03: on memories
Short story - Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au
Cold Enough for Snow is the second book from Melbourne writer Jessica Au. It won her the first Novel prize in 2020 and comes a decade after her acclaimed debut, Cargo. The plot is simple; “deceptively” so, as some reviews have noted: mother and adult daughter visit Japan, see the sights, take in art and food, go home. What we hear of their conversation is quotidian and understated, at frustrating odds with the narrator’s pressing hunger for connection. Memories swirl of interactions with others: her partner Laurie, with whom she’s considering a child; the lecturer who introduced her to “the classics”; an unsettling customer at the Chinese restaurant where she once worked.
What the narrator wants is ways to “know someone and to have them know me”. The trip seems obsessively planned around experiences that might spark some shared vocabulary with her mother, down to the time of evening that “might be nice” for a certain restaurant. A melancholy detachment seeps into all this perfect composure – an anxious sense of being outside the moment, not dissimilar to that seen in Katherine Brabon’s The Shut Ins, or Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies. Another, lost vocabulary hovers: her mother’s first language is Cantonese, hers is English – “we only ever spoke together in one”.
Also published by one of my all-time favourite publishers, Fitzcarraldo Editions, hers is a book of observations, memories and the gap between those two.
Essay - Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain
I’ve always been a sickly girl. I fall sick often, despite not having a frail constitution, and when I’m sick, is when I feel like I’m truly alive. I have the tendency to barrel through things in life at the speed of a freight train— writing deadlines, work commitments, chores, keeping up with close friends, gigs, etc. I’m not sure how I make the time for it, but somehow, I do. So, as it happens when you live everyday like it’s got 12 extra hours in it, you tend to fall sick eventually. The pain slows me down, brings me back to my body, I go back to yoga and meditation, to breathwork and herbal teas. I’m more vulnerable with my partner, not embarrassed by my naked need for his presence and affection. Pain makes me more human.
When I was younger, the tendency was to glamorise the pain and romanticise it. I see this playing out a lot in the cinema I watch, and some of the books I read. Is owning your pain what grants you, as a woman, agency?
This essay forced me to question the way I think about my personal pain. What does it mean to own pain? Jamison describes wounds in an outward and upward motion—wounds “merge” from private into public, fluidly allowing others to “peer” into them. This move forces us to question the agency of the wound—is it forcefully pushed or more gently teased and revealed over time? A little bit of both perhaps. This piece called me, as a woman, to question how I deal with the pain in my life. Often I have felt that my pain was too trivial, or I have adopted the apathetic “post-wounded women” attitude that Jamison suggests. The paradox she struggles with (and that she asks her readers to struggle with as well) is both the advocating, and the admonishing, of women’s pain. This point cannot be reiterated enough. It encompasses Jamison’s mission for her readers, her fellow empathizers, her advocates to legitimize pain.
Playlist 03
A playlist that hopefully evokes memories— listen alone, on headphones. Or, do a seance with your friends, play these tunes, honour your ancestors, cry simultaneously. Saturn in Pisces, that works too.
Weekly Energy Reading
At first glance, this energy seems intense, confusing and very, very inward-looking. Knight of Pentacles reversed, a Minor Arcana card, suggests you maybe neglecting your personal life in favour of work and the daily grind. As much as there’s magic in the ordinary, I definitely have the tendency to get bogged down by domestic banalities because at a time when very little of what happens in the world makes sense, getting my cup of coffee right, or sending a perfectly worded email or responding to the Metronome-like quality of my Slack notifications, feels like I may have achieved a lot. Are you feeling overly resistant to change, tied to your routine like it’s your last lifeline before giving into the feeling of being completely and totally unmoored? The New Moon in Aries tomorrow urges you to tap into its fiery energy for new beginnings, for making emboldened decisions without necessarily worrying about the consequences, for fulfilling your heart’s deepest desire. Aries energy is raw and primal. It represents the vibration of life itself. It’s a baby’s cry to be fed, a seed bursting through the soil to find the light, and a gazelle sprinting for survival. Aries teaches us that we have the right to exist in this world and helps us fight for that existence when needed. This vibration is explosive and propels us to the next level of our evolution when harnessed in the right direction.
Is your routine meant to optimize productivity and efficiency, now stifling your creativity and ability to take risks? What does it mean to add fuel to your internal fire; whether it’s because of irritation or pure determination?
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