CATALYST: 'EVERY WHERE', Issue 4, Volume 78

Savannah Selimi

Claudia Weiskopf

EVERY It’s the stinging feeling of the freezing water as it pains your skin in summer.

It’s the scratchy turning of a vinyl in your favourite record store.

It’s the scent of your mum’s cooking radiating through your childhood home.

It’s the local park where you had your first kiss.

It’s that trip to Europe you took in your gap year.

It’s the sweaty mosh at a gig.

Beatrice Madamba

It’s the reminder you get when you’re in a space, that life is here and there’s no choice but to surrender to it. Your senses engaged, your heart fluttering, your mind running. It’s in an ocean; a crowd; a forest; a foreign city; your street. It’s an inescapable escapism.

It’s Every Where.

Love, The Editors

WHERE

Claudia Weiskopf

Spaces make us. Places remind us.

Our environments, the air we breathe, the people that surround us. It means everything.

Claudia Weiskopf

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Claudia Weiskopf Claudia Weiskopf

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ONTENTS. CONTENTS. CONTENTS. CON

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832 A Second Home Notebook Number 3 Panchkula Always Returning Reflections on Space from the Place I’m in Right Now Greenhouse In the dream house Inner world My house, a sewing needle Love Letter to My Teenage Bedroom Moving On Empty Spaces Places That Someone Simply Deleted bury my corpse under the mall Repair The Allotment Sea I have no desire to change my space and that’s okay.

Smelling the Roses in Everything Everywhere All at Once A Reunion A Return World Calender

Claudia Weiskopf

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Contributions.

Catalyst Issue 4 2022 Established in 1944 Contact catalyst@rmit.edu.au RMIT Media Collective, RMIT City Campus, Building 12, Level 3, Room 97 Printer Printgraphics Pty Ltd 14 Hardner Road, Mount Waverley, Victoria 3149 Australia Photographers: Erina Hoque Shriya Sudarsan Rao Jonah Epstein

Editors: Beatrice Madamba Savannah Selimi Vivian Dobbie-Glazier Designers: Brianna Simonsen Cherry Lin Vivian Dobbie-Glazier News Officers: Mia Gregor Rafael Gerster Entertainment Officers: Sienna Taylor-Gibson Ruby Box Olivia Hough Ruby Edwards Culture Officers: Stella Thomson Nishtha Sharma

Editorial Committee: Jasper Riley Juliette Salom Stella Thomson Mia Gregor Sienna Taylor-Gibson Julianna Rajkowski Jean Wenjing Zhang Claudia Weiskopf Rafael Gerster Daniel Car Ruby Edwards Zoe Perks Alyssa Forato India Curtain Jonah Epstein Creative Writing Officers: Juliette Salom Claudia Weiskopf Julianna Rajkowski Zoe Perks

Catalyst and RMIT University Student Union acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past, present and future.

Catalyst and RMIT University Student Union also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and their ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where it contacts its business.

• • • •

Coffee shops & eateries Live music & entertainment venues Professional & health services Supplies & groceries A unique and affordable shopping strip, just around the corner from the Brunswick campus.

Melbourne CBD commuters can catch the Upfield train from the city, the No.19 tram or use the Upfield Bike Path.

sydneyroad.com.au @sydneyroadbrunswick

image by Ava Rossi

the faint rumble under feet quiet mumbles barely break the 6am silence i sit alone a time of vulnerable isolation

everyone encapsulated in their own worlds an abundance of atmospheres existing in a metal carriage we go on with our phones and no one seems to notice the rain that comes because to them, there is no sentiment it’s all pavement, dull lights, red peeling paint down the side cracks of the toppling architecture

832

Anonymous but for me i find my sunrises in street lamps that emphasise the abnormalities on the sidewalks moulded by the decades of life the encyclopaedia of the modern man towering buildings make for my mountains their magisterial magnificence crafted with hundreds of calloused hands i don’t see the ocean that often and i never learnt how to swim but i am submerged in the early morning fog that hangs low over the city

shooting stars are the romanticism of a particle that skims past our atmosphere, uninterested so i make my wishes on the red eyes traffics lights and construction sites they’re more likely to be heard that way anyway oxygen replaced with second hand smoke all the kids are wearing second hand clothes and i am here, colourising the grittiness of my home whist i ride the second bus of the day.

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It’s 7pm. I’m stepping out of my warm apartment. Fuck it’s cold. The air is piercing my face, turning my nose comically red. The trees look skeletal in their bareness, and it’s so quiet. It smells like woodfire smoke, and the mist has already settled upon the empty road. Something about this reminds me of my Grandma’s home in Munich, Germany.

words and photos by Mina Wakefield

She lives on the second floor of an apartment block.

In the spring, her garden is filled with well-kept, brightly coloured flowers in pristine terracotta pots. In the winter everything is covered in snow, the cobblestone footpath just barely visible, snow shovelled roughly to the side. The hallway smells like laundry detergent, and well-watered house plants fill each corner of the stairwell.

I went back this year, for the first time since my grandfather passed away in 2012. That year was different to all the previous years. Germany for me meant Christmas. Clean snow, night markets and spice scents released from cookie jars. It meant family.

Calm chatter from the other room, candle lit dinners and wine-stained tablecloths.

It was late September, Autumn. We were there for his funeral. It wasn’t the same as all the memories I had built of this place the years before. A sad and stressful time for everyone. The calm chatter became a hushed argument. It wasn’t cold enough to snow, and not warm enough to feel comfortable.

After this, Germany became a foggy distant memory.

Only triggered by the smell of that woodfire smoke hanging in the misty air. The scent of laundry detergent in a cold, tiled room. Something you looked through and smiled at in photo albums.

This year it was a different experience. Ten years later, those distinct aromas remained, and everything looked the same as it was all those years ago. Yet everything was smaller, I had grown to only inches below the light installations in the ceilings of my Grandma’s home. I was there with an adult mind.

Experiencing everything new for myself, traveling the city alone, learning the subway lines and speaking a broken attempt at their language. I watched people living their life in their home city, cycling through parks, chatting in cafes, running to catch busses, shouting into phones.

It was summer. I never had memories of summer in Germany. It was beautiful. Everything was so green, the sky so blue. The light was stark and bright, reflecting off the concrete. It was hot. People wore sandals and shorts and strappy dresses and T-shirts.

People swam in freezing rivers and lakes, sunbathed on brightly coloured towels. People drank Aperol spritz, sipped the overflowing foam from their beers, ate sugar-coated almonds and quickly melting ice-creams.

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So now, as I’m walking through my seven-degree evening in Melbourne. I’m thinking of this. My second home: Munich. It’s nights like these that make me miss it the most.

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Notebook Number 3.

Savannah Selimi

I wrote in my little, beige-paged notebook, amid a midnight chat while Lana Del Rey played and my friends snuggled in blankets. The atmosphere offered an invitation to vulnerability; the white-noise purr of the heater, the soft light of the kitchen, the faint sound of nearby ocean waves. As my friends opened up, I caved in. Pen in hand and subsequent ink on paper, jotting, noting, poeticising. I find that documenting is the only way I know to make sense of space.

Sorrento, July 16, ‘Brooklyn Baby’ - Lana Del Rey. And I’m not completely sure I’m fond of my little literary reclusions.

Sometimes I wish to be in my body and have that be enough. Talk loudly, softly, crudely, thoughtfully, and have that be enough. Watch and view and see and do, and have that be enough.

But I always resort to pen on paper. I think space is more of a comprehensible concept from a crumpled page. It’s like I’m the writer of my own life in the most literal sense — now this happens, then this happens, and this makes me feel this way and God, wasn’t this wonderful and doesn’t this make me so sad?

When I read about days travelling the coast with my friends, I’m there again.

When I recite poetry scribbled on empty spaces, I feel the way I felt at a time. It’s a silly immortalisation of magical happenstance. And maybe even deeper, it’s a reckoning to make sense of what to do, how to live.

I’m on Notebook 3 now.

Every so often I’ll flick through old pages, smile at quotes people have said or envision a scene I’ve described. I can smell summer on my blue notebook.

My mustard-yellow transports me back to the gigs and city nights of Autumn.

My current floral-patterned book finds a home in every tote bag I carry, a companion for every place I find myself and every person I meet, to whom I repeat the never-tired script:

My trusty notebook also blossoms with quotes and random doodles, overcrowded with accompanying dates and song titles (the song that’s playing is essential to time of documentation). Every blot of ink is a reminiscent recollection of a moment: low-lit dinners, dances in empty train carriages, random musings of everyday life - chalk on the sidewalk; a poignant song lyric; opinions on anything.

‘I carry this notebook everywhere I go, and I get people to write in it. There are no rules - you can do whatever you want.’

Of course, the pointless pondering and hurried reciting is just memory fuel.

It brings me back to places and spaces, conversations and faces. But more than that, it’s also a longing to solidify where I am.

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And perhaps I’ll say it and read it to infinity before it finally sticks.

There are no rules - you can do whatever you want.

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Nishtha Sharma I was so blessed to be born in a small town, Panchkula, located right next to the famous town of Chandigarh in the north part of India. Without ever being aware of each other, my parents were matched for each other by their parents. Seeing as both families went to the same religious place, later finding out that both families lived within 15 minutes of each other. Growing up was a blast, I faintly remember getting ready and going to school from my dadi-dadu’s (paternal grandparents) place during the week and then spending the weekend at my nani-nanu’s (maternal grandparents) place where I’d spend hours at the park in front of their palace and buying treats from the carts that went past. The most time I spent in Panchkula that I last recall was the year or so I lived with both sets of grandparents and a close aunt, as my parents were studying here in Melbourne trying to build a new life out of nothing for us.

There was this ever growing market I have always been ecstatic to visit, whether it be back when I lived there or going back now to visit.

There is always something for everything, a furniture shop, a grocery, a sweet shop, in between stores there would be a colour dyeing guy with his drums and boiling water just dyeing some clothes, countless clothing stores for all seasons, a must have fun restaurant with all types of street food and noodles. Not to mention the gradual increase in car parking every time I go back, with not as many scooters and bicycles and more motorbikes and cars. There is always a stray dog or two in the footsteps who I am always tempted to pet but am pushed back from by my health conscious mum.

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In general, that small area was a good mix of modern and traditional roots, with large industrial buildings on one side and then a large cart based vegetable market on the other side of the road. I love going to another nearby fruit and vegetable market with my nanu, which is only open on Thursday evenings. We would leave around 5pm as it was just getting dark and wore some strong shoes as even though it was not a far walk there were always some bumpy rocks and construction material stacks to get past.

But the most fun is and will always be my nani-nanu’s house, it’s the one we stay at still until this day when we go back. With the quilts and pillows smelling like mothballs, the furniture seemingly getting smaller with every visit only to realize I was the one getting bigger, the open verandas on both ends of the house as well as a rooftop balcony to play in, the guava tree in the back that always had it’s leaves poking in through the kitchen window. Everything was filled with magic, and I have to give it up to my nanu-nani for taking care and keeping things in place clean and running for basically my entire life. Not forgetting the park right outside. It always brings back a whole bucket load of emotions, from making friends, to losing them to getting pushed around and learning how to ride a bike. Some of the playground is even the same and that swing that’s shaped like a chair makes even the coldest day feel like a warm hug.

I hope I never tire of this town and always find something new and exciting as well as remember and cherish the places that brought so much joy and growth as I was growing up.

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The attached photo is one that I took while in Halls Gap. In fact, it was taken the last time I visited the area in April. A friend of mine and I were out exploring and heading for a lookout when I took it. I was especially excited that day, as I was shooting my first ever roll of film. Prior to that roll, I had only ever shot digitally, but now that photo is preserved both digitally and physically. The photo attempts to showcase the vast landscape and some of the mountains that make up the wider Grampians/Gariwerd area.

When you are that high up in nature you truly do feel on top of it all.

That everything out there is yours for the taking. I do not get that feeling being in my apartment, overlooking the ant-sized people walking along. In that photo, it feels like being at peace.

At least that's how it felt taking the photo.

Another memory from that first visit was at night, when she took me to a dam. Unlike in Melbourne, Halls Gap is free of light pollution, so the night sky is entirely dark. In fact, everything is dark at night there.

There are barely any lights apart from those of a few restaurants and cars that buzz past. Once you are out in the middle of the dam, you're surrounded essentially by nothing. There is only a path on either side of you and the edge of the dam and the lake flanks you. With the moon shining down I gazed upon one of the clearest nights I can remember. It was as if thousands of lost souls gazed back at us as we looked at those stars, beaming their light at us as we do to them every day.

There her and I were – alone. It was just the two of us and the great beyond above.

I remember the first time I visited Halls Gap back in February. My friend and I walked up an unbelievably steep road to the top of a mountain, only to follow a rough path over some boulders to find opened for us a panoramic view of the valley from which we had come from. It literally took my breath away at the sheer scale and splendour of it all. The vastness of it all blew me away. It felt like it was just her and I, again, on top of the world, looking down upon it as though we created it.

It was just us alone with the trees, rocks, and birds.

EVERY WHERE

Now she is among those lost souls up in the stars gazing back down upon me.

Reflecting her light off the world in a different way than she did before. I look back at these photos from time to time and remember the beauty of Halls Gap and I remember my friend. She will forever remain in the vastness and the breathtaking beauty of the landscapes, shrouding everything in magnificence and intrigue. She showed me the beauty of the area and helped me begin to see some of the beauty in life.

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words and image by Jake Maraldo

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Izzy Savenake

Reflections on Space from the Place I’m in Right Now

This year feels like the first time I’ve noticed myself growing up and growing in, increments extending downward and rooting me into the earth.

A shift in the way I have been given the space to embrace creativity and understand my queerness, to dress up and cut my hair.

I found friendships that lift me up and began leaning into the way they make me feel whole.

I’ve had the same nail polish on my toes since December last year. I chose a dark brown colour to match the dress I was wearing and hurriedly painted them twenty minutes before leaving for a friend’s 21st, awaiting a room of familiar faces and wearing heels for the first time since 2019. In the eight months that have followed, I seem to have never found the time or sheer willpower to reach down with a couple of acetone-soaked cotton balls and wipe it off. Instead, I have opted to let nature take its course, clipping my nails when they reach that uncomfortable length and watching the colour disappear inch by inch, in steady increments.

I never knew how much time you could fit into eight months and how many increments it could take to build a person. Identity is bigger than me, it is people and place.

‘I Know The End’ by Phoebe Bridgers is one of my favourite songs ever, because I love the way that it gradually builds into something you would never expect. I love feeling, not incrementally but uncontrollably, and it’s the type of song that draws you in and leaves you with something to feel.

Growing up is imperceptible until you begin to feel yourself taking up space, feet planted, the last streak of brown nail polish clinging to your two big toes. Learning to let people in and finding a new place to be from.

What a difference it makes to feel at ease.

I didn’t expect these lingering flecks of brown toenail polish to be such an opportune indication of time.

On that night last December, I found myself in a space that welcomed me because I was known, but found it hard to ignore a series of barely perceptible glances taking in my appearance and calculating the way I had outgrown myself. Growing up is imperceptible until you’re in a room full of your high school friends.

People that you care about but are no longer around to witness each increment of growth, so they begin to see them all at once.

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I can smell it too - redolent, and hazy Midsummer, I remember like pollen on bee-hinds.

Your greenhouse has a current, and it runs In orbicular shape, rings around Jupiter’s perennial.

Our chamber – and I too with the hanging flowers – Persist the wrinkled palm of your labour.

Sweet are the inhalations of petunia Perching under the glassed panes.

And how kind are the yellow hands, Geraniums that speak in hushed tones.

So many houses of green things that hold, And carry us.

My feet were small and unclothed, My eyes budding like marigolds.

Tessa Remsu

Your Greenhouse

Isabelle Howard

Background photos by Claudia Weiskopf, middle photos by Savannah Selimi

Claudia Weiskopf

In the dream house.

My childhood home is gone.

This is not a figurative declaration.

The house I grew up in has been painted, renovated, reconfigured and blasted into modernity beyond all conceivable recognition. Whenever I’m feeling sentimental enough for a driveby, I barely recognise the indigo blue Victorian weatherboard that housed my growing body for so many years.

kitchen and no wisteria in sight. Gone is the pine tree, the crumbling fence, even the ratty carpet that my mother swore she would replace when we learned to stop dropping food on it (we never did). It used to upset me; another vestige of childhood lost to the hungry beast of time. But what those eager investors didn’t realise as they slapped a coat of paint on the house and called it a bed and breakfast is that no amount of renovation can stop me from visiting the space as it was.

I know nostalgia sweetens, but when I think of my time in that house, it’s like one long summer day. Ice creams melt over chubby fists, friends stay over for sleepovers on a weekly basis and the school holidays stretch out before us like a racetrack. The most stressful thing on my mind is making sure I fill out my reader with the latest chapter of Deltora Quest.

My childhood home might be gone, but in my dreams, it is untouched.

Every night I return to the bedroom I shared with my sister, full of treasures long disintegrated. I go back to uneven wooden floorboards, to a bathroom with rose-coloured tiles, to the lounge room that doubled as a concert hall for my elaborately choreographed performances and the place I learnt to love words. I return to that house in sleep, and though it aches, I’m glad. I’m glad a space exists that will not crumble with age, that is mine and mine alone, shaped by memory and the sweetness of youth.

Life was sweet, simple, and my home was the centre of it all.

In memories, I pace creaky polished floorboards, open stained windows draped in trailing wisteria vines, stir milky Milos in a kitchen warped becomingly by age and play with Bratz dolls on a bright green carpet that never quite looked clean. I pick tiny sour cumquats from the tree in the front garden, build cubby houses in the towering pine on the nature strip with the neighbourhood kids and search for fairies among the wild rose bushes that grow unpruned by the window of my parent’s bedroom.

Dream analysts will tell you that dreaming of your childhood home represents a regression, a yearning for the past, but I say otherwise. My dream house exists as a refuge from the corrosion of time, and though my memories may fade, I believe that the house will always exist somewhere – in a little pocket of space just for me.

Now, bought by investors and given a facelift, the house is mushy pea green with a monstrous industrial

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Olivia Hough image by Beatrice Madamba There is a place which has remained consistent, and my own. A place which is loud, and bright, bumbling, and busy. One which encompasses all the laughter and sadness; the good, the bad, and the exciting. A place which is as wide as it is small and a place which is malleable as much as it is strong.

All those I have known are kept here; all the jokes I’ve heard, all the places I’ve been, those who I have lost and my favourite films.

The random poem I had known slowly fades, while books and chapters of my friends and I now are stored with a hazy permanence on shelves which stretch so high I can no longer see the top.

Within me lies a place I can go to escape, reminisce, and return to times of joy and laughter.

My memory acts as a foggy film reel frantically flicking through familiar scenes and images of my favourite places, and it is surfaced through my sense of smell the fastest. Burning firewood and Australian gum trees brings me back to a town which ran on gold and sits on shadows of the larger, greater sister town. Fire ravages through here most summers, and the scars still show in sweeping black and white gaps in army green coloured trees and large foreign autumnal litterers. On the edge of the alpine region is a place where laughter is brighter, and music is sweeter, and where the sun beats down harder and the cold snaps at your toes.

The smell of Japanese cherry blossom perfume, spring and smog brings me back to a city which changed my life and the people who were with me when I went.

In my head flash colours of a collage of my past. They all bombard my mind’s eye at every turn; the faces of those I love are what I see the most (as well as some random facts and embarrassing events which decide to pop up to say hi).

I like the privacy of my mind. I can think about anything at any time, or dream of any goal out of reach without another soul knowing, until I open my mouth. It’s a sort of comfort my consciousness and I share.

This place, my place, is special to me because it is my own. When I am feeling trapped, or anxious, or worried and scared, feeling as though my world is getting smaller and smaller, I shut my eyes and travel back in time.

I see it all so clearly. My friends, my family, and the feeling of total freedom.

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my lungs warp the water damaged floorboards. my tongue tastes the eggplants we’ve roasted in the oven. my neck aches from the toomany pillows on my bed. my eyes prick with tears shed on the couch. my head hits the tea cupboard that is never shut. my hands create the art that hangs from hooks.

hooks - when we placed them, we thought we had to wait 30 seconds and we danced around as we waited and it took us weeks to even get to the point when we put them up because we were so content in this bright little flat with the big windows and the yellow walls that reject the bludgeoning nails we tried first.

Aya Tamir Regev

me - I sit on the walls of this house, watching the happenings like a fanatic at the second screening of their favourite film. ready for all the details.

I sit here on our facebook marketplace couches, with our second hand coffee table, my tea in a mug I was given for a craft project, on coasters we were gifted, watching the screen I found on the road.

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my house, a sewing needle.

this - this - is the Place where I mended myself - I took my frayed edges and pinned them neatly, then picked a pretty thread and sewed, my fingers gentle and loving, a kindly seamstress. this is where I Healed. I will miss it.

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Love Letter to My Teenage Bedroom.

Brianna Simonsen

Tantrums, arguments, discussions, laughs, dancing (well, I guess, an attempt at dancing), Lorde’s ‘Pure Heroine’ thumping against the walls on a small speaker. The wardrobe mirror reflected a girl trying desperately to find herself within the fog of teenagehood. Trying to understand the changes to her body, trying to appeal to the male gaze, trying to understand why people saw her one way but she saw herself another. Trying.

This house was built in the ‘80s.

Soft cream-coloured walls with wooden skirting lining the door; scuffed paint around the corners; gold rims around the wardrobe; and a window outlooking a hot pink flower bush, tangled and overgrown, which has probably been there forever. This house has always had a sense of comfort. The week that I spent in quarantine with Covid confirmed its stability in keeping me sane.

16/07/22 Tonight, is the last night in my teenage bedroom and I can’t help but feel nostalgic…

Imagine a square with a window; a bed plonked in the middle; a kimono stand; a chest of drawers; two bedside tables and a girl with orange hair squishing through the gaps to open her curtains.

This bedroom was made for one person and one person only, to feel wrapped up and held by its four walls, and that’s exactly what it did.

Let’s face it: moving out is scary. It shatters the idea of your room as a safe space. As your space, no matter how much you grow, you will always fit into, come back to, or be surrounded by it. It shines a light on the fragile memories which were shared within that space, which will dissolve into that space, existing now only in your mind.

As suddenly the only place you used to call your own gets turned on its head.

Teenage bedrooms are archives.

Collection zones and safe spaces to let out all that teenage angst and to process all of those complicated emotions, like jealousy or heartbreak.

Putting everything you own into boxes will never not be daunting, but it’s also exciting. Like the feeling of coming to the end of a chapter. The rush, the excitement, the adrenaline.

My room was never really a hang out spot, but sometimes, friends would come over, drink tea and chat on my bed. We could talk for hours under the glow of my mushroom lamps and pink linen sheets, delving into the thoughts that spun around our minds and our tragic relationships, to just for a moment, speak these feelings into existence.

Like a sponge, the room would soak up our conversations. What we say here, stays here.

Change always hits me after it has already happened.

That girl that first walked into this room, ready to take on her teenage years, now only exists through soft memories. These memories are housed within a woman still trying to understand the world around her, ready to make new memories in new spaces, to find new friends and discover new relationships; to inevitably and lovingly reflect on the growth she experienced in that small square room.

My teenage bedroom.

There’s been a fair amount of tears shed in this room.

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Moving On

The final box looms in the corner of my bedroom, edges settling into the carpet in resistance, clawing and refusing to leave. Secretly, I long to join it, to lie down and dig my nails into its plush surface. Someone would have to drag me away, kicking and screaming.

Something that dramatic feels more suitable than this. No screaming. No tears. No resistance. Only one final box and the anticipation for the cheers that will come once I carry it out into the awaiting car. I close the door behind me and relish as the other voices echoing throughout the house fade away into muffled static. I need this to be between me and the box, this room our only witness.

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I wasn’t melancholy before. Houses, like any material object, come and go. Some are better than others. This one certainly fell into the others category, with unreliable plumbing, thin walls unable to trap heat or sound, and a patch of mould growing in the bathroom that we all chose to ignore. Maybe once it was loved, but now it has fallen victim to time and disinterest. My friends and I aren’t blameless. We only chose this house due to cheap rent and its proximity to the train station. It wasn’t love or admiration; simply convenience.

Hence, there should be no sadness in saying goodbye to the house, and yet an overwhelming heaviness stirs in my chest as I stand in the empty room.

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Zoe Perks image by Beatrice Madamba I stare at my old window that looks out onto the street, already missing the sunsets it gifted me each evening.

My phone is full of photos of my favourite ones, each a unique burst of autumnal hues entwining in a water colour symphony. Stepping deeper into the room, my eyes trace the carpet until I find the small patch a few shades darker than it should be. I smile, remembering the night we shared a bottle of wine to celebrate Sam’s new job, playing card games late into the night until someone knocked over their glass. The four of us spent days trying to research home remedies to fix the stain, terrified of losing our bond or having to pay for professionals to clean our mess. I can’t believe we got away with it.

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I walk until I’m standing in the middle of the room. It looks intimidatingly bare with nothing inside. Soulless.

Indents of my bed frame and desk remain in the carpet, the only indication that someone, that I, was here. I sit down where the middle of my bed should be and take in the emptiness, letting it consume me. One year ago I sat in this exact position, curled up on a bare mattress surrounded by boxes, crying until my lungs ached and tears stung my eyes. I feared that I had made a terrible, horrible, irreversible mistake. That version of me entered this room, and here she will remain. The one leaving today is still terrified, but maybe a little more confident, even happier. My eyes settle on the box still glaring in the corner of the room. Finally, a pinch of remorse surrounds me for leaving this place. It would be unjust not to, not after the lessons and the stories it helped me create. Still, our goodbye is inadequate. No screams. No tears.

No resistance. Only a bittersweet farewell.

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Empty flâneur noun a man who saunters around observing contemporary society.

Every now and then, I find myself assuming the tasks of the ‘flâneuserie’.

I stroll around the city with a keen-eye and take in the scenes of Melbourne; the grand, the mundane and the peculiar. I wander around through tobacco-scented alleyways, decadently tiled arcades, or the wide expanse of gardens away from the bustling urban centre. In each flâneur escapade, I have noted that I am drawn to specific types of spaces: old things, abandoned buildings and historical sites.

Spaces EVERY WHERE

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Beatrice Madamba

Svetlana Boym, an academic, writer and artist, once said, “ruins make us think of the past that could have been and the future that never took place, tantalising us with utopian dreams of escaping the irreversibility of time.”

Next, in pairs, each person took turns being blindfolded to be guided by their partner. Here we relied on our sense of smell, our touch and sound. The scent of a blooming rose, sprinkled in dew drops; the cool surface of a decaying stone; the sound of birds flying above heads.

My favourite kinds of places are housed in peculiar venues. The kind that makes use of an otherwise not-soaesthetically pleasing void of empty space and turning it into something else entirely. A vintage bazaar in an old theatre; a zine fair held at a once bustling meat market; a farmers market operating on a commercial parking lot.

When we returned to share our unique observations, we all came to the same conclusion: our time at the cemetery reminded us of the impermanent, ephemeral nature of life.

To answer my previous question, (and if you have forgotten what the question was in this convoluted stream of consciousness of an article, it was: what is it that draws us humans towards things of the past – or something of the like), perhaps it is due in part of our collective human desire to tantalise with the irreversibility of time. We have become so good at romanticising the past because we don’t want to succumb to the ennui of the present. Such spaces almost serve as a reminder of what is, what once was, and what could be. It positions us to face our own mortality whether we are aware of it or not.

What is it exactly that draws us city folk like myself, to these antique locations made anew, I wonder?

I once paid a visit to Fawkner Cemetery as part of a symposium about the use of space in urban areas. Cemeteries are such strange, liminal spaces, where both life and death co-exist. Life, in the people that come to pay their respects to the dead, and in the plant life that graces the otherwise cold, lifeless tombstones.

Maybe it was the sun that shone on us as we arrived, or the endless rows of rose bushes neatly trimmed to perfection, but when we entered through the iron gates of Fawkner Cemetery I was overwhelmed with a strange feeling of peace. How peculiar, I thought, to enter a place of death and feel at ease. As humans, aren’t we taught to fear morality?

Next time you find yourself alone in the city, I invite you to take part in flânerie. Walk around. Take in your surroundings and note what you see, what you feel. You never know what hidden pocket of history may make itself known to your eyes, and your eyes alone if you are willing to look.

We engaged in a few activities to isolate certain senses. First, we wore earplugs and walked around, relying mostly on sight to take in our surroundings.

Issue 04

Because perhaps the concept of ‘empty space’ bears false witness – there was always something that came before it.

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EVERY WHERE

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Alicia Crowhurst

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Josie Buden

What sticks out is the multiplayer.

Dropping into servers I’d heard about with friends, building bases, trading goods. Some I hosted, most I didn’t.

I wonder how our generation will talk about place, as we get older. We’re the first to really grow up with web 2.0: social medias, communities, and concrete online spaces. It’s important to draw that line between Zoomers and Millennials there, I think, in the specificity of the digital worlds we each were born into. The era of dialup and old internet, where you could interact with, really feel and touch the mechanics of each website are long, long past. Many of us Zoomers have only ever seen the internet through the shiny, glossy, cover of an app, program, or intricate social media site. There is a degree of abstraction that makes these things fundamentally unknowable.

The lifecycle of a survival multiplayer (SMP) server in Minecraft is well documented. A guy gets their friends to start playing together, or finds a preexisting community and offers to create a Minecraft server. That initial player base grows, with the players swiftly stripping the world of resources, hitting all the milestones, and beating the game, usually in less than a week.

Then people start building, setting to megaprojects or weird, abstract goals.

Those goals get met, and people set new goals, or they simply... don’t.

And people get bored, drop off, lose interest. Maybe you can keep that interest up, bring new people in at a constant rate, but that’s tough.

I wonder how we’ll talk about Minecraft.

I have played a lot of single player, alone in my room, but that’s not where I put most of my core memories.

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Most servers simply reset. Maybe to try a new update or maybe just... because.

They gather the remaining community, maybe some old timers jump on, explore the world, take screenshots, say goodbye, and then the server shuts down, and the world is wiped clean.

Maybe the world is archived, somewhere, but chances are you can’t access it, so all you have left of this world you built, poured time and love and care into is a few photos and memories.

I suppose that’s not much different from the physical world. Will we give those stories the same weight? Put those screenshots in photo albums? Will we boot up old games for our children, or to show our future partners?

Years from now, long married, will we sit down with our spouses to read our first text messages? Explore our old Minecraft worlds?

It’s odd to spell out, but we’ll have to, won’t we?

It’s even tougher because those places we created are uniquely vulnerable.

Sydney will still exist in fifty years, but will Facebook? Will Los Santos?

Software changes, and hardware is fragile. You only need to drop your hard drive once. Even The Cloud belongs to a company, first.

So much of my childhood, my life so far, was spent in places that someone simply deleted.

Maybe we’re young enough that those places were important to us, but old enough that we won’t acknowledge that.

Maybe the next lot will have it better.

Maybe, fifty years from now, I’ll scroll through a photo album, see a blocky, low-res group photo, and just fucking cry.

Issue 04

26

c.

I hate the shopping centre. The mall.

The plaza. All its names and forms.

Deeper I go. The walkways open to rooms. The rooms open to walkways. The walkways open to walkways. The rooms open to rooms. I could go up. I could go down. A moving labyrinth on offer for visual feasts and desires. Colours calling my name from every direction.

This place holds my hand. There’s always a directory nearby making sure I never get lost and making sure I’m forever lost.

When the doors slide open and I take those first tentative steps onto the cream-tiled floor, I feel it. This place is eating my soul.

By no means is it in a rush. No, no.

Little bites. Careful and precise.

Slicing off the crusts with a knife.

Gnawing and absorbing each piece of my being into the pale dead fluorescent lights above. It hurts so good while it picks around, trying to find the most tender part of me to dig into. It won’t take long to find.

“Follow me,” it murmurs softly.

Navigating through the sea of ghouls and tiny sprites that inhabit here is difficult. They wander without care.

Stuck in the pull of temptation and distraction.

“Go deeper,” it whispers into my ear.

EVERY WHERE

27

c.

Vivian Dobbie-Glazier

Today it is high tide. They all look like someone I once knew. Maybe they are people I could’ve known. Sometimes I swear they even look like me.

The teeth are sunk in, not letting go now. The juiciest part of my essence is on offer for all to see. Ripping and tearing, leaving a mess all down this escalator. It’ll be shut for a couple hours while they clean it up. Closed for maintenance.

“Down this way,” it calls sternly from afar.

It’s not even day anymore. I don’t think it is even night. What time was it when I got here? There is plenty of light but no windows. I don’t think I’m allowed to leave anymore.

Nobody is taking any notice of what’s going on. Another one bites the dust.

I hate the shopping centre. The mall.

The plaza. All of it.

“In here,” it commands.

My body is getting weaker. This place knows I am weaker too. The gnawing isn’t pleasant anymore.

Issue 04

28

c.

Isabelle Howard

Repair His time was coming, he turned up some morning Expectedly, his sun dappled skin His spade hung, a trowel in his trouser pocket Heaved and levelled the ground Just before the hedge, his damp knees Bruised fingers unclenching mud-sticks Shelling moss, and mildew from stone Hatching again his father’s grave Hare, running from open ground Snickets under fences, catching something To turn back, and the red-breasted robin Tutting in their rounded way, and leaving for the woodland His nimble fingers, wispy Murmurs -he too must be on his way

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Alicia Crowhurst

Visual

Amelia Rosser

At the mouth of Strainges Close, which curved in a lazy half-horse shoe, sat a semi-detached house with patent brown window frames.

The lacquer on these frames was sticky, although, to the sugared palm of a child, so was everything. Feet planted in the frontgarden lawn, my brother and I picked at the kitchen windowsill, sneezing when the brown paint flaked, a dire act of destruction as we cried through the glass pane for dinner.

In the corner of the front garden grew a tree whose branches cradled me. It felt so fairy tale-like to hoist myself up there that I’d have to be coaxed down on summer evenings by the promise of a bedtime story. Only if it’s Halibut Jackson, I’d say. Though it meant sustaining ant bites, reaching the top was worth it on Easter, where between spindly branches lay Kinder Surprises left by a mythical rodent.

coffee shop windows; leaf blowers outside the lobby, which is flat and pavement... these noises form a constant whir.

All of these noises between me and Strainges Close, yet I swim through like an addict in a movie named after a mode of transport.

My little apartment, tucked against the city, with its understairs cupboard at the door. I recycle one joke, parrot it to guests; ‘you’ll be sleeping like Harry tonight’. It feels so sitcom-like to hang my coat on the over-door hooks when I come in. There is a whiteboard sitting on the fridge on which I write yoghurt and apples and doodle pictures of daffodils.

During springtime, the village erupted with the ambient chirping of ducklings and our neighbour Rhiannon’s cat would embark on its yearly massacre. The duck pond became a dandelioned battlefield.

Past the duckpond, a gravelled path led to the Allotment, a haphazard field measured into gardens for green thumbs.

We’d visit in wellies, swinging on splintered wooden gates and scooping up tadpoles in our palms. One season, we grew tomatoes and courgettes but only half-seriously.

I daydream like a kid about dinner parties and getting wine drunk on the balcony in summer. And, like a kid, ownership flatters me. A coffee table to my own, for my own coffee table books?

Blue spatulas hanging from hooks in the kitchen? A balcony, twined with lights?

All mine?

Face pressed against the window pane, I’d watch icicles form on the windowsill and daffodils sprout at the curb. From inside Number One Strainges Close, I’d hide in the understairs cupboard - before I knew of Harry Potter - and I’d crawl up the stairs as manically as a bear on all fours.

On my bookcase below Aldi martini glasses, leans my fraying copy of Halibut Jackson. Next to it flutters three fairy figurines from discounted Kinder Surprises I bought on my break at work.

Today I find myself far from the Allotment, from mince pies and spring fetes where engorged cucumbers won ribbons for their sizes. Despite that measured distance, so real and contained, I find myself closer to the child in wellies and purple leggings more than ever. Church bells ringing no longer situate me but the city noises of drunk youth falling into each other; collectable names from

EVERY WHERE

At the door I scramble before leaving, forgetting something, and crawl like a bear up the winding stairs to retrieve it.

My own space and who do I invite first?

The gap-toothed, crooked fringed child who played hide and seek in the Church graveyard and kidnapped the village cats.

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Alicia Crowhurst

The Allotment .

I close my fifteenth floor apartment door and feel the swing of the allotment gate creak behind me.

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Isabelle Howard

my second tongue caught beneath a rib-roof sky i seldom know living but this salt-licked canopy cold feet trace sea-shell ground

and the sea mist, wings that unfoldedand and my heart too, my feet

sea

my head, my hands first tongue conjures tales of sentience but where words fumble tidal pulls at reason

EVERY WHERE

33

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I have no desire to change my space and that’s okay.

Alyssa Forato

I have no desire to change my space and that’s okay It’s over Sunday brunch with the girls that the talk of living abroad after uni is brought up. Everyone’s voicing their desires to quit their jobs once they graduate, buy a one-way ticket to Europe and “get the hell out of here.”

“Wouldn’t it be so nice to just work in a café in Italy and live there indefinitely?” One girl says. Everyone nods their agreement.

The idea floats around in my mind for a few minutes but is dismissed. Don’t get me wrong, I have my own desires to travel and see the world while I’m still young. I want that ‘main character’ experience no less than the next person, to live my life to full capacity. However, I possess absolutely no urge to live abroad. Is there something wrong with me?

Maybe it’s my intense fear and anxiety surrounding change, or maybe I just love Melbourne. Born and raised, I am a Melbourne girly through and through. I have never moved house, never left this precious city (other than a very rare holiday). And I’m completely okay with that.

I don’t know where the saying came from: “Melbourne is the New York of Australia,” but it’s spot on. There’s always so much to do, why would I leave? I love the weekend markets, the nightlife, the city, having all my comfort foods and favourite spots to eat within my reach. I know it’s a good thing to venture outside of your comfort zone, but why would I? I don’t want to force myself into an unfamiliar, strange setting, not when I have all my friends, family, and future right here.

Everyone around me seems to be moving out of home, out of state or internationally. What’s up with that?

No matter where I look, someone is packing their bags and setting off in search of greener pastures.

Mum gets off the phone with my aunty and tells me that my cousin is moving to the UK; my boyfriend turns to me and voices his surprise that his exhousemate is suddenly moving to the Netherlands. People I work with are leaving to go explore lives in other countries.

Issue 04

And that’s okay.

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c

Good Good

Morning Afternoon

Good

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Night

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Cherry Lin

Issue 04

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image by Beatrice Madamba

I often find myself looking back and intensely wanting to return to prior parts of my life. For much of the past few years, I haven’t been able to let myself enjoy the present, but will consistently have fond memories of my past.

And then one film came along and changed all that.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, has fundamentally changed how I think about the world.

I was always aware of the concept it tackles, that being that, in a universe (or multiverse!) where nothing matters and our lives do not amount to any sort of grand purpose, why not enjoy our lives while it lasts? Why not spend our energy

loving those around us and making each other happy? And yet, it was only after watching this film, three times no less, that I truly began to come around on the idea.

I want to talk about one scene in particular: the rock scene. If you’ve seen the film, there’s no doubt in my mind that this stuck with you. Evelyn and Joy, two of the film’s main characters, are transported to a universe where life never evolved on Earth, and they exist only as rocks with googly eyes.

They converse, using their multiversal powers, via on-screen text, with the only audio being ambient wind. At first glance, this idea seems silly. With no on-screen actors or anything very crazy going on (especially in comparison to

Malachy Lewis

the film’s prior intensely actionpacked scenes), it can be a bit of a shock, but that’s why it works.

This scene narratively establishes that Joy has been hoping that Evelyn, her mother, would notice something she wouldn’t, and perhaps convince her that life wasn’t meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Eventually, Evelyn, with help from her husband Waymond, convinces Joy that life being meaningless doesn’t mean that you don’t have to find joy in it. I can’t do justice to the film’s message and story in such short a time (please go watch it!).

The scene works wonderfully for me because it boils down the film’s message to its bare essentials, both in the script and cinematography. There’s no acting or complex shots (though the scene is very beautifully shot), but the energy and passion behind the story still shines through. By stripping it to this level, the film demonstrates that it is a message to be enjoyed and understood at a basic level, where we can just watch and feel positively overwhelmed with its philosophy. The film has done such a magnificent job building up to this moment that audiences are eating up a scene with two rocks talking about life. I wish every day that I could re-experience this scene in the theatre, from the initial chuckling from the audience, and the gradual realisation that they were viewing something truly beautiful.

In these turbulent times where we stress over our jobs, our relationships, our schoolwork, and countless other things, it is extremely important for our livelihoods to stop and breathe. Whenever I go to a place, no matter the place, I try to find beauty in it.

Whether it’s admiring the architecture and engineering prowess of the warehouse I work at or looking up from my phone on my way to university to take it all in, there’s no shortage of ways we can come out of an experience with something positive.

Love those around you.

What’s the point in worrying so much at the expense of mine and other’s happiness? Just take it all in.

Just be a rock.

image by Claudia Weiskopf

A Reunion.

I didn’t attend my Farewell. But I did go for a Reunion. All by myself, during the summer months, when I knew nobody would be around.

Five years ago, I walked out of this building, excited to escape, determined never to return. The memories were fresh, though I had buried them deep inside, where even I could never find them. Walking that empty hallway, with sunlight streaming through barred windows, they came, surging back.

I was back in my blue and yellow uniform. Too tight in the chest, too long at the knees. My hair was in pigtails, my shoes too big, my bag too heavy. I had hated that uniform. It was too hot, too tight and it never felt right. I had hated those pigtails, a menace when they came undone.

And I wondered.

If I had known.

Who I would become. And who would return.

EVERY WHERE

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c.

Jai Mudgerikar

Gone were the rabbits in the courtyard, I remembered sneaking in pieces of lettuce for them. Their closure was a pond now, with lotus flowers and little fish. But the birds in the hallway were the same, loud, excited, happy to have a visitor. Were they the same who had greeted me then, or the children of their children?

I had friends in these labs, Kim, Roger, Rani and the others; the creatures in their chemicals, peacefully dead on their shelves. I could not remember which was which, or if they were even the same.

Hilariously, the burnt bit of wall, the result of our play, remained unpainted, a warning perhaps, for the students after us.

The hallways had changed. They’d been an ugly navy back then, now they were bright yellow, with paintings and pictures splattered across. I wondered about the kids who drew them, as I had done years ago. The classrooms had changed too. Gone were the blackboards of my youth, now they were screens, with clickers and video players. Did they still write a ‘Quote of the Day’ every morning, did they still doodle graffiti at the bottom?

The art room next door had changed.

Gone was the teacher who’d locked up supplies in the name of tidiness.

Now the shelves were open, full and beautifully cluttered. The handprints on the wall had grown, big and small, my own lost somewhere at the bottom.

The vase I had painted still took pride of place, proudly looking on from behind the teacher’s desk.

And as I walked out, emotion grabbed me by the throat, suffocating, blinding, breathless. My memory… my common, ordinary, simple memory remained in these walls. My presence, the little girl I was, stayed back.

The library at least, remained unchanged. The shelves exactly as I remembered, the curtains drawn across the windows, the corner table dusty and the chairs as always wobbly. I traced my hands across the spines, finding my way by feel and memory. I had donated so many books to this place. Did the students today trace my name and wonder, as I had done before them? Did they sneak in here for quiet rebellion, as I had done back then?

And for a moment, I was again as I used to be, not timid, not awkward nor angry.

But young, and bright, and inspiring.

The science labs were locked, but I knew which window had a door lose.

They had re-painted and re-designed, modernised and upgraded, but never fixed that window. By mistake? Or secret amusement?

Issue 04

40

c.

Isabelle Howard

A Return the birches through their oracle shave eyes that tug at the moorland heather clad and a blowing draught bid you came to this meadow before a lighter tread, hands that made play out of twigs and leaf-piles mind steady fingers grappling juniper tending to the pasture like a child i won’t say you are unwelcomed now but the mounds are water-logged the trees won’t bend like they did before and too much is changed

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Cherry Lin

Felix Toheey

World.

I find the notion of a hometown difficult to relate to. I grew up in two countries on opposing sides of the world. I always wanted to have lasting friendships and strong family ties, but I simply could never trust my own situation enough to believe it was worth it when a “goodbye” was always around the corner.

My home has simply become wherever I sleep at night, and my world is everything else. Some people might define their world as their routine. “I wake up here then I go over there.” The notion that life is a continuous loop is simply not true. Every day is different, and although you may not be able to control every aspect of it, you can control how you react to it.

The things that are important to me change a lot as they come in and out of my life, but one thing that will always be here is my creativity. It is everything to me. I am sure that I wasn’t born with the left side of my brain, so the right side has the power of both!

It’s very easy to think of your mind as its own little world, but that’s just a way of keeping all your thoughts and emotions to yourself. Which isn’t healthy and doesn’t allow new ideas and growth. The mind can be an echo chamber, so open your mouth and let the echos out. The more you share your little world, the bigger it will become.

So when I say goodbye, I emphasise the “good”.

Being happy to say goodbye to someone doesn’t mean that you’re glad to see them go, but rather that you are happy to have met them at all.

Everything comes to an end if you let it.

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Beatrice Madamba

Issue 04

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September.

MON

TUE

WED

THUR

6.

7.

12.

13.

14.

19.

20.

21.

26.

27.

28.

Notes:

SAT

SUN

1.

2.

3.

4.

8.

9.

10.

11.

15.

16.

17.

18.

22.

RUSU chill

23.

24.

25.

29.

30.

RUSU chill & grill on city campus

5.

FRI

RUSU chill & grill on city campus

RUSU chill & grill on city campus

& grill on city campus

RUSU chill & grill on city campus

Claudia Weiskopf Savannah Selimi

Claudia Weiskopf

Claudia Weiskopf

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