Confined
Tiffany Tsao • 5 November 2021
Monday marked the official end of Australia’s international travel ban, which lasted eighteen months. For those who’ve been prevented from visiting or caring for loved ones abroad, this period of time has felt like forever. And for those unable to pay their last respects in person to a loved one who has died, the end of this ban has come too late.
In light of this, our selection this week opens with an essay by Perth-based South African writer Sisonke Msimang about the isolation she has felt while confined to Australia. And about grief’s insistence on spilling over national borders and pooling in a shared sense of sadness and struggle.
Berlin-based Singaporean writer Christina Ng recounts her own sudden feelings of entrapment several years ago while working as a volunteer farm hand in rural Victoria – the moment when the surrounding forest morphed into a physical manifestation of her failure to escape the 'carefully crafted urban environment' of her home country.
The conversation about crossing and not crossing borders continues with Sydney-based author and academic Intan Paramaditha’s rumination on the power dynamics and social inequalities of travel. Who is permitted to freely trot the globe, historically and presently? How does colonialism determine the travel routes people take?
The unbearable confines of a body in chronic pain and of a body separated from home and family by time and space are the subjects, respectively, of Jarad Bruinstroop’s 'Peace Body Pain Body' and Frances An’s short critical piece on two versions of the Vietnamese song, 'Qua Cơn Mê'. What happens when peace is a physical and hence psychic impossibility? What happens when you’re trapped in a reality where what you yearn for no longer exists?
Grief is Another Word for Love
'Somehow, these two sadnesses, my private sadness and this public sadness, have become entangled. I can’t figure out the connection. Why does watching the news make me think of him, and why does thinking of him make me worry for Palestine? I am too tired to try.'
Finding a Way Out: Lost in East Gippsland
'In my moment of disorientation, the forest was a mirage of home, dreamy and irritating. Every tree I saw was a reminder of an aspiration I had of escaping to a foreign land that could not, or would not, keep me. No matter how dreamily beautiful the forest once was, it had morphed into a cold, hard challenge to surmount, another task to cross off from my to-do list.'
On the Complicated Questions Around Writing About Travel
'Should we seize Prospero’s pen and write our own stories of travel and discovery? There is a problem there. What we will discover is determined by a map that already exists. We can read the map, but the map has read us first, locating us based on where we come from and the color of our skin.'
(This essay was included in The Best American Travel Writing 2021, which goes to show you that writing from Australia can be found everywhere!)
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Peace Body Pain Body
'Before I began, I knew that peace would be an impossible subject. Even more abstract than pain and twice and ineffable. I’m speaking here of personal peace.
The pain is a car alarm wailing all day and night outside my window. Shut up, I am trying to work. Shut up, I am trying to be happy. Shut up, I am trying not to be in pain.'
Nostalgia and Delirium in 'Qua Cơn Mê'
'These verses culminate in the hallucination referenced in the cover image of the hut, when Duy sings "cùng theo lũ em học hành như xưa" ("accompanying the kids to school as before"). The listener would understand this to be an impossibility, given that either: 1) his children or child-relatives have grown past school age during the protagonist’s army service; or, 2) his family and home town have been destroyed either physically or economically.'
For those interested in reading more about Vietnamese pop music history, be sure to check out this article by Sheila Ngọc Phạm about 1960s rock and roll sensation Phuong Tâm and the successful recovery of her music, thanks to her daughter’s efforts to track them down.
It’s always exciting to see new publications on the Australian lit scene! Salutations to Colournary, who launched their first issue in July. Colournary is a print magazine dedicated to celebrating and amplifying the voices of First Nations, Black, and People of Colour through the lens of culture and food. Felicitations also to bi-annual independent literary magazine Debris on the occasion of their visually dazzling inaugural August issue 'Grief'. And a warm hello to The Saltbush Review, which went live just last month, and which is 'grown from the earth and water of South Australia, but open to the world'.
If you’re a new publication featuring non-fiction by or about Australian writers, we’d love to hear from you! Send us a hello at editor@thecircular.com.au. We’re especially interested in featuring more from newsletters, so if you have any particular favourites, feel free to let us know.