I.
The scale that weighs my face tips towards
the spot where shadows mingle on the road,
on the pavement and on other strange faces.
It is a heavy face, amplitudinous, strange even
through the side windows of cars parked
on King Street this side of old Newtown
like transient turtles, waiting for the waves.
Where the eyes had been—the eyelashes
scaled down to mere tiny lines, the slits
that defied at first the whole of continents
they call Asia and Europe and Polynesia and
the Pacific Islands in their deceptive sheen
in the light, and underpinned at last the
indifference of strangers towards their
incongruity—could never find solace in
the teem and vagabond of the inner west.
I had been to St Clair and so had my eyes,
so had my face, where an interloping emu
or a small bovine would sometimes sun itself
in the pastured greens of the reserve leading
to our old backyard that my uncle used to
call his expansive workshop of dreams.II.
To get to where my uncle’s family used to live
from the centre of the wide jungle of the city
is to travel back to the overlapping enclaves
of suburbia and into the cacophonous chatter
and diaphanous grip of suburban xenophobia
(or reverse claustrophobia). The train leading
to the leaf-laden streets lazily embarks at
St Marys, a locus of blatant tattoo parlours,
empty pop-up shops, disregarded playgrounds,
archaic street signs pointing to welfare offices
and even a lone shabby port of a Filipino shop.
If the train arrived belatedly, a mad flurry of
feet and huffing bodies trampled over stairs
to catch the every-thirty-minute shuttle bus
to the nearest main artery winding towards
the weird ensemble of cul-de-sacs on Meru
Place. The street name itself invoked the
fantasy of time and space drenched in the
strange fascination of memorials and old
kingdoms forever lost between the sea and
the shore. But it’s the street where my uncle
used to live, where I used to die little deaths.III.
Going back to the place where I first breathed
the clear smogless air of Sydney, where the
clowns of indifference first danced in my head,
where the temerity of growing up quickly in time
blossomed like a flower in the misty nightscape,
proves to be an epiphany, a turning point of
sorts. It’s the same streets with wide girths
and clean gutters, the same grass landings full
of green lush and lavender tufts of wild weeds,
of houses of pseudo-affluence standing tall,
of swirling driveways and unfenced-in smirks
of tots on three-wheeler trikes that used to
shout chink chink as I walked by on the way
to the bus stop—an ugly memento of a moot
circumstance—and the same tree-lined memory
of a time when the inherently vicious nature
of man belied the freshly sweet air of new
freedom. Getting back to St Clair, it now
gives me clarity—I have grown old but wise
to the call of hate and regret. It’s the same
old place, but I am not the same. I am one,
for once, with wisdom in a haunted face.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones