Myuran Sukumaran – Music for Deckchairs

In our own hands

Kate Bowles April 30, 2017 3 Comments

To offer consolation is an act of generosity. Arthur Frank, The Renewal of Generosity ANZAC Day: dodging the memorialisation of war by gardening, trying to distribute worm casts without ripping handfuls of living worms to bits. I’m feeling the dirt packed under my fingernails, and suddenly hearing Thom Gunn’s poem that skids to a stop on the matter of our cellular form: when we die and fall into the earth, we become dirt, and there is no intention in this, it just is. This poem ends with…

Death penalty, Narrative practice

Enhancing life

Kate Bowles March 4, 2017 5 Comments

When a person dies, they leave behind, for those who knew them, an emptiness, a space: the space has contours and is different for each person mourned. This space with its contours is the person’s likeness and is what the artist searches for when making a living portrait. A likeness is something left behind invisibly. John Berger, ‘Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible’ It’s been hard to write, evidently. It’s March. This morning I was over on Plashing Vole’s…

Cancer, Death penalty

Never let me go

Kate Bowles July 28, 2016 3 Comments

In an interrogation, blows have only scant criminological significance. They are tacitly practiced and accepted, a normal measure employed against recalcitrant prisoners who are unwilling to confess. Jean Amery, ‘Torture’ The perverse bureaucracy of a well-mannered killing is cranking up so fast in Indonesia. Plastic chairs, fresh paint, name tags to sort out family members from spiritual advisers, coffins. Again. Executions are scheduled for tonight. Fourteen people, their families and loved ones are slowly sinking into this pit. They can’t save themselves from what…

Death penalty

What you cannot accept

Kate Bowles July 27, 2016 1 Comment

So, how can we productively guard space upon terrain where agency is constantly affronted? Sean Michael Morris, ‘The Place of Education‘, Hybrid Pedagogy July 2016 I pray you find the courage to show mercy, as one day you will no longer have the power and will be looking back at your choices and your mistakes and the decisions you have taken. Raji Sukumaran, letter to President Joko Widodo, July 2016 1 Over the last two weeks we’ve turned like sunflowers,…

Death penalty

Faith

Kate Bowles April 29, 2016 5 Comments

I think about the day a person dies, how the morning is just a morning, a meal is just a meal, a song is just a song. It’s not the last morning, or the last meal, or the last song. It’s all very ordinary, and then it’s all very over. The space between life and death is a moment. Stephanie Wittels Wachs, ‘Yahrzeit‘ 1 The internet is curled in on itself with grief, again. Someone loved and admired and puzzled over and copied and with a place…

Death penalty

The heart of it

Kate Bowles November 6, 2015 12 Comments

The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it. Akarshan Kumar, on #TwitterHeart Here’s the thing. There is no single Twitter experience, no coherent “you” that can be better enabled by corporate tinkering within its miniaturist frame, because Twitter is just people. Millions of us use…

Living and dying

Words for the way we talk

Kate Bowles April 29, 2015 0 Comments

1. January 28th, 1986 the Challenger Space Shuttle finally took off after many delays and concerns about safety. The parents of female astronaut Christa McAuliffe were watching from the stands, news cameras trained on their upturned faces as the shuttle exploded. “Etched forever” is a meticulously pieced together account of the reactions of all those who prepared for the launch and then witnessed the explosion, from the NASA ground support to the families to the President to all the bystanders. So many stories…

Being an academic, Cancer, Health and healthcare

Writing and dying

Kate Bowles April 26, 2015 3 Comments

This weekend the situation in Indonesia has escalated. It shouldn’t have come to this, and yet here we are. Networks and timelines are filled with expressions of horror and sadness that the executions are going ahead. Families and loved ones are racing to get there in time; governments all over the world are appealing and protesting. The lawyers are giving last minute radio interviews, exhausted. A consignment of plastic chairs being ferried to the prison is photographed and worried over. Who are these chairs for? Those who…

Cancer, Health and healthcare

Vigil

Kate Bowles February 18, 2015 3 Comments

End of life illness stories come to this moment: the final period of waiting and staying awake. Sleeping mats on the floors of hospital rooms, dozing in chairs, holding hands, keeping shifts and vigils, hard choices, knowing what is to come. There’s an intense wish repeatedly expressed to get there in time: for the living to be present with the dying, to let them know that they are safe and cared for, and that those they love are safe and can…

Cancer

The reality

Kate Bowles February 14, 2015 9 Comments

Even though I know what the reality is, it gives me hope, it gives me a purpose, it gives me something to do. However little time I have. — Myuran Sukumaran, Australian artist Here’s a story that ought to be filling us all with hope: a big tale of resilience, creativity, cooperation and opportunity, driven by a remarkable and gifted Australian. Look at him here: he is young, and healthy, and doing so much good. He has time left. If I was his mother watching…

Cancer