became very serious. ‘When you close your eyes tight you can see these strange specks of absolutely nothing. The brain can be trained to see what lies between and behind and above and around the specks and so in time it connects them and gives me my visions. It’s just a bit different to how early men looked up at the stars and saw fish and crabs.’ The Wizard replied staring deeply into the smoke trail of his cigarette.

Tonight the moon was full and bright and the stars were just at the point where you could look around at one point in the sky and then to another and then back and there would be several more stars at the original point and you would think that this could seemingly go on forever, until it got so dark that the sky stopped paying you fan service and you would have to be content with those stars already there. It was however, just beginning.

‘Do they mean anything? Anything more than what those people saw when they saw those fish and crabs?’ Heath asked and almost immediately felt guilty for airing the possibility that something so far out could be used for anything more than selling books to old ladies.

‘It’s hard to say isn’t it. Those stars up there are all dead. They’re long dead. Except maybe the sun, but we don’t call that a star. It’s like how we try not to remind old people that

they’re old. But it’s a star and one day it will die. Well then, I don’t know how much those stars mean if they’re dead and long dead and that we still see them. I suppose it’s like how someone really dies when people stop saying their name. Maybe if we don’t look at the stars, they don’t mean anything and maybe if we don’t look inside our heads than those specks don’t mean anything either. I suppose the stuff in our head probably does matter though, because as long as we can see it, we aren’t dead and that means something doesn’t it?’ The Wizard replied, although I have presented his thesis here in a much-truncated form from that which would exist had I added in the pauses and haws, the fiddling and riddling, which existed between the full stops. They stepped inside and the Warriors were up 18-6. The Wizard’s left eye was fixed upon his right foot, as though fearful it would make some sudden movement, while his right eye gazed directly east, with a readiness to leap into the shrub were the sun to rise. The drunk old man smiled at the boys and wished them well, he put back on his trilby hat and walked into the restroom, never to be seen again.

BY ARTHUR PARSONS

They are coming for the artists next

You and me, we, us

Every single half-way queer And full-blown poser

The poets, drag folk, jockeys Lip-sticked thick-dicks with pockets full of posies

Yes, next it will be us

Every nondescript everyman, everywoman and everychild

If you have dyed hair or a fairy grin They will kick you twice And then start stomping Oh, and I suppose this goes without saying, But You better not be black

When they come for us There will be nowhere to run Nowhere to hide Nowhere to paint, write, sculpt or shiver They will point at us And murmur

“There they are the scoliosis of the working dead”

When they conquer the artist And celebrate the death of creation Molotov GOMA, nuke the Louvre and piss into the blackboard sky, Do not fool yourself, do not say you tried, Just shut your mouth, put down your pen And wait For as sure as hate We shall return As broken as we have made them

ELECTION

DECEMBER

BY ALISHA DAVENPORT

remember December nights? when it hurt to close my eyes when my days were empty and my nights were alive. jewel studded skies became only a guise for those that pried inside my mind, pulling out my darkest threads of memory then throwing them upon me like wild dogs. remember fairy lights that made my eyeballs bleed? red, blue and green, thoughts stuck inside a screen, I became a robot, a machine, churning out indistinguishable thoughts like cheese. then there was you on my phone, I had never felt so alone, I spent my hours crafting words for you, you later threw them in the trash.

Thank You!

As 2020 comes to a close, Glass is handing over to a new team. Your elected Glass editors for 2021 are:

We’d like to take this time to thank everyone who has been a part of Glass, especially Jasmin Graves, Jessica Perkins, Emily Hill, Aidan Ryan, UQP and the QUT Guild Team. Glass would not be what it is without you. Here’s to next year!

EM READMAN

ASHLEIGH NORTH

ALEXANDER ASHER

ANAHITA EBRAHIMI

ELLA BRUMM