Hello, thought I could write you a letter to bridge, honour(?) distance.
1.
The days have been moving… steadily. Slowly lengthening without me really noticing the change of time. The water is keeping me sane. I’ve been listening to the Manus recordings on walks. It feels so close, intimate, pulls deeply. Trying to evaluate freedom in these moments and how I see and feel it around me. There is much discussion around freedom where I am, in my family, around lockdown. These discussions are so deeply tethered to… countless, bodily, fleshy experiences, which makes it feel timeless? Cyclical? Which is more accurate in how we understand time.
Navigating social media shaming of non-vaxxers with my current relations being largely non-vaxx, and high risk, is hard. Since [name undisclosed] died, the framing shifted to his suicide being at the hands of the regime. Which I can’t deny. The thought cuts at me.
I don’t really know why I’m on social media. I like sharing things, and how that can offer a story that spans beyond my body. That process, being with and allowing your relations inside of you… being able to share that, I like that. But I often feel naive thinking it’s getting to people (which is partly my own self-worth complex). But there is just so much noise. And I can’t even say I feel like myself when I post anything. “Embrace the cringe”. Maybe it goes deeper than that.
I’m not really sure (of much). I’m not sure what to do about my family, other than not go anywhere public (indoors) to make sure I’m keeping them safe.
I can feel their fear. It’s not about disbelieving the virus in its effect. It is about freedom. And after the fires there is a relentlessness to them. It doesn’t feel like my place to argue.
My life has been hellish at times
but not like theirs. And people are being ravaged by their demons in iso. When I think of this it feels like time is slooooowing down, sometimes so much it begins going backwards.
You are in it, but it’s like the narrative of our own hell exists outside of us. And we participate in that narrative too. Like, disassociatively.
When the noise is over (is it ever?), we recoil down, back into our own worlds, resting or destroying ourselves. Kind of intense? ha. Yeah, it’s intense. But it is my “duty”. We’re meant to be storytellers. And apparently I’m gonna turn things around. Which is an honour and a burden.
Better learn how to articulate myself better.
I’ve been assigned a protector, a featherfoot. Which means someone will look out for me whilst also keeping me in line. And in ‘2021 time’ someone who will, “kill any cunt that fucks with ya”.
lol.
It’s kind of funny but to experience the depth of this accountability to each other – which permeates to the self (as others, for others) – fills me with the most profound sense of joy, and belonging.
It’s funny because my protector [name undisclosed] is an elder yet one of the most terrifying/fascinating/beautiful people I’ve met.
Amps me up to be this person who can turn things around, “stop us from burying another child,” whilst feeding me white-ox with stories not indifferent to violence to get there.
[name undisclosed]’s love is endless but you can feel the hate in him. Like, palpably. The night of [name undisclosed]’s funeral he drank a lot, more than I had seen him. He split into 2, maybe 3 different people.
Holding my hand, then telling me that there are moments where he feels an urge to cut my throat.
For a few seconds, I feel terrified. Thoughts of getting in my car and driving away. But I’d had far too much to drink and I knew that there was much more to what he was saying, that it wasn’t a threat. I knew I didn’t need to leave him in that moment.
If I’d left, it would validate everything in his world that led him into that place of violence and hatred toward people. Manifest from a lifetime of isolation, invalidation and being a prisoner inside of his own body.
So I stayed.
I didn’t break eye contact as he spoke. He said he could feel my fear in that moment. He smiled and I returned it. I knew I had passed his test, that we’d traversed some ground. Built trust.
The fear dissipates.
Staying in that moment relates to a lot. It relates to the deep, bodily knowing of violence, that it exists in us, all of us. And how you can learn to sit with it, listen to it… hm, this is an unresolved thought.
Bluntly, I’ve been around a lot of violence which makes me desensitised to it. But it also allows me to know that violence doesn’t make you a monster. I have too been in the grips of that emotion and I know myself better than that.
I think this is the wall between blak culture n yt culture. My understanding, our culture, in white terms, could be fucking brutal. To us, it is necessary (don’t take this the wrong way there is a lot to it). But the accountability and the networks that form over time… create incredible relations of respect and reciprocity. And it obviously wasn’t a shit show as we made it through with the deepest respect for all of our relations, formed through the discipline of our own ravaging dogs.
Let’s face it, we can be complete fucks.
I wouldn’t say a clip on the ears (etc) would do it (sorry nan), but something along the lines of that interaction with [name undisclosed]. It moved something in me. And I won’t un-know it.
That exchange made me feel bound to and beyond him. I think that was the intention. Oh and a side note – [name undisclosed] is a registered mental-health nurse of 30+ years. His phone rings off the hook with people he formally/informally looks after.
I also see [name undisclosed] as a complete and utter walking contradiction, in flickers. I’m listening to him, it’s cryptic but what he says holds the most fucked up and profound life experience that forms his reality.
And in that, there is truth. I hear it.
I think, unjustly, the nuance of how we build accountable communities isn’t understood by a lot of yts (minimising, I acknowledge). Which currently manifests in the difficulties of grappling w abolition, for example.
Anyway this is a full-on rabbit hole. But something I do spend a lot of time thinking about. In some ways, anger/violence has been one of the most significant, and formative emotions of my v short life. Which has everything to do with freedom. How do you become resigned to anger, its manifestation in violence? Is this decided for people before they leave the womb? I think so. That’s IG trauma for u! People spend their whole lives trying to unlearn this shit.
That’s what is sticking out for me right now – 7:06 am, Walbanja Country, kinda cold, can feel Darly breathing next to me. A lot of this ^ has been coming out in composition lately. It sounds... intense. Holding a lot of emotion.
I am grateful for the outlet.
2.
I’m living with my mum again. My room is 1/2 of the shed. I’ve used found objects from mum’s ‘junk’ to create a wall. An old doona cover of nans torn open to double the size. It’s pretty fucken ugly but the association makes it beautiful. The bloodlines are so strong here. When you walk 800 or so metres west you can see the string of mtns leading all the way home. Balgans concealed by development but you can see, feel through it nonetheless. These lines now marked by highways. They still carry their meaning.
Living in a makeshift space feels like being a kid again. When we first moved to Canberra from Bermagui we had a cousin living with us to help with rent, making the house a little crowded. All three of us sisters were sharing a room, fuelling regular “death matches”, as mum’d call em.
Mum decided to turn half the loungeroom into a bedroom using cupboards and shelves stacked up on top of each other. Being the youngest, I got the raw end of the deal i.e. the 1/2 lounge-room 1/2 bedroom situation. I would fall asleep to the hum of the tele and shifting lights sneaking in through the gaps in cupboards. I found it comforting. I can’t remember a lot from this time, other than getting really pissed off when my middle sister would chuck shit through and over the cupboards to taunt me. But I also remember more often than not, pretending to act mad whilst concealing my laughter at the situation.
Silver linings.
There was a time when I was stacking books into one of the shelf-walls and it fell right back into the loungeroom. I remember feeling embarrassed and angry. U know, at the instability of the situation. How that permeated beyond the physical.
But was the shame really mine? Or was it others’?
I didn’t really mind much. I guess it was only later that I began to feel shame around poverty. It was never much of an issue when I was small, being so bound, wound up with family. It felt right.
I’ll always feel the deepest sense of comfort in these spaces. The familiar ones. The ones I keep creating for myself. Wherever I go.
Mostly, I’m enjoying where I am. Mum has made it to the beach two days in a row now. At home, it’s so easy to slip into our known roles, also cyclical. Feeling neglected by her. That her mental space takes priority over all others.
I know I’ve been guilting her and I hate myself for it every time. When we were at the beach yesterday, seeing her fumbling over rocks I was like a hawk watching over her! Ha!
“Fuck mum be careful!!!”
Seeing her outside of the home (rare) I feel her sickness and frailty more palpably – despite her being built like a chonk little staffy. I can understand why she needs to spend most of her time in bed. I recognise how selfish I can be with her.
I guess we both need to come to terms with how far she would like to be pushed – held accountable(?) – and how much she too has become comfortably, numbly(?), resigned to her body’s demise. Her bone and her blood.
Hers.
Who am I to invalidate that?
I know better than to keep presenting myself as a child to her. We will always struggle with these roles, regardless of time.
It’s a process, cyclical in how you can go round and round and still end up at the same place. But every time u learn something different. That’s the important part.
E Fishpool is a Yuin artist based across Budawang and Walbanja Country. Their work maps processes of unlearning and (re)learning identity through sampling sound, dialect and field recordings.
Hello, thought I could write you a letter to bridge, honour(?) distance.
1.
The days have been moving… steadily. Slowly lengthening without me really noticing the change of time. The water is keeping me sane. I’ve been listening to the Manus recordings on walks. It feels so close, intimate, pulls deeply. Trying to evaluate freedom in these moments and how I see and feel it around me. There is much discussion around freedom where I am, in my family, around lockdown. These discussions are so deeply tethered to… countless, bodily, fleshy experiences, which makes it feel timeless? Cyclical? Which is more accurate in how we understand time.
Navigating social media shaming of non-vaxxers with my current relations being largely non-vaxx, and high risk, is hard. Since [name undisclosed] died, the framing shifted to his suicide being at the hands of the regime. Which I can’t deny. The thought cuts at me.
I don’t really know why I’m on social media. I like sharing things, and how that can offer a story that spans beyond my body. That process, being with and allowing your relations inside of you… being able to share that, I like that. But I often feel naive thinking it’s getting to people (which is partly my own self-worth complex). But there is just so much noise. And I can’t even say I feel like myself when I post anything. “Embrace the cringe”. Maybe it goes deeper than that.
I’m not really sure (of much). I’m not sure what to do about my family, other than not go anywhere public (indoors) to make sure I’m keeping them safe.
I can feel their fear. It’s not about disbelieving the virus in its effect. It is about freedom. And after the fires there is a relentlessness to them. It doesn’t feel like my place to argue.
My life has been hellish at times
but not like theirs. And people are being ravaged by their demons in iso. When I think of this it feels like time is slooooowing down, sometimes so much it begins going backwards.
You are in it, but it’s like the narrative of our own hell exists outside of us. And we participate in that narrative too. Like, disassociatively.
When the noise is over (is it ever?), we recoil down, back into our own worlds, resting or destroying ourselves. Kind of intense? ha. Yeah, it’s intense. But it is my “duty”. We’re meant to be storytellers. And apparently I’m gonna turn things around. Which is an honour and a burden.
Better learn how to articulate myself better.
I’ve been assigned a protector, a featherfoot. Which means someone will look out for me whilst also keeping me in line. And in ‘2021 time’ someone who will, “kill any cunt that fucks with ya”.
lol.
It’s kind of funny but to experience the depth of this accountability to each other – which permeates to the self (as others, for others) – fills me with the most profound sense of joy, and belonging.
It’s funny because my protector [name undisclosed] is an elder yet one of the most terrifying/fascinating/beautiful people I’ve met.
Amps me up to be this person who can turn things around, “stop us from burying another child,” whilst feeding me white-ox with stories not indifferent to violence to get there.
[name undisclosed]’s love is endless but you can feel the hate in him. Like, palpably. The night of [name undisclosed]’s funeral he drank a lot, more than I had seen him. He split into 2, maybe 3 different people.
Holding my hand, then telling me that there are moments where he feels an urge to cut my throat.
For a few seconds, I feel terrified. Thoughts of getting in my car and driving away. But I’d had far too much to drink and I knew that there was much more to what he was saying, that it wasn’t a threat. I knew I didn’t need to leave him in that moment.
If I’d left, it would validate everything in his world that led him into that place of violence and hatred toward people. Manifest from a lifetime of isolation, invalidation and being a prisoner inside of his own body.
So I stayed.
I didn’t break eye contact as he spoke. He said he could feel my fear in that moment. He smiled and I returned it. I knew I had passed his test, that we’d traversed some ground. Built trust.
The fear dissipates.
Staying in that moment relates to a lot. It relates to the deep, bodily knowing of violence, that it exists in us, all of us. And how you can learn to sit with it, listen to it… hm, this is an unresolved thought.
Bluntly, I’ve been around a lot of violence which makes me desensitised to it. But it also allows me to know that violence doesn’t make you a monster. I have too been in the grips of that emotion and I know myself better than that.
I think this is the wall between blak culture n yt culture. My understanding, our culture, in white terms, could be fucking brutal. To us, it is necessary (don’t take this the wrong way there is a lot to it). But the accountability and the networks that form over time… create incredible relations of respect and reciprocity. And it obviously wasn’t a shit show as we made it through with the deepest respect for all of our relations, formed through the discipline of our own ravaging dogs.
Let’s face it, we can be complete fucks.
I wouldn’t say a clip on the ears (etc) would do it (sorry nan), but something along the lines of that interaction with [name undisclosed]. It moved something in me. And I won’t un-know it.
That exchange made me feel bound to and beyond him. I think that was the intention. Oh and a side note – [name undisclosed] is a registered mental-health nurse of 30+ years. His phone rings off the hook with people he formally/informally looks after.
I also see [name undisclosed] as a complete and utter walking contradiction, in flickers. I’m listening to him, it’s cryptic but what he says holds the most fucked up and profound life experience that forms his reality.
And in that, there is truth. I hear it.
I think, unjustly, the nuance of how we build accountable communities isn’t understood by a lot of yts (minimising, I acknowledge). Which currently manifests in the difficulties of grappling w abolition, for example.
Anyway this is a full-on rabbit hole. But something I do spend a lot of time thinking about. In some ways, anger/violence has been one of the most significant, and formative emotions of my v short life. Which has everything to do with freedom. How do you become resigned to anger, its manifestation in violence? Is this decided for people before they leave the womb? I think so. That’s IG trauma for u! People spend their whole lives trying to unlearn this shit.
That’s what is sticking out for me right now – 7:06 am, Walbanja Country, kinda cold, can feel Darly breathing next to me. A lot of this ^ has been coming out in composition lately. It sounds... intense. Holding a lot of emotion.
I am grateful for the outlet.
2.
I’m living with my mum again. My room is 1/2 of the shed. I’ve used found objects from mum’s ‘junk’ to create a wall. An old doona cover of nans torn open to double the size. It’s pretty fucken ugly but the association makes it beautiful. The bloodlines are so strong here. When you walk 800 or so metres west you can see the string of mtns leading all the way home. Balgans concealed by development but you can see, feel through it nonetheless. These lines now marked by highways. They still carry their meaning.
Living in a makeshift space feels like being a kid again. When we first moved to Canberra from Bermagui we had a cousin living with us to help with rent, making the house a little crowded. All three of us sisters were sharing a room, fuelling regular “death matches”, as mum’d call em.
Mum decided to turn half the loungeroom into a bedroom using cupboards and shelves stacked up on top of each other. Being the youngest, I got the raw end of the deal i.e. the 1/2 lounge-room 1/2 bedroom situation. I would fall asleep to the hum of the tele and shifting lights sneaking in through the gaps in cupboards. I found it comforting. I can’t remember a lot from this time, other than getting really pissed off when my middle sister would chuck shit through and over the cupboards to taunt me. But I also remember more often than not, pretending to act mad whilst concealing my laughter at the situation.
Silver linings.
There was a time when I was stacking books into one of the shelf-walls and it fell right back into the loungeroom. I remember feeling embarrassed and angry. U know, at the instability of the situation. How that permeated beyond the physical.
But was the shame really mine? Or was it others’?
I didn’t really mind much. I guess it was only later that I began to feel shame around poverty. It was never much of an issue when I was small, being so bound, wound up with family. It felt right.
I’ll always feel the deepest sense of comfort in these spaces. The familiar ones. The ones I keep creating for myself. Wherever I go.
Mostly, I’m enjoying where I am. Mum has made it to the beach two days in a row now. At home, it’s so easy to slip into our known roles, also cyclical. Feeling neglected by her. That her mental space takes priority over all others.
I know I’ve been guilting her and I hate myself for it every time. When we were at the beach yesterday, seeing her fumbling over rocks I was like a hawk watching over her! Ha!
“Fuck mum be careful!!!”
Seeing her outside of the home (rare) I feel her sickness and frailty more palpably – despite her being built like a chonk little staffy. I can understand why she needs to spend most of her time in bed. I recognise how selfish I can be with her.
I guess we both need to come to terms with how far she would like to be pushed – held accountable(?) – and how much she too has become comfortably, numbly(?), resigned to her body’s demise. Her bone and her blood.
Hers.
Who am I to invalidate that?
I know better than to keep presenting myself as a child to her. We will always struggle with these roles, regardless of time.
It’s a process, cyclical in how you can go round and round and still end up at the same place. But every time u learn something different. That’s the important part.
E Fishpool is a Yuin artist based across Budawang and Walbanja Country. Their work maps processes of unlearning and (re)learning identity through sampling sound, dialect and field recordings.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches. We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway Journal is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Runway Journal receives project support from the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches. We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway Journal is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Runway Journal receives project support from the NSW Government through Create NSW.