Editorial: Week 3, Semester 2

People are too harsh on routine. I love it — I see it as a privilege when things are the same. I want to go to Terra Cotta Roasters with Alice again and order the breakfast burger and a skinny chai, I want to sit in our underground hole and order Thai food from the same place, and I want to ask Vivienne to help me with my spread as she insists that she also doesn’t know what she’s doing (lie, she is the best).

I have nothing smart to say about the state of the world. It has not ended yet, or at the very least, it has not seemed to. I wish I could say it is the same, every day, every sunset blending together with nothing to show but identical fading light peeking through the gaps in my blinds. But as much as I would like to succumb to despair, the people around me have made that impossible.

Although recent days appear to be drowned in a sort of monotony, the last couple of months have also brought many firsts; Marlow’s first Barbie movie (Barbie and the Diamond Castle), Ariana’s first venture into writing prose, Jeffrey and Deaundre’s first time knitting, and my brother’s first steps. 

I bought a disposable camera with thirty-nine shots at the start of June, insistent on documenting the last holidays of my undergraduate degree. I expected to go through it like wildfire, but it sits on my desk now, wound to the number twenty-one. Sam is the star of nearly all of them; squinting on his balcony with the sun in his face, smiling atop the stairs in Victoria Park, zealously kneading the water out of shredded zucchini. 

I’ve been taking pictures and videos (almost) every day since January on my phone. I found a video of Max from our Welcome Week lay up, with a blanket wrapped around his legs. Alice and I are laughing in the background, commanding him to ‘be a mermaid.’ He insists he doesn’t know how before flapping around and giggling. There’s a photo of Claire posing next to a completely alive and legally acquired potted plant, one of Sam with his award-winning cake monstrosity, and one of Juliette with simp hands in her oversized ‘Fit for Honi’ t-shirt when we first attempted the Herculean task of cleaning the office.

There is so much I am grateful for this year, almost all of which I owe to the people mentioned in this editorial. My mum tells me that the Gods are more likely to answer my prayers because I don’t pray enough, so I will use this opportunity to hope every year is half as great as this one.

To all the writers and artists in this edition, and to the lovely cover artist Bella Henderson, I am eternally grateful.

All my love,

Shania