10 things I make a big effort to remember
1. My gramps’s laugh. He laughed like a child on a swing. Not like the laughter of the child on the swing, but like the child moving on the swing. In and out. His laugh was like a bellows being squeezed,
I hope someone breaks your heart all at once
To my dear and beautiful daughters, I hope that when someone breaks your heart (and they will), that they do it all at once. A bombshell. A bit of knowledge so exquisitely disarming that it shatters your heart to pieces in
Adventure: why I don’t want to write about mental illness
Last week I sat down to write a piece for uni. It was a total open topic: any subject, fiction or non-fiction, as long as it had a narrative thread. Literally anything. I sat at my desk and I thought about everything
Free writing: brothel raid
When I was eleven I watched a brothel be raided. It was one of two brothels from my childhood. The first was a neighbour's duplex, a tiny carpeted place in which I babysat her children. She didn't fit my teenage view
Are creative people self-centred?
Someone sent me this question on ask.fm: It's interesting that Amanda Palmer is the kind of person of whom people ask this question. There's a certain loadedness to it: you wouldn't say "what do you think about Nelson Mandela?" or "what
My year that was: a photo essay
At the end of last year, when I was very angry, I wrote down some goals for 2014. Then I literally gave 2013 the finger, ate some pizza with my kids and thought about driving into the sea.
A letter to a woman I might become one day
Hey kid, I came in to check on you tonight and you were still and warm under the blankets. I don't know if you know this, but your cheeks flush red when you're dreaming. Tonight I put my fingers on them
Favourites
When I was born, my Nan was 76 and had hair like buttercream. She had been waiting for me, she said, as I'm sure she did of all of her great-grandchildren. I knew I was her favourite because she let
My nanna the mortal
A while ago, Michael's grandfather died. He was in his mid-90s and had been deteriorating for some time. Nothing specific, just age and frailty. I called my nanna and told her of this. It's sad, I said, but he had a good life. She was perplexed. Why did he die? she said. What did he die of? What did he die of?
What I didn’t learn about feminism from my feminist mother
My mother doesn't take shit from anybody. She is kickarse in all the ways available. She is an empowered and balanced and amazing woman. If she weren't my mother already, I would wish that she were. Probably. No offense to my other, hypothetical mother. As far as role models go, she is the cream of the crop. She is a woman doing things in multiple STEM fields, being a caring and supportive mother and grandmother, and looking young and hot always.
A quest for love at Port Jackson
When I was in my late teens, I went to Sydney to search for the person I loved. I had had my heart broken and I cradled its pieces in my carry-on luggage and we went to look for a new start together. In the first weeks I was there, I shared a bedroom with a friend of a friend, in his parents' house. It was a ways up the North Shore, and I slept on the train in a way I hoped was adorable and would attract suitable men or women. In the evenings I bought a bit of deep-fried chicken and bacon in pastry, and once a week we went to the RSL for dinner and trivia. I was never certain whether we were romantically involved, but I slept on his floor and he didn't wear a shirt to bed, and after three weeks he bought me a necklace.