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Keywords: Memoir

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Learning how to die with chimera Montaigne

    • Patti Miller
    • 14 October 2015
    13 Comments

    I have always felt guilty about an inability to commit to any belief system. So when Montaigne said 'Only fools have made up their mind', I felt an enormous sense of relief. He knew that those who are certain are the ones to shut down newspapers, lop off heads, blow up planes, burn books. There is a thread throughout his essays, too, of him finding sex undignified and therefore unfitting for grown men and women. It is one of his many contradictions and confronts me with my own contradictory attitude.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Search for truth continues 50 years after Indonesia's purge

    • Pat Walsh
    • 01 October 2015
    2 Comments

    Like Tony Abbott before him, Malcolm Turnbull is slated to make Jakarta one of his first overseas ports of call as prime minister. His visit will occur as calls grow louder in Indonesia and elsewhere for the truth to be told about the massacres of up to 1 million Indonesians 50 years ago this October. It is assumed that at the time Canberra did not protest the massive miscarriage of justice and international law that occurred. It can now compensate in a small way for that silence by making public what it knew.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How Abbott was defeated by his own pugnaciousness

    • Andrew Thackrah
    • 15 September 2015
    24 Comments

    After Malcolm Turnbull announced on Monday afternoon that he was challenging Tony Abbott for the LIberal leadership, commentators were unanimous in their speculation that Abbott would not give up the prime ministership without a fight. The pugnaciousness that characterised his political style was similarly part of the playbook of Canadian PM Stephen Harper, who was also seen to base his interaction with political adversaries on their 'standing' rather than debating policy. In Abbott's case this turned out to be a fatal flaw.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Spiritual enlightenment on the transplant waitlist

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 03 September 2015
    1 Comment

    In part, these hallucinogenic, metaphysical digressions are a product of Robert's medically-altered state of consciousness. Chemotherapy brings a sense of disorientation, which often leads patients' minds to wander in directions they wouldn't have otherwise. Through this, Robert discovers an Eastern spiritual and cultural approach to death that informs his own confrontation of mortality.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Former Xavier students' love transcends AIDS horror

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 20 August 2015
    25 Comments

    Timothy Conigrave's memoir Holding the Man is a classic of contemporary Australian queer literature. Originally published in 1995 a few months after Conigrave's death from AIDS, it is an account of his relationship with John Caleo, whom he met in 1976 when they were both students at the Melbourne Jesuit private boys school Xavier College. Conigrave and Caleo were together for 15 years until Caleo's death (also from AIDS) in 1992. This film adaptation of their story is nothing if not bold.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Silence won't make abuse go away

    • James Fry
    • 19 August 2015
    6 Comments

    We tell victims of of crimes including bullying, domestic violence and child abuse, that help will come their way if they are prepared to speak up. But on several occasions, I spoke to those responsible for my welfare and safety, only to have such pleas ignored. For others it can be worse, with Child Abuse Royal Commission revealing victims being blamed for the crimes against them, and sometimes being delivered into the hands of other pedophiles.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Living and flourishing with quadriplegia

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 10 June 2015
    4 Comments

    In October 2010, shortly before his 40th birthday, Pentecostal pastor and theologian Shane Clifton rode a bike at high speed off a ramp and into a pit of foam rubber. When he landed, he fractured his spine, severed his spinal cord, and became a quadriplegic. He was forced to ponder deeply his beliefs and doubts, strengths and weaknesses, and the possibility of flourishing in the midst of human suffering.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Vera Brittain's elegant anti-war ode

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 23 April 2015
    5 Comments

    Vera, a latecomer to the gathering, interjects. She has worked as a nurse, has had her hands warmed by the blood of the maimed and the soon-to-be-dead of both sides of the conflict. She has lost loved ones, too — a brother, a friend, a fiancé — and the grief of their loss will be with her always. But how can violent conflict ever be truly redeemed through the trauma of more violent conflict? The German soldiers who died in the war left behind loved ones, too.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The root cause of IS extremism

    • James Fry
    • 17 April 2015
    16 Comments

    I was 14 years old and angry. My mind was fertile ground for an extremist ideology, like today's IS recruits. One day I met 30 year old Mal, whose chosen brand of neo-Nazi whackery presented a simplistic view of the world. Through my own experience, and my ongoing work with troubled youth, I shudder when I hear politicians talk of their commitment to national security yet at the same time defund community programs working with marginalised young people.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My mother often used to say

    • Geoff Page
    • 17 February 2015
    4 Comments

    Although a country atheist, my mother often used to say, she rather hoped there'd be a heaven, where one day I would have to pray, forgiveness for my voting record, my sell-out to the 'other side', by telling my large-looming grandpa, what made me cross the 'great divide'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keeping company with misery

    • Kristy Chambers
    • 08 October 2014
    8 Comments

    I attempted to manage my mental health with good intentions, stern self-talk, guilt and cigarettes. Finally, exasperated and desperate, I started taking an anti-depressant medication, and when it actually worked, I was stunned to feel happy. But like any new relationship, the honeymoon period is brilliant... and temporary.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Encounter at the gate

    • Brian Matthews
    • 12 September 2014
    6 Comments

    I'm standing at the front gate, about to go for a run when he swings round the corner. He speaks in a deep, modulated voice that seems to run on like a quiet stream. Just when you think you might answer, the flow smoothly resumes, and he is an adept prince of the non sequitur. 'Ever take a short cut through the cemetery?'

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