LilyInteractive

I am Angry.

“Understandably,” says my mother. 

There is a gaping chasm between us,

A chasm filled with millions upon millions of dead First Nations Australians.

Millions of innocently bombed Palestinian civilians.

Millions of women heartlessly murdered by their trusted lovers. 

Millions of queer people beat on the street. 

Millions of people that the leaders of the world are failing.

I retreat to my bedroom.

I am sick of protecting my loved ones.

I will not give up. 

“Today we have fallen short,” The Prime Minister of your (not my) country stands proud; I wish I could say tall upon his stage. He addresses his nation of sheep. He is giving a eulogy to my people. I do not remember asking him to be here. I don’t remember anyone asking him to be here. 

He has brought with him the media buzzards, circling around my mob like monkeys at a zoo, primed and ready to capitalise off of our misfortune once again. The tears are beginning to fall. The realisation is hitting.

Australia is Evil.

Australia is not “the lucky country”. 

Have you ever seen old, grey men cry? Have you ever felt the pain of a community, a community that grieves their own land is rejecting them? Their own mothers weren’t considered human. The children of the men who decided that continue to kill us now. Do you ignore it? 

Do you enjoy it…?

“Sorry! I thought you were still them. I needed to find my best friend.”

Thatsalrightma’am, a grumble and a release, They want to know what happened. I don’t know if I remember what happened anymore. 

(It’s a worrying feeling when your fist has met the face of so many men trying to hurt your family and friends your fist forgets their names.)

(Does the world forget the victims?)

I am threatened with the police for saving my friend from a hate crime. 6 men against 2 women.

I am a proud misandrist. 

I retreat to my bedroom. Life is getting scary. I can fix us in here. Goodnight, Charlie.

She sleeps on my bedroom floor for safety for days. 

My mother was born here, my mother’s mother, my mothers mother’s mother, and her mother, back to the first matriarch of our family – all born on this gorgeous red sunburnt land. What did we inherit? Surely, a family that has been here for so many generations has such a rich bounty to fall back upon, surely…

An Itemised List Of My Family Heirlooms:

• Intergenerational Trauma *
• Dispossession **
• Lost connections to knowledge and language ***
• Firsthand stories of stolen children and broken families ****
• Shorter lifespan in greater poverty *****

[* A diagnosis of CPTSD just like my father

** I have spent my whole life travelling between Wilcannia and Dubbo with my mob. We don’t have anywhere permanent to settle. In a sense of safety not necessarily entirely monetarily. 

*** Google Charles Sturt Uni Graduate Certificate in Wiradjuri, Language, Culture & Heritage. The effort it took to create that. Thank you, Uncle Stan Grant Sr. 

**** When my great-grandmother died last year we received Christmas cards from her stolen babies.  She found her way back to us by the time she was 17. How many times did they rape her? How long did it take her babies to find their way back to her?
***** My pop died immediately after retiring. He spent his life savings on a house he never got to relax in. His Dr called him an “angry black man”…he was having a stroke.]

How are you feeling? The question of my concerned mob. My body is failing me now, too. I have been to rally after protest after community events after helping my local elderly and disabled community. I am spread too thin, but there is no one else around. 

I retreat to my bedroom. No more lists and plans of action. I will take a nap and then go on a walk.

A video of me pulling down racist graffiti near a school makes it to Facebook. I am labelled many things by the local buy swap sell community for it. None good. None kind. None accurate. None justified. I have been in the hospital vomiting for 6 days. 

I want to laugh, but They know where I live. 

Images of weapons sent to my DMs rattle around my brain. 

There is one in particular I cannot shake, the cashier at the petrol station I go to has a Katana by his bed “with my name on it.” 

Next time I fill up my car I am grateful to be in the minority of people who will match what they say with a keyboard with their words and with their actions. 

The anonymity of the internet has killed as many as it has saved. 

The irony of tears streaming down my face while I scream the words “I am a lover, NOT a fighter.” at the man I just kicked in the cock with my yellow LSD-themed Dr Martens does not go unmissed by me, he shouldn’t have tried to rape my gay friend in the middle of oxford street Mardi gras. I also believe you reap what you sow.

My best friend.

My sister. 

My brother.

My aunt.

I feel broken, and defeated, like this was all my fault. 

I should have done better. Misinformation was rampant in the community, and they trusted me to educate them. How could so many WhiteFullas be confused enough to vote no?

Except I know the truth. No one was confused. We are a racist nation, and I struggle to swallow that comfortably. I refuse to swallow it at all. 

I cannot comprehend that in so many parts of the world, there is so much hate in people’s bones. 

I cannot process the active genocide attempts in multiple continents, I cannot process the multiple undesirable assets of my identity (Blak, Queer, Disabled, Woman). There is not a single part of me that someone does not want to kill. Everything feels disjointed. I cannot be disjointed now people are relying on me to educate them. 

I retreat to my bedroom. Maybe this time I will stay here.

I am Sad. 

L: goin 2 protest. Phone @ home. See u @ beach.

C: Stay safe. Will drive past otw home from work. Wats 4 dinner?

I stand by a circle of old Palestinian women, they are praying, and I am crying. I feel the need to clarify I don’t live in Sydney, my local area is not hugely populated. It takes me about 3hrs on average to get to my university campus when I need to be there. They are yet to realise people can work and study from home, a whole pandemic out of the loop.

We are surrounded by riot squads. 

They have vests, guns and tasers. 

I remember once I was 15 on the side of the road with all the lightning of the world coursing through my veins. 

My crime? The police recognised my last name as belonging to the local Aboriginal families. Naked and tased on the side of the road. I go by Callaghan now. It is still Blak; just not as tainted. Not as sharp. 

I feel this same fear resurface when a little girl promises to a police officer that she is NOT a jew. 

I know that if anything were to happen right now, my body would be between all of these women, this girl and those police.

It is not even about the policemen (Although; I am against the police as an institution) it is about the fact that every single one of these men is white, presumably cis-hetero, presumably able-bodied and of sound mind. They are so blissfully unaware of how hard life is getting in one way or another for everyone who isn’t them. Or maybe they relish in it. I am still learning to tell the difference.

C: R u scared?
L: … 

Come to the backyard ❤

 I am cooking steak.

 Throwing one on for you.

We don’t retreat to our bedroom. I cannot carry everything alone. We talk. We laugh. We eat. She understands that a lot of people are relying on me, but Where do we go, and what do we do if there’s a nuclear bomb? I don’t know what that is or what it implicates. I understand that there is a lot of fear and confusion, and my friends trust me to help them feel safe and informed, but I know a film we can watch about that, tonight it’s going to be okay just look at the stars with me. Always so worried about light pollution, my love. We are trying to come to some sort of conclusion; almost as if we think we can solve the problems of humanity in our backyard with a couple of beers, a steak, and a joint. We won’t, we are missing the key players of roast veggies and the allyship of federal parliament, but it feels nice to try. It feels nice to be on top of the world just for a second, even if everything under you is made of rubble and debris.

I am Invigorated.

Physically, I have just shat something up that a Google search tells me is not an organ, just a combination of bile and antibiotics from being in the hospital and hungry for over a week. It all looks roughly the same to me, personally. 

Mentally, I wish I could walk, I wish I could yell, skip, hit, kick, punch, giggle, swim, fly. I am lucky to be so young and resilient. So able and willing to help myself and others. As long as I am alive, as long as my friends are alive, influencing and raising ourselves and others, there might be a chance. 

Physically, I am pissing blood and have been uncontrollably vomiting for 9 days. There is talk of surgery on my kidneys. 

Mentally, I know I will be okay. My best friend is here, my brother and my mother. We live hours apart from each other but my sickness has brought us together. We have been struggling in the same ways in different places, different states. It has recharged us all to be trapped in this hospital room unable to sleep, discussing our lives since we last saw each other. 

The world is not ending. Yet.

I am Waiting.

Gastro, Kidneys, Zionism. The name of my latest Spotify playlist, I haven’t slept for longer than 20 minutes in nine days. I need something to pass the time while the world is quiet. 

My anger, my sadness, my invigoration, and me. We will not change the world, but we will influence it. We will influence it with kindness, firmness, and gentle education. I am passionate but not passionate enough to save everyone alone. 

When people start banding together, when they are ready to make change. I will be there, at the front line. I am here now., I won’t leave. I will wait for others to join me. I will be there with my outstretched hand. 

I will be there with my outstretched hand to protect my community. 

To serve my community. 

To educate my community. 

To love my community. 

To lift up my community. 

Whatever my community needs, we will work on it together. 

Together we will march towards the revolution.

AUTHOR STATEMENT:

‘Imagining the real’

This piece was started when stuck between my bedroom and the hospital and finished once I was able to walk again. It went through many painkiller-sponsored evolutions involving thematic, stylistic, genre and medium changes, but the more time I spent trapped in a bed, the more time I was given to realise the issue I was attempting to address and the place I was anchored to. The “place” of this piece is Australia and how this country simultaneously represents everything I live and love for but also everything I am avidly against as a socio-anarchist. My life motto as of late (can’t be an autistic person without one tbh) has been “The world is always fucking ending, have some fun and take a stand.” whilst writing this piece, I felt a little piece of that statement become embodied and alive within it, the message being woven into the words like a shaping/guiding thread. When the piece started to form, I was angry and exhausted and giving up on there being any good in the world. I am still angry and exhausted, but I know there is still good in the world. Everything I do is done with intent, and everything I write is backed by my politics and moral compass, I feel confident that I have treated this piece with enough effort and care that I can proudly add it to my portfolio of works to expand upon in larger multi-media personal projects. Due to the isolation of sickness, most of the workshopping and feedback came from myself and uni peers from other tutes, and as of submission I am back in hospital.