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The University of Sydney Union is proud to publish Hermes, Australia’s oldest literary journal. Founded in 1886, Hermes is produced by s t uden t e d i to rs a n d s u b mi s s i o n s a re open to s tudents, s ta ff and a lumni of the univers i ty.

Published by the Universi ty of Sydney Union, 2014 .

ISSN 0816-116X

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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T

O F C O U N T R Y

The Univers i ty of Sydney Union acknowledges the

Cadigal People of the Eora Nation as the traditional

owners of the land on which we are located. The USU

recognises that the land belonging to these peoples

was never ceded, given up, bought, or sold. We pay

our respects to the Aboriginal Elders both past and

present and extend this acknowledgement to any other

Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people here with us.

E D I T O R S

Rebecca Allen Whitney Duan Celeste Moore Eleanor Turner

D E S I G N

Simon Macias

6 7

PREFACE 9

UNSAID \\ Feiya Zhang 11

MEXICAN BREAKFASTS \\ Mira Schlosberg 12

FAULTS (EXPLOSIVE DECOMPRESSION) \\ Mackenzie Nix 14

ZWISHENRÄUME \\ Robin Eames 15

IN THE DEAD SEA, ISRAEL \\ Micaela Brookman 20

THE HARD WAY \\ Kathryn McLeod 22

GIRLS \\ Micaela Brookman 27

THROUGH BROKEN PERSPEX \\ Nicholas Fahy 28

CUPBOARDS \\ Katrina Kemp 29

ANATOMY OF A CRIME SCENE \\ Mackenzie Nix 34

DETAINED \\ Jordan Roe 35

C O N T E N T S

GRATITUDE IN TRAFFIC \\ Jeremy Page 36

OPENING THE SPACE BETWEEN SOUND AND SILENCE:

LIMINAL REFLECTIONS ON MUSIC \\ Goetz Richter 37

PORTRAIT, PAPER BAG AND HAND \\ Jun Ming 43

DRESS UNIFORM \\ Rico Craig 44

YES \\ Rico Craig 45

SLEIGHT OF HAND \\ Samantha Bowers 46

THE SPEED OF THE SUBLIME (I) \\ Arielle Marshall 48

THE SIX O’CLOCK TABLE \\ Evelyn Araluen Corr 49

THE SPEED OF THE SUBLIME (II) \\ Arielle Marshall 53

FROZEN \\ Katarzyna Aurora Sprengel 54

DUSK \\ Madeleine Charters 55

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P R E F A C E

The liminal is an inherently unpredictable space, a state of

ambiguity, of grey areas and elastic edges. Its power lies not

only in this elusiveness, but the way in which such indefinability

allows for and – more importantly – inspires creativity.

It was this openness we hoped would ignite the imaginations

of our contributors this year, who have not only embraced

the theme but, together, have highlighted the multiplicity of

compelling meanings within this single idea. The transition

between graduating and beginning a career. The baby you

will never get to meet. Or the mother you will never know. The

unfinished conversation. The unfurling of a musical note. The daily

traffic jam. The darkening of the twilight sky.

Leave the world of the black and white behind, venture beyond

familiar borders, and join us in the space between.

Editors, Hermes 2014.

11

U n s a i dF e i y a Z h a n g

To say the least is to say the most to you

is to say the most of what I dare not say

except in fleeting whispers and half-formed thoughts

that lie still-born in the depths of stars and thorns.

And to say the least is to preserve the fragile peace

is to keep the calm to cool the pain beneath

but maybe not for certain though I dare not speak

to you of the memories sunken deep.

And so we direct our attention towards the distance

carefully counting down the minutes with our fingers

and then we direct our intentions towards the instance

when we leave and the conversation lingers.

12 13

M e x i c a n B r e a k F a s t s

M e x i c a n

B r e a k F a s t sM i r a s c h l o s B e r g

Do you remember when we went to the Marrickville markets on Sunday

morning? The night before we had eaten veggie burgers at Lord of the

Fries in the city and then we went to the Take Back the Night rally, but

we were too cold to participate in the march afterwards so we went

back to your house and watched the first episode of The L Word in bed.

You turned off the light but in the dark I could still feel the blue of your

bedsheets. We had kissed for the first time in that colour. I lost my virginity

in that colour. It was a nice shade of blue.

You told me you’d been feeling ‘more’. Not more strongly, just more. I was

happy because I’d been feeling the same. Falling asleep together under

your mosquito net and waking up to the bright white light of Sydney spring

shining through it, I was feeling a lot more.

On the way to the markets we stopped to pet a cat without ears that

stuck its head through a gate. The air was already hot and the cicadas were

humming that huge hazy hum that gets everywhere.

I bought a kale and ginger juice and you got a watermelon one. We sat

on the curb to drink them. We watched people’s feet, their little cute dogs,

swinging bags of leeks and zucchini . This was before I stopped shaving my

legs but after I cut off all my hair. I was growing into myself. I was telling

myself the story of us as it was happening. This was the week you fought

with your mum and you were worried because she hadn’t called you back.

I was worried for you too, but I could feel the sun on the back of my neck

where my long hair wasn’t anymore and your thigh against my thigh on

the curb and I was feeling more, and more was a good feeling.

Across from us there was a stall with a sign that said they were selling

MEXICAN BREAKFASTS. Sydney has shit Mexican food but I saw that

sign and wondered if it would be any good anyway, and I wanted to

tell you I loved you but I was scared to and I thought it would make a

good story later if I pointed that sign out to you instead. So I pointed

at the sign without looking at you, and I thought ‘I love you,’ and I said,

‘Look. Mexican breakfasts. ’

14 15

Z w i s c h e n r ä U M er o B i n e a M e s

You are born in the tiny space between two adjoining walls in a north facing

Edwardian-era terrace house. The house belongs to an old couple who have

plans to retire in the winter; the old woman is a mathematician, and the old

man is a projectionist down at the local movie theatre. You do not know this

yet. You are an inch and a half long, and your first word is a sneeze. Your

senses are sharper than a human’s, but the only thing around you is dust.

For a week and a day your whole world is dust and silence, until you

discover a crack in the skirting board, and your world becomes that

much bigger.

You quickly discover that humans cannot see you. You are glad. They are

very frightening at first – they are so much bigger than you, and their voices

are loud and croaking, like monsters – but after a time you become used

to their presence. As you grow, you occupy yourself with small tasks,

like cleaning the rust off the old water pipes and chasing the pigeons out

of the rafters.

In the autumn of 1937 the old woman breaks her tiny hand-mirror, and

you manage to salvage a shard. You find a scrap of sandpaper to file down

the edges until they are smooth, and then you settle down into a patch of

sunlight and inspect your reflection.

You are not like anything else that you know. You do not look like a bird,

or a dragonfly, or one of the garden skinks that you are always shooing

out of your sleeping place. You look a little like a human, but your eyes are

M a c k e n Z i e n i x \\ F a U lt s ( e x p l o s i v e d e c o M p r e s s i o n ) \\ p e n o n pa p e r

16 17

Z w i s c h e n r ä U M e

wide and catlike, and your ears are pointed, and your skin is dark blue-black rather than brown or pink. You do not seem to fit into any of those strange human-made categories – Male or Female, Man or Woman. You are between the two. This makes perfect sense; for now, you see yourself as part of the microcosm of the house and garden, where other insects and small creatures organise themselves in ways that are unintelligible to humans. Though later, you will learn that many humans also see themselves as somewhere in between.

In the evenings the old woman’s grandniece visits, bearing gifts of richly scented muffins and cardboard packets of tea. Sometimes she brings her daughter, and they sit in the fading sunlight beside the window and read from brightly coloured pages. You hide in the light fittings, enthralled, and listen to the stories. It occurs to you, later, that you do not have a name. Birds and lizards have no need of names, but you are not a bird or a lizard. You name yourself Huxley, after the fraying spine of a book on the old woman’s shelf.

The old man dies in the waning summer of 1951. The wake is held in the house, and that afternoon you see more humans than you have ever seen in your life, all gathered around the scratched dining table, weeping and offering tissues to one another and stealing canapés to hide in their purses.

After the wake you brush away the food scraps, rescue lost canapés from where they had rolled under the sofa, shake out the good tablecloth, and then you begin the taxing process of washing the dishes – some of which are bigger than you are. You are quiet – although the old woman still cannot see you, you do not wish to disturb her. By the time dawn’s rosy trails creep across the sky, the living room is gleaming and neat, as if nobody had ever

been here.

Z w i s c h e n r ä U M e

You tumble into your space between the walls, curl your arms around your

knees, and fall head first into your dreams.

When you wake again you have doubled in size in the night. When you

try to stand, disoriented, you hit your head against a piece of jutting brick,

and bright blue blood starts to slip into your vision. You cry out – and though

you do not know it, the old woman hears you, and thinks that perhaps it was

the distressed call of some small animal. Your shoulders brush against both

walls, and you cannot quite stand upright; instead you hunch over slightly,

still trailing droplets of vibrant blue. Your blood falls into your eyes, and then

your mouth. It tastes like dust.

You feel your way towards the gap in the skirting board, limping, half bent

over. The bricks and floorboards that were so familiar to you yesterday

suddenly seem alien: your hands are larger, and everything else is smaller

and stranger. There is a tiny patch of light spilling into the wall just ahead of

you, and as you slide through it for one heart-stopping moment you realise

that your shoulders are too large, that you are stuck – and then a moment

later you are free. For the first time, you pull yourself up to your new, entire

height. You are at least three feet tall . Your bones ache.

There is a little fountain in the garden where the pigeons like to wash

their wings, and you manage to scramble up to perch on the edge of the

fountain bowl. The fountain is grimier than you remember, and the ceramic

is a little chipped. You dip your hands into the collected rainwater and wash

the blood out of your eyes. In the wake of your fingers the water turns

bright blood-blue, blood spreading through the water like clouds filling an

empty sky.

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Z w i s c h e n r ä U M e

You tip the bloodied water into the camellia plant, and then you fetch a

cloth from the house and scrub the fountain until the soft nacreous gleam of

the ceramic is visible once again. From the garden fence a pigeon squawks at

you, indignantly.

Your birthplace between the walls was not your only hiding place, but you still

feel its loss keenly. That night you sleep in one of the forgotten places beneath

the house, behind the old empty wine-rack, in a pile of torn-up curtain fabric.

The next morning you have grown a little more, but not so drastically as

during the previous night. You begin to measure your height against the notches

in the garden fence, and you find that you grow in fits and starts, an inch here,

and another handful of inches there. The old woman spends her days reading

and dozing in the sunlight, and you spend your days reading over her shoulder

and quietly making cups of tea and leaving them dotted around the house. The

old woman frowns sometimes, when she finds mugs of Earl Grey and Darjeeling

tucked into the bookshelf, but she drinks the offerings happily enough. The tea

does not go cold; you make sure of that.

You begin to eye the front doorway with a sort of nebulous longing, and

when the old woman dies in the night in the latter half of 1965, you pack up

your meagre treasures and venture into the outside world.

Your journey does not last long. You hide in gutters and in storm water

drains, in the hollows under huge oak trees, and in the rafters of the local

library. The library! – you had not dared to hope that the world might hold

such wonders as the library, but in the fortnight of your first absence from

the house, the library becomes your favourite refuge, and you spend many

long hours curled up in the window reading works written by your namesake.

On the last night of your adventure, you grow two whole feet in the night, and

wake up feeling rather dizzy.

When you return to the house, you busy yourself with tidying away the

moving-boxes, and helping the old woman’s grandniece – now an old woman

herself – and her daughter to sort out their belongings. You stay for a little

over a week, and then you escape to the library again, and to the local

movie theatre, and to the park, and the river. Your body is still changing, and

occasionally you notice that your ears have smoothed over, or that the blue

is bleeding out of your skin to be replaced with a dark brown-black. The next

time you catch a glance of your reflection, your eyes are brown and round

and human. You are five and a half feet tall, and you no longer fit into any

of your old interstitial hidden places.

Winter comes, and your skin is not as hardy as it used to be. You borrow

a coat and a pair of trousers from the grandniece’s daughter, and you

slip outside into the streets, letting the breeze catch at your hair and your

eyelashes, and follow you into the library.

The rush of cold air catches the attention of the librarian, who glances

at the doorway. You wait for her gaze to pass over you, as it always does,

but instead her gaze catches and holds.

“Good morning,” she says.

Z w i s c h e n r ä U M e

M i c a e l a B r o o k M a n \\ i n t h e d e a d s e a , i s r a e l \\ p h o t o g r a p h ( F i l M )

22 23

t h e h a r d w a yk a t h r y n M c l e o d

THE ROAD TRIP

Fuck, it was hot. It was the kind of summer day where you couldn’t talk about

how hot it was without coupling it with a profanity. In fact, it was the kind

of day where you couldn’t talk about much of anything but the weather.

The breeze was hot. Clothing felt like an encroachment. Uncovered skin

burnt instantly. And I was in my car with three friends hurtling down a

searing black asphalt road towards a mirage on the horizon. Somewhere

beyond was the coast, waiting.

The car was a 1993 Ford Falcon station wagon but the year was 2011.

I fondly called it ‘the barge’ because it creaked like a ship and had the

turning circle of one too. Going uphill and along straight stretches we’d

have the windows open, letting in a hot breeze that wasn’t dissimilar to

riding in a fan-forced oven. On downhill sections of the road when my foot

was off the accelerator, the antiquated air conditioning would roar to life

and we’d cheer it on. The cool air was intoxicating enough that I would try

buying a few extra seconds by keeping my foot off the pedal, but eventually

we’d lose too much speed and there was no choice but to press on.

This is surely one of the reasons why it took so long to get to the coast

that day. It didn’t help that if there was a side of caution to err on, I would

err on it . I had only been driving on my own for two months and I was still

fraught with nerves, especially on unfamiliar roads. While the volume of our

music, the P plates and our wild hair screamed ‘epic road trip’, my driving

style whispered ‘grandmotherly’ .

After playing the accelerator-or-air-conditioner game for four hours,

we finally pulled into the quiet camping ground. Our site was on a grassy

area overlooking the wide, unpatrolled beach. We were all too delirious

with heat to do anything but kick off our shoes and run straight towards

the ocean.

t h e h a r d w a y

ACCIDENTS HAPPEN

After years of thinking a Bachelor of Arts degree would lead to

unemployment and a lifetime of quiet desperation, I was comically surprised

after my graduation to receive a job offer from a government agency to

work full-time on an eight-week contract. I desperately needed a break

after finishing my Honours thesis, but the offer was too lucrative to refuse,

and besides… it was only eight weeks.

Half a dozen extensions to my contract later and fourteen months on,

I really needed a break. While getting a job within a week of graduating

was initially amusing, as each successive contract was extended, I became

strangely appalled. I had done a much-mocked BA; where was all the

promised free time, the crushing poverty and the inevitable soul-searching

about whether or not to become a teacher?

I was suspended in an awkward twilight, existing in the space between

being an aimless student and developing a career. By day I had become a

young professional, upholding the Australian Public Service code of conduct,

wearing my hair in sensible buns and speaking almost exclusively in acronyms.

Outside of work, I still identified with my slacker university lifestyle.

The share-house I lived in had five people on the lease but there were

usually more strangers in the house than people I knew. Weekends were

spent drinking and recovering with Bec, my housemate, friend and partner

in hangovers. One of us would lie in the hammock and the other would sit

on the home-made swing and we’d talk, laugh, complain and eat copious

amount of potato products until the sun moved on or other housemates

interrupted our ritual.

I ’d built up three weeks of annual leave at work, and I decided to blow it

all that summer. The timing was perfect; great bands were touring, Bec was

unemployed and our friend Matt was visiting from Vietnam after living there

for almost a year. He brought along his boyfriend Christophe, who we liked

immediately. Christophe exuded the kind of easy warmth of someone who

was perpetually high, which he was.

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t h e h a r d w a y

The car had been locked. Fuck.

Sobbing, I unlocked the driver’s side door and sat sideways on the seat,

legs splayed out on the grass in front of me. I gingerly lifted my feet off the

ground and turned my legs outwards. A huge wet flap of skin swung from

my left foot. The right foot had an enormous blister that covered the entire

arch. Pockets of skin had lifted away underneath my toes. I could see liquid

under the transparent skin.

By the time my friends ambled back to the car, I had flagged down a

neighbouring camper and asked her to help me rig up a container with

ice and water. The container was only big enough for one foot to be

fully submerged at a time. It ’s not the first or last time I have cursed my

size elevens.

THE TRIP

Four hundred and twenty-two kilometres later and roughly ten hours after

the accident, I arrived at the emergency room at 2am. I rated my pain an

eight. The nurses sat me in a wheelchair and rolled me into a starkly lit

consultation room where they gave me a hefty dose of Endone and cleaned

and bandaged my feet. Upon discharge, the doctor swanned in to check

the proceedings. The male nurse told him that I had second-degree contact

burns and that he’d suggested I see a chiropodist in the coming weeks to

have the damaged skin removed. The doctor raised his eyebrows, nodding

as though the idea was novel or cute, but he was satisfied and both the

nurse and I were free to go. I floated to a taxi and told the driver to take

me home.

Everyone was gathered around the outdoor couches on the veranda

when I made my way into the yard. The day’s events had already been

recounted to our housemate Alasdair and his entourage. They all greeted

me like a war hero, and I lapped it up, swaying in a euphoric haze of

opiates with a shit-eating grin. I noticed a grasshopper on Bec’s shoulder

and calmly transferred it from her shirt to the garden. To say this was

t h e h a r d w a y

We decided to put my newly acquired driving skills to use by road-tripping

to the coast for a camping holiday. It wasn’t so much a holiday to me but

an exercise in restoration. It was a time to get back to who I really was; an

unemployed slacker arts student just going through a temporary period of

accidental employment.

A NUMBERS GAME

It was forty degrees that day as the four of us stood barefoot on the

boundary of beach and ocean, letting the waves roll in over our legs after

the long drive. Our shoes lay discarded and useless next to the car. It was

the second of February. We’d been there for roughly five minutes.

Did I remember to lock the car?

I turned to look. The barge was off in the distance, staring at us benignly.

“I ’m going to go put my swimmers on. I ’ ll be right back.”

The salty water evaporated on my feet despairingly quickly as I walked

back across the beach. It was uncomfortably hot. I began sprinting. The car

was only 250 metres away but the uphill return journey meant I was sinking

slightly with each stride, the sand contouring around my feet. Half-way up

the beach I realised I was in trouble. It wasn’t just hot, it was burning.

The car or the ocean? The car.

I kept moving, tears rolling down my cheeks. Patches of grass, half-buried

in sand became like islands for me to hop across. The searing pain forced

me to use a clump of grass like an emergency rest stop. I sat down and lifted

my feet and arms in the air, desperate for the sand not to touch exposed

skin. From afar, it might have looked like I suddenly had an irrepressible

urge to do yoga quite poorly.

Instinctually, I knew not to look at my feet. Not yet. I plunged them back

into the sand and lurched desperately forward. I scrambled up the grass

and found myself by the car.

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t h e h a r d w a y

uncharacteristic is an understatement. I am amongst my friends famously

scared of all things that creep or crawl. They laughed at how high I was.

I laughed because we were all laughing. The roles had been reversed for

once; for Matt, Bec and Christophe it was usually weed; for Alasdair and

his crew, it was ecstasy.

“What did they give you?”

“Endone.”

“Oh shit . Do you have any more?”

“No.”

I surveyed Alasdair suspiciously and muttered that he was going to cut my

stomach open to get at the Endone. They cackled again, and Bec was kind

enough to lead me to bed.

Some things you just have to learn the hard way. Wear shoes at the

beach. If you care about being carefree, chances are you aren’t . Growing

up is hard to do. Roll with the punches. After spending the remainder of

my annual leave resentfully watching my friends have fun in the pool, I of

course recovered just in time to go back to work. With another extension

to my contract, it was clear that I wasn’t just on the threshold between

university and working life; I ’d already crossed it . Still , the waiting game was

already on for the next big break. I figured it couldn’t be worse.

M i c a e l a B r o o k M a n // g i r l s //

p h o t o g r a p h ( d o U B l e e x p o s U r e F i l M )

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c U p B o a r d sk a t r i n a k e M p

Arranging battleships on a calm ocean of dust under the bed, he glanced

up from the floor when he heard his mother sigh. He liked to keep an eye

on her when no one else was at home.

Her room was spacious; huge to a five year old, with plenty of empty

carpet where he could spread out his discoveries, found during expeditions

into the secret spaces of the house. If she was awake, his mother didn’t

notice how he passed the time, so long as he was quiet.

She liked the house to be silent. Outside, louder than the unobtrusive

sounds made by playthings he brought to his vigil, he could hear cars

passing up on the road, and wondered where people went who did not

stay in their bed like his mother.

The child longed to go outside, to watch those cars going by, or to

squeeze the gaudy snapdragons in the flowerbeds and make their mouths

gape. He didn’t, because his mother had warned him to always stay inside

if she was asleep.

He watched for a moment and decided that she would soon be sleeping.

Not long before, she had been up as she did every day to go to the toilet

and fill her glass of water. She needed water for taking pills . Three brown,

glass bottles sat in a row on her bedside table. One by one she would open

each bottle, carefully tip out the right amount onto the table, then screw the

lid back on tightly. He wasn’t allowed to touch them, but when he sat beside

her during this ritual, they smelt awful.

She gathered them all up into one hand, and, after taking a quick sip from

her glass in the other, would clap the loaded palm to her mouth and toss

back her head, swallowing the lot. It was the most energetic thing he saw

her do all day.

t h r o U g h

B r o k e n

p e r s p e xn i c h o l a s F a h y

Come the times when I remember her face,

I forget, only to relearn; how frail –

Lines drawn like blinds at dusk, beautifully pale,

Which bend and weave with youthful embrace,

A quiver of lips such makes the heart race,

To be read in gentle as sweet-messaged braille,

Waterlily cheeks drift with each exhale,

Dimpled, ever softly, with sincere grace.

Yet eyes are mysteries always misread,

For clarity remains shrouded in mist,

The deep passion in her most drawing stare

Is but my technicolour sight refracted;

To how many strokes am I the artist

Who drew her in these lines of sweet despair?

30 31

c U p B o a r d s

He liked to climb right into that wardrobe and disappear behind the

dresses, sitting perfectly still in a little, tight ball until there was not a sound

from the coathangers overhead. He could imagine then that he and his

mother did not exist at all; that he was just something in a wardrobe in a

house empty of people.

Beside him, stacked on the floor of the hanging space, were three

shoeboxes. He had noticed them before, but, intent on his game of non-

existence, he had not yet opened them. But this day, not in the mood for

disappearing, he pulled out the boxes instead.

They weren’t heavy. He shook one, trying to guess, prolonging the

anticipation. No rattles, or rolling, just sliding, papery sounds. He took off

the lid, and there was his own face, a year or so younger, smiling back at

him. Underneath were more people he knew, his brothers, his grandparents,

all of them together in places he had vague memories of visiting. The zoo,

the Manly ferry, Nanna’s house. Mummy was never there.

In the next box, he could recognize his brothers, younger, before he was

there, in places he’d never seen. The photos at the bottom turned grey and

boring, showing his brothers as infants held up by his mother or father.

The last box was full of people he didn’t know. The photos were tiny

and almost brown. The men and women in them wore strange hats, and

appeared to be dressed up wherever they were, standing beside great big

cars rounded like beetles, or in front of city shops in gloves and overcoats.

He stirred the little people around in their musty prison, ready to put them

away again, when he found a lady. She was not dressed up at all, but wore

what looked like swimmers, though there was no beach in the picture. Her

pretty face, white against dark curls, laughed at the camera from the bough

of a tree. Showing off all her legs and pointing her toes, she had one arm up

behind her head, pushing up her hair, just like someone from the old movies

his father sometimes watched on the weekend. He kept the lady in the tree

with him while he carefully put all the boxes away.

c U p B o a r d s

She always propped up her pillow and sat against the bedhead for a

while, until the pills went down properly. Her eyelids would start to drop,

the big sigh would come, and she would lie back down. He knew then it was

sleeping time. He crept to the other side of the bed to check. Her face was

yellowish and puffy, and she had on a nasty green cardigan even though

it was hot.

“Mummy?” he said, but her greasy eyelids didn’t even flicker.

\

She couldn’t hear him when she was asleep. He knew because one day he

had climbed up on a stool to reach an interesting box in the hall cupboard.

When he pulled at it, other things on top had come crashing out, knocking

him to the floor. He had waited, holding his breath, for her voice. What are

you doing? But not a sound came from her room. He breathed, and went to

look. She had not even moved.

In that silent interval between her falling asleep and the three chimes

he knew marked the time before his brothers came home, he explored the

house and built a map in his mind of where all the best treasures were kept.

And there seemed to be no end of cupboards and drawers to explore

during those long, empty afternoons.

\

Now he had started in the spare room. It had a wardrobe and a dressing

table like all the other bedrooms, as if one day someone would live there.

The furniture was full inside, as if somebody already did, or had. There

were clothes hanging up; rustling, long, satiny dresses, stiff with shimmering

beads or pearls sewn on, or softly velvet to rub against his cheek. He had

never seen anyone in dresses like these, except on television. Some were

even enshrined under jackets of plastic, as if they would be needed for a

special occasion.

32 33

c U p B o a r d s

She looked at him, so sadly he almost cried too.

“You’re a good boy Jamie,” she said, reaching out for a hug.

He climbed up and snuggled under one arm. She laid her face on top of

his head; he could feel the tears wetting his hair. Her hand on his shoulder

was very cold, right through his t-shirt .

“Oh, look at the time,” she said. “Come on, the other boys will be

home soon.”

He watched while she blew her nose and slowly got to her feet. She

looked at herself in the dressing table mirror and wiped her eyes again,

then bent down to open the bottom drawer.

“Here, give me that,” she said, holding out her hand for the photo.

Reluctantly, the boy passed over his lovely lady and saw her disappear

under the alarming tangle of elastic and lace his mother kept in her drawer.

Jamie went to his room, not sure why his other mother had to be hidden

away. He could only imagine, not altogether incorrectly, that a first mother

brought you to your family, and then disappeared forever, never to be

known by her children.

\

In the months that remained before he started going to school, his quiet

afternoons continued. His mother slept, and he dared one day to open her

dressing table and steal away with the lovely lady, keeping her in a special

hiding place of his own. When he looked at her laughing face, so different

from his own mother’s, he knew that she was someone he had loved, almost

as much as the mother he knew.

Aggrieved, he would put her back, his mind full of the terrible fact that he

would never be able to find her.

c U p B o a r d s

Suddenly, a voice reached him from down the hall . He snatched up his

lady. Mummy must be awake.

“Oh, Jamie,” she said as he ran in. “I have such a headache. Can you get

me the aspirin?”

He knew where to find them in the bathroom; she asked for them

frequently. He slapped his lady down on the bedside table, remembering to

take the water glass for refilling. His father had told him that he had to help

look after Mummy, and that she needed water by her bed.

He returned to her smiling, pleased that he had not spilt any water on the

carpet, but she did not notice him come in. She was sitting up, looking at the

lady. He kept on smiling, waiting for her to thank him, but she looked up and

her eyes were full of tears.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, from far away, and a big tear

splashed right on the lady’s face.

“There’s a box, with all pictures inside, in the spare room. Who is

that lady?”

His mother wiped it carefully, and held it further away as more tears fell,

spotting the ugly cardigan.

“It’s your mother of course,” she said, as if he should know, while she felt

under her pillow for a hanky.

“But aren’t you my mother?” he had to ask, his world suddenly awry.

“Well of course I am!” she sobbed.

Jamie did not understand, but did not dare ask anything else. When

mummy was upset, he’d been told not to bother her.

“Mummy, here’s your aspirin.”

34 35

d e t a i n e dJ o r d a n r o e

A flying fox strays above this sunken cloister,

barely blacker than the strip of sky, vanishing

before it’s passed, along with all the smoke and sighs.

I asked Bobby was he speaking Zulu,

trying to test my expertise on clicks—

it was Ndebele.

We were playing Shithead,

while he murmured slow with mellow croaks

below the soft and stagnant hum of lights.

Two children burst through the floodlit drizzle

flapping armfuls each of toilet paper

to stomp grey into the standing water.

We all turned to watch them jump hysterically

upon the frilly pulp; our wasting gazes snagged

on trampled slop dilating feebly in their wake—

twitching underneath—the echo-trails warbling

overflowed the brutal yard,

where mutterances slip

behind the purplish light, tobacco patterns blacken

into boundless platitudes and oblivion.

Drips on iron defy a Persian threnody suspended

by a scarce beshkan: a hollow polyrhythm.

Sky gapes dark and vacuous.

Bobby clicked—shuffling.M a c k e n Z i e n i x \\ a n a t o M y o F a c r i M e s c e n e \\ p e n o n pa p e r

36 37

g r a t i t U d e i n t r a F F i cJ e r e M y pa g e

Where’s my thank you wave

mother fucker

and yet

I’ve never received a call

from my boss

“just to say thanks

for all that money you made me

last quarter - it ’s really

coming in handy”

I suppose it’s easier to be mad

encased in metal —

still —

some of our aggressions seem

misplaced; may be better

spent on causes other

than one another. But then there’s

the car payment, and we’re tired

I am

and it’s al-

most the weekend anyway.

(something about revolution)

o p e n i n g

t h e s p a c e B e t w e e n

s o U n d a n d s i l e n c e :

l i M i n a l

r e F l e c t i o n s o n M U s i cg o e t Z r i c h t e r

\

Music is an art of time and temporality. By virtue of sound it also unfolds

in space. While music may direct attention to the ephemeral nature of time,

it is space that enables music to sound and to be heard. The temporally

moving forms of sound produced by voices or instruments bring spaces

soundingly to life. Here we encounter a perplexity: Does music sound in

space or does a space resonate with the music which is played?

The possibility of inverting seemingly straightforward perceptions signals

questions. Space is where human beings find themselves. Such space is

not only confined to rooms, halls or buildings. Nature, too, provides us

with spaces: the clearing in the forest, the quarry in the mountains or the

sheltered dunes behind the beach – here, sounds can be made and music

can take place. When this occurs, the silence of nature blends with the

sounds of music. But contrary to the natural sound in such spaces, the man-

made music remains outside the surrounding silence with its occasional

natural sounds. Natural space confirms to us that music requires bounded

space to sound as the openness of nature leads music to disappear in

the distance.

38 39

\\\

Let us return to the question of what binds the two fundamental ontological

characteristics of music as temporal form and as resonant space by

considering the interaction between musician and listener. What occurs in

that space between these two? What characteristics does this space have?

We may ordinarily believe that the musician and the listener are

separated by their distinct attention and activity. The musician makes music;

the listener simply listens. However, both musician and audience listen to

music. They differ insofar as they enter musical listening at different temporal

thresholds. When the music sounds, the musician has already heard it .

The musician is ahead of the listener in the audience: the musician’s listening

commences with the imagination of the music and anticipates the listening

of the audience. This immediate temporal independence is mediated by the

presence of resonance in space.

The audience responds to the music opening their consciousness to the

possibilities of further listening. The listener is ahead of the music-maker

in their expectation. This expectation provides a space for sustained and

engaged listening, in which the listener must engage their own imagination

and anticipate the music in their consciousness much like a musician.

To truly listen, the listener must become a musician through their attention

to the music.

Once music sounds, the musician listens as it resonates in space and

unfolds in time. The musician has a twofold, dialogical task: imagining

and anticipating the music, as well as listening to musical resonance.

o p e n i n g t h e s pa c e B e t w e e n s o U n d a n d s i l e n c eo p e n i n g t h e s pa c e B e t w e e n s o U n d a n d s i l e n c e

\\

The idea that spaces resonate is central to music and to these reflections.

Resonance presupposes a capacity for sounding out and for sounding

back. Resonance requires space and its defining dimensions for reflection.

We refer to a space as potentially resonant or as dull and even dead. When

we play music, space is filled with sound and comes to life. The sounds of

music do not only transform space; they transform the listeners who have

entered the space noisily and who need to fall silent to hear. In the musical

space the listener experiences a change in their being. This depends on

their attentiveness, the characteristics of the music and the power of the

musician. The change is often readily understood as emotional – or even

spiritual. The reference to emotion here leads us to question why some

regard music as a language.

Philosophers debate whether and how music might communicate

emotion. What does the idea of music as a language of emotion imply?

It suggests that music is a medium through which emotions are transferred

to the human being who can be at any particular time in its possession

independently of music. However, how do emotions or feelings exist?

What is their mode of being? The view that music is a language of emotion

may conceal the ready assumptions that emotions are substantial, enduring

states of consciousness with properties that qualify their independent

existence. In such a conception, music itself takes the form of a trading

currency of feelings.

40 41

\\\\

The intention to bring a phenomenon from the threshold of our immediate

experience into view inevitably imposes on us the requirement to retrace

our steps carefully. Only slow thinking and a repeated return to our concern

will advance our understanding. How is it possible that the complexity

of the musical experience constitutes a coherent, meaningful experience

altogether? How do musician and listener intuitively understand each other

and the music? We return to the question of music and emotion and with this

to the role space and time play in our experience of music.

As the musician anticipates musical listening such listening suggests

significance. This significance is always also felt . If we conceive music as

a language of emotion, an intuition of feeling would need to temporally

precede the anticipation of music for it to inform the musical utterance

properly. In the case of a re-creative musical performance, the musician

would have to pre-anticipate the feeling of the music suggested to them

by a preparatory, forensic study of the music. Whether we agree with the

view that music is a language of emotion or not, the relationship between

imagination and expression is determined by dialogical interactions very

similar to those exposed above in relation to listening itself . The imagination

of feeling suggests a musical anticipation. Upon articulation, the musical

idea develops its own dynamic dialogue within sounding space and

silent imagination. The listener’s experiential profile reflects this structured

anticipation with the difference that the initiative for any alteration to it

is retained by both the music and the musician. This may lead to outcomes

which provide ongoing challenges to the listener. In this dialogue emotion

itself develops and changes. It is intentionally and temporally formed like

music, animated, reflected and directed by the dialogue between the

intentionality of the musician and musical listening.

o p e n i n g t h e s pa c e B e t w e e n s o U n d a n d s i l e n c e

This dialogue of imagination and perception allows the musician to form an

ensemble with others and to reach a listening audience effectively.

The listening of the audience has similarly dialogical and developmental

characteristics – music suggests connections that in turn create expectations

and lead to anticipation. It inspires the imagination of the listener who

no longer merely receives the sounds made by the musician but instead

actively includes unfolding music in their own conscious life. This process

involves multiple spaces. Active timing and creative anticipation open the

spaces of attention towards concrete engagement with, and participation

in, music. It leads to listening in the man-made spaces where music sounds.

Such spaces would be silent or noisy were it not for musical imagination

to conceive temporal forms of sound. Where we fill spaces with sound,

we open at the same time a space between the silent imagination and

the audible sound. Making music and listening reveal to us how the active

formation of time opens up new realms of being, spaces of, and spaces

for, sound.

o p e n i n g t h e s pa c e B e t w e e n s o U n d a n d s i l e n c e

42

\\\\\

The complexity of this concern demands that we return once again to our

starting point. The view of music as a language of emotion has lead to

a perplexing position; music originally conceived as a language expressing

emotion is now seen as a path towards emotion. It seems that neither

music nor the musician can hold fast to emotion. Musical expression remains

incomplete, and in fact, open to transformation by the initiatives of music

itself, the intentionality of the musician and the response of the listener.

There is no given emotional content in music which simply runs off. Whatever

significant emotion might arise in and through music needs to be anticipated

before the music sounds. It finds itself transformed at once through the

manifold dialogues of musical making and listening. This transformation is

achieved because music is both temporal form and resounding in space.

Our reflections have arrived at a cadence: music is the sounding form

and the resonant space where listeners and musicians meet. Such a meeting

engages the imagination to complete suggestions initiated by music yet

immediately transformed by all . The superficial separation between

musicians making music on stage and audiences listening in silence does

not reveal readily that both are engaged in the same temporal task nor

that both share the same intentional space. Their combined listening, an act

of all-encompassing imagination, gathers musicians and listeners through

time within space. Music sublates difference by filling the space between

musician and listener with sound. Music opens the space between sound

and silence by bringing temporal form to spatial resonance.

o p e n i n g t h e s pa c e B e t w e e n s o U n d a n d s i l e n c e

J U n M i n g \\ p o r t r a i t, pa p e r B a g a n d h a n d \\

i n k o n pa p e r

44 45

d r e s s U n i F o r Mr i c o c r a i g

There is a woman screaming

from my balcony, naked

breasts quivering with rage.

She has been tender; in bed we were

a heart-shaped question, her ribs a ripple

beneath my fingers, knees bent toward

the edge of peaceful half sleep. My euros

well spent. No longer. Now she yells

the taste of me from her mouth.

She has my keys in her hand, holding

them like a broken trophy, my uniform

in the other, slack and bodiless. Her lips

spit the chalk of my name at a growing

crowd. I feel the sting of their hunger

rising from the street. She casts

my uniform at their mouths and I

imagine my chevrons trampled, torn.

The first rock is a surprise, through

the window; they mean her no harm.

I hear their voices chanting the slogan

that follows me. Another rock, glass

on the carpet; I no longer have the will

to harm them. I hear the cheer from below

as she throws my keys from the balcony.

They must dazzle through the air; the last

brazen part of me. Now my hands are empty.

And shirtless I wait for footsteps from the hall .

y e sr i c o c r a i g

Did I become heartless?

Yesterday evening, in front of Medici’s,

you returned to me; walking pale,

bent, a slipshod plait hanging from white

unruly hair. Nails crimping the plastic off

a pack of Lambert and Butler, your

picket lips puckering for a drag.

I remember you on the gutter edge,

hardly twenty, in Auburn, brawling

for a cigarette, kicking

a car that wouldn’t start,

throwing keys across the road.

Now your eyes are rheumy, trapdoors

over the sump-hole you tended

so well . I hear you mutter

as you rest between each step.

Your gimcrack dress billows, green

and threadbare, a grandmother’s

cast-off. I watch your broken gait.

You grin, toothless, gentle, a smoke

between your lips, happy as a child.

Did you?

46 47

s l e i g h t

o F h a n ds a M a n t h a B o w e r s

You tricked me

into thinking you were real.

In idle moments, names

occurred, we wondered

if you’d tend to science

like your Daddy,

or make playmates

out of words, like me.

Or who you’d look most like,

when you were bigger.

An hour before we met, I drank

two glasses of cold water, like they said,

and crossed my legs,

and squirmed until they called my name.

s l e i g h t o F h a n d

The gown sagged

like an elephant skin and billowed

at the back.

A woman buttered me

with aqua-tinted gel, then ran

a wand in arcs from rib to pubic bone.

You lay, a little

grey screen-ghost,

and didn’t move.

I thought it strange.

The woman frowned and turned a dial,

I knew before she said it –

the heartbeat on the screen

was mine, was

only mine, just

mine.

A solo throb

that I could cry to.

4948

a r i e l l e M a r s h a l l \\ t h e s p e e d o F t h e s U B l i M e ( i ) \\

p h o t o g r a p h ( F i l M )

t h e s i x o ’ c l o c k t a B l ee v e ly n a r a l U e n c o r r

The table exists at six o’clock. At five-fifty-nine it is just furniture, unmarked

in time. But every day at six o’clock, she pours the tea and always sets an

extra place. When she has finished her Darjeeling or sencha or Assam, she

takes the empty cup to the sink and washes it as she did before.

The rest of the house is fuzzy around the edges. It ’s almost as if it is fading

into the forest beyond the picket fence. She only sees it when she isn’t

really looking - when she steps out to collect the mail, or when she leaves

each morning and returns home in time to wait for the table to come into

presence. Last summer she helped carry it out to the lawn where it stood

each day at every hour, come rain or shine, but this year she is only one

pair of hands when the sun comes out.

Nothing feels particularly real about the house except for this table at

twilight, in the place between afternoon and evening. Not even her presence

here is real. She was never invited to live here after he disappeared, but

when she walked through the garden that first night, that first six o’clock

with no tea on the table, no light in the lanterns, no voice calling to her

from the kitchen to make herself at home, she stepped into a void and the

house would not let her step out. It clung in the way it could not cling to him.

Do not leave me too, it seemed to say.

The house demands answers, but there aren’t many that she can give.

50 51

t h e s i x o ’ c l o c k t a B l e

So long as there is his absence to contemplate, she does not have to

consider her feelings for his presence. It is not that she forgets the tightness

of her chest and the too-hotness of her skin when he smiled, or the way

his laugh could warm her even on those summer afternoons where the rain

filled their cups before the tea could. It is that he is gone, he is gone at six

o’clock just as he is gone from every hour that he never was before.

There are possibilities, of course.

The first is that he could come back. This is the one she hopes for.

The one she dreams of. She has tried looking for him, tried looking for

his job or asking the owner of the shop where he bought his tea, but the

universe has whispered him out of the town and it will not let her be led to

him. So now she wraps herself up in a midnight dressing gown in a house

that she once only visited at six o’clock in the afternoon, her evening,

his morning, in that place between, because they were always between.

She hopes to be the flame that will lure the moth home. She thinks,

if I keep this place for you, if I set the table and pour the tea and clean the

cups, then you will know that there is a home somewhere, waiting, a house

that aches and grows blurred at the edges where it wants to sink into the

soil and leave her nothing but memory, an hour of crystallised stillness for

those who take their seat at the table.

The second possibility is that he would never come back. She inspects

the delicate willow pattern on the tea cup she places out for him and

wonders how many times it can be filled and washed before it fades.

How many six o’clocks will pass with this absence. She has never had to

think too far into the future, because this is not a place of futures. It ’s a

strange town that seems to go backwards with every day. She is sure she

hasn’t aged since coming here, that her hair is the same length it always

was. She loses track of her family and friends outside its borders. She was

the last person to come here, and no one ever seems to leave.

t h e s i x o ’ c l o c k t a B l e

He went away.

There is really no other way of describing it .

Last summer he was here, he sat at this table at six o’clock and drank

tea and waxed philosophical and teased her about her hair. They read

books and recited poetry. He told her about physics and mathematics and

geography. There are machines in his study that use radio waves to hear the

crackles of the past. He said there are strings that make up a solar system.

A cat in a box that does and does not exist . There are numbers that can split

an atom. Infinite universes where nothing will have changed but that they

meet an hour earlier each day.

She asks him if these other worlds can exist within each other, and he

tells her there is still so much they don’t know – but that is neither a yes

nor is it a no and now she has come to understand that they can exist at

the same time.

He was the first person she met when she moved to that town, a vague

face from a vague memory. They both had to remind each other of their

names. He was leaning across their shared fence in a dressing gown the

colour of midnight, asking after her mother, if she remembered their boat

trip one long lost July. She seemed older, but he didn’t .

When she moved in she discovered a library in his house with books in

half a dozen languages on every conceivable subject. No bedroom, but a

study filled with things she cannot even begin to contemplate. She doesn’t

dare step in there for fear of shattering something that would suck her

down, down, into another world, another pocket of the universe. He could

be dead in that room for all she knew, but she did not know, so he was and

he wasn’t . She knew he had a job somewhere in town. The night shift, so her

supper was his breakfast. They were as different as night and day, because

those were the places they lived. The spaces they occupied. It was only at

that table that their geographies collided.

52 53

a r i e l l e M a r s h a l l \\ t h e s p e e d o F t h e s U B l i M e ( i i ) \\

p h o t o g r a p h ( F i l M )

t h e s i x o ’ c l o c k t a B l e

Except him, of course.

She cannot decide if it is cruelty or kindness that the universe gives her

these possibilities. The cat could be alive or dead. He might be in his study,

or he might not be. The pain comes from being between.

Each day becomes so much like the last that place and time have

synthesised into one. Historical geography. The spatial and the temporal.

The time between leaving and returning to the house could be months.

It has been day all summer.

At five-fifty-nine, she turns on the record player, sets the table, and

pours the tea. The daily dance to bring home the strange man with no

bedroom but a radio that can listen to the past. When she has completed

this ceremony, she hears the garden gate swing, the click of the latch.

If she does not turn around, he is both there and he is not. She can sit

for a moment at this table and does not have to choose how this all ends.

And then it is six o’clock. The universe decides.

54 55

F r o Z e nk a t a r Z y n a a U r o r a s p r e n g e l

We started with nom de plumes,

writing manifestos for our trivial lives

and stealing altar wine from the local church.

Do you still remember our futile prayers to Emerson,

our restless fights for inspiration?

We used to get high every lazy weekend,

transforming ennui and loneliness

into graceful doom.

We used to flounder

in the lustre of the night’s madness.

Now we are frozen. Ageing:

spending afternoons in

a quiet room,

writing polite letters to anonymous muses,

and waiting –

while pouring hot tea into china cups

that break each time

our old clumsy fingers haunt the kitchen.

Insomnia used to be a luxury, a confidant –

something that gave birth to the best epiphanies.

Now a sleepless night is nothing more than

a deaf confessor.

We will die sentimental,

perhaps while drinking our tea, waiting out the night

or fearing the sunsets like clueless children.

But when it happens, I just hope that

the sunset will seem a bit different,

somehow more

tangible.

d U s kM a d e l e i n e c h a r t e r s

Their beating coats echoed Escher

In concentric blind tracery;

Their canopy replaced the stucco

Relief

And fanned from the metal lanterns

Of harbour verandas.

Now petrified with fretting moths,

The city stops and quivers beneath

A mounting anticipation;

The living scaffold hardly breathes.

Come twilight,

Staid rooms grow faint with their shadow

And the throbbing sky draws

The souls who cusp unto arches

Of windows lit

Electric blue.

The bridge lets fall its dark wire frame,

Now floodlit ribs in bleached relief

Against the void of rising spirits.

An incandescent dusk.

56

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Samantha Bowers is a former Fairfax journalist,

currently writing a book and completing her

Master of Creative Writing.

Micaela Brookman is a Sydney-based

photographer known for her narrative portraits

and lifestyle photography.

Madeleine Charters is in her third year of a

Bachelor of Arts degree.

Evelyn Araluen Corr writes essays on books

about maps (but not atlases) and in her spare

time plots to overthrow capitalism.

Rico Craig writes poetry and prose. Recent

work has been published in Cordite ,

Bluepepper , and is forthcoming in Meanjin .

Robin Eames is a third year student of History

and Gender Studies. They like cats, fairytale

monsters, and weird art.

57

58

Nicholas Fahy is a previous editor of Hermes.

He is a writer, publisher and photographer,

studying and working at the University of Sydney.

Arielle Marshall is a second year Architecture

student with a penchant for philosophy.

Katrina Kemp is a teacher working on a

Masters by research on teaching creative and

imaginative thinking. She is a 2002 graduate in

Special Education.

Kathryn McLeod is studying a Master of

Creative Writing, focusing on screenwriting,

journalism, and non-fiction.

Jun Ming is a second year student studying a

Bachelor of Design in Architecture.

Mackenzie Nix is current ly trapped in a

metaphorical prison of lineweights and project

deadlines in her second year of Architecture.

59

Jeremy Page has recently completed a Master

of Creative Writ ing and plans to begin a

poetry-related PhD in 2015.

Goetz Richter is a musician, philosopher and

Associate Professor in Violin and Chair of

the String Unit at the University of Sydney’s

Conservatorium of Music.

Jordan Roe is a student of Australian Literature

and music composition, and a self-(un)employed

botanist and explorer.

Mira Schlosberg is gay as hell and likes cats

and stories.

Katarzyna Aurora Sprengel is half-Polish, half-

Australian and writes mainly poetry and fiction.

Feiya Zhang is soon to become a Science

graduate and ponders her next move. Writing

is her chosen form of therapy.

58