THE SECRET TO CHANGE

MAKING A
FRESH START

HOW TO CHANGE
YOUR HABITS

REVIVING REGGAE
 4

7
EDITOR
Antonia Case

EDITORIAL ADVISOR
Zan Boag

ART DIRECTORS
Aida Novoa, Carlos Egan

C O V E R I L L U S T R AT I O N
Charis Tsevis

A D M I N I S T R AT I O N
Steffen Westermann, Marnie Anderson

CONTRIBUTORS
Georgia Booth, Niamh Boyce, Rhian
Sasseen, Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, Alecia
Simmonds, Lucy Treloar
ARTISTS
Dariush Allahyari, Seyyed Abbas Bagheri,
Elisa Baldissera, Monica Barengo, Seyed
Abbas Seyed Ebrahimi, Carlos Egan, Shari
Erickson, Avi Marciano, Aida Nayeban,
Aida Novoa, Jason deCaires Taylor, Charis
Tsevis, Matt Vearncombe

PHOTOGRAPHERS

H.L. Anderson, Louisa Clayton, Maria

Colaidis, Robert Harding, Caleb Kenna,
Annette Liu, Devi Lockwood, Maria Stone,
Jason deCaires Taylor

SUBSCRIBE
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Views expressed by the authors are not those

of the publisher. Reproduction in whole or
in part is prohibited. Copyright is reserved
by the authors.

Issue 7, February - April 2016

ISSN 2203-5850
By Shari Erickson
 5

EDITOR’S
LETTER
When did life become so complicated?
There was a time in our childhood when life
was simple, and we had the time to do all manner
of things, like chasing a hula hoop down a path or
noting the colours on the horizon.
Adulthood, in comparison, is a series of chas-
ing loose ends in a land of distraction. We’re in
constant motion, zigzagging from one thing to
the next - barely attending to one need before an-
other jumps in our path. Over time, accustomed
to distraction, we actively seek it out, deploying
technology and the media to aid us in our quest to
fill our lives with as many diversions as possible.
We measure our success by the sheer volume of
information we consume, the number of events
we attend, places we see, how many facts and fig-
ures we can roll off our tongue - this is progress,
we say, this is the meaning of life.
But in the early days of psychology, it was
attention - not distraction - that was champi-
oned. Attention “implies withdrawal from some
things in order to deal effectively with others,”
wrote psychologist William James. It is “a condi-
tion which has the real opposite in the confused,
dazed, scatter-brained state which in French is
called distraction”. It is our ability to discard, ig-
nore and block out that enables us to set goals
and pursue them; to bolster memory; and to de-
termine where we’re heading. For unless we de-
cide what we’re chasing in life, others will step in
and set the agenda for us.

Antonia Ca se
Editor, Woma nkind ma ga zine
 6

92

ARTIST

CONTENTS
5 Editor’s letter
8 womankindmag.com
9 Contributors
10 Quote: Epictetus
12 News
18 Caribbean
20 Making a fresh start
22 Wax printing fashion
30 Quote: Paulo Coelho
32 Don’t worry, be happy
40 City woes and car culture
44 Changing seascape of our times
54 The Bermuda Triangle
60 3 ideas for change
64 Notepad
66 The psychology of worry
70 Meditation challenge
80 Unconventional wisdom
84 Reviving Reggae
92 Artist: Shari Erickson An artist’s hideaway
98 The story of white gold Shari Erickson

104 Quote: Blaise Pascal

106
106 Castaway
112 Photographers’ Award winners
SURVIVAL
117 Photographers’ Award VII
118 Quote: Bob Marley
120 Books
122 What’s on
124 Documentaries
126 Subscribe
128 Ithaca

Castaway
Rhian Sasseen
 7

32 84 60

RASTAFARI MUSIC HABIT

Don’t worry, be happy Reviving Reggae 3 ideas for change

Lucy Treloar Rhian Sasseen Antonia Case

98 44

SLAVERY TRAVEL

Changing seascape of our times

Jason deCaires Taylor

The story of white gold

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

22 54 66

FASHION MYSTERY PSYCHOLOGY

Wax printing The Bermuda Triangle The psychology of worry

Vlisco Niamh Boyce Antonia Case
 8

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CONTRIBUTORS
Antonia Case
Antonia Case is the editor
of Womankind and the liter-
ary editor of New Philosopher
magazine. In 2014 she was
awarded the AAP Media
Professionals’ Award for the
presentation of philosophy
in the media.
Clarissa
Sebag-Montefiore
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
writes for The Guardian, The
Economist, Financial Times,
The New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, New States-
man, New Internationalist,
The Huffington Post and
Time magazine.
Shari Erickson
American contemporary
painter Shari Erickson first
visited to West Indies in
1979. Her work, featured
in the global ART in
Embassies Program, has
been honoured by the US
Department of State.
9
Niamh Boyce
Niamh Boyce won debut
novel of the year at the Irish
Book Awards in 2013 for The
Herbalist. An award-winning
poet, Boyce was Hennessy
XO New Irish Writer Of
The Year in 2012. She lives
in the Irish midlands.
Alecia Simmonds
Alecia Simmonds writes for
Daily Life, The Sydney Morn-
ing Herald and The Age and
is the book reviews editor of
the Law and History Journal.
Her first book Wild Man was
published in 2015.
Rhian Sasseen
Rhian Sasseen is a journal-
ist whose work has been
published in Al Jazeera
America, Salon and Modern
Farmer, among others. She
lives in Massachusetts.
Lucy Treloar
Lucy Treloar is the winner
of the 2014 Common-
wealth Short Story Prize
(Pacific), and the 2012 Writ-
ing Australia Unpublished
Manuscript Award. Treloar’s
second novel, Salt Creek, was
published in 2015.
Jason deCaires Taylor
Jason deCaires Taylor
founded and created the
world’s first underwater
sculpture park. Situated off
the west coast of Grenada
in the West Indies it is now
listed as one of the Top 25
Wonders of the World by
National Geographic.
Georgia Booth
Georgia Booth is a
Sydney-based writer. She is
currently the acting editor
of Broadsheet in Sydney, an
online culture guide.
Epictetus 10

“Don’t explain your philosophy.

Embody it.”

Epictetus
11

Artwork by Monica Barengo

News
Your experiential CV
Would a person climb Mount
Everest, Earth’s highest mountain,
if they couldn’t tell anyone about
it? Let’s say that the adventure to
the top had to be clouded in secre-
cy. Would a climber risk their life
without being able to tell the tale?
Academics Anat Keinan and
Ran Kivetz were baffled by some
people’s attraction to negative
consumption experiences: sleep-
ing on ice, flying solo across seas
in makeshift tin planes, and so
on. Would such people engage in
these activities alone, without a
soul watching, and without any
record that it actually took place?
French extreme tightrope walk-
er Philippe Petit went down in
history for padding across a thin
stretch of wire connecting the
Twin Towers of the World Trade
Centre. 400 metres off the ground,
Petit adjusted his balance, sec-
ond by second, as the Manhattan
early-morning breeze pushed and
pulled at the wire swinging wildly
below his feet. At the finale of his
12
Unusual facts about
the sea turtle
• Sea turtles are some of the oldest
creatures on Earth, dating back over
150 million years.
• The largest turtle, the leatherback
sea turtle, weighs some 700 kg, just
under the weight of a small hatch-
back car.
• Male turtles never leave the sea.
• Female turtles return to the same
beach where they were born to lay
their eggs, sometimes as long as 30
years later.
• Typically, only one hatchling in a
victory over death, Petit’s smile thousand will make it to adulthood.
suddenly disappeared from his • The lifespan of a sea turtle is 70
once-beaming face: his camera- to 80 years.
man had forgotten to press record
on the video camera.
Keinan and Kivetz note that
humans are forever adding to
their “experiential CVs”, or their
collection of experiences proving
to others that they are productive
people. Critical to this is the joy
of retelling the tale - which helps
explain why travellers can spend
more time recording their exotic
adventures than actually experi-
encing them.
It could well be argued that the
accumulation of experiences, or
the “experiential CV” has much
in common with other forms of
“conspicuous consumption” - such
as the purchase of luxury properties
and cars, jewellery, and other dis-
plays of wealth, or success. Each is
used to prove to others that one is
worthy. It is a pity, indeed, that do-
ing things for us, and us alone is no
longer enough.
 13 News

The pros of Jamaica’s warrior queen

being messy
In western culture, you won’t and branches, guarded them-
see a warrior woman on a bank- selves against attack from British
note, but in Jamaica the $500 forces - over time securing a pow-
banknote shows the face of mili- erful stronghold. For some 30
tary leader and folk hero, ‘Queen years, Queen Nanny freed over
Nanny’. No photographs or vid- 800 slaves, helping them resettle
eos exist, only a tale that’s been in the Maroon community (who
immortalised in Jamaican songs consisted mainly of people from
and legends. Queen Nanny was the Ashanti region of Ghana).
born in West Africa in the late Today, tourists ascend the nar-
17th century but was later sold as row paths to Jamaica’s Nanny
a slave to a sugarcane plantation. Town. And a plaque dedicated to
Determined to free herself from Nanny of the Maroons, national
slavery, she and her brothers es- hero of Jamaica, reads: “Beneath
Messy desk? Isn’t that supposed
caped - plunging into the forest this place known as Bump Grave
to mean a cluttered mind?
and scaling to a safe haven high lies the body of Nanny, indomi-
In a study published in Psycho-
in the Blue Mountains. From this table and skilled, Chieftainess
logical Science, Kathleen Vohs posi-
vantage point, Queen Nanny and of the Windward Maroons who
tioned two groups of people into two
her group, camouflaged in leaves founded this town.”
different rooms - half of them were
placed in a tidy room, and the oth-
ers in a room strewn with books and
papers. From these very different sur-
roundings, participants were asked to
fill out questionnaires, contribute to
charity, and choose either a healthy
or unhealthy snack. Vohs found that
those seated in the neat room were
more likely to eat healthily as well as
give to charity, but when it came to
creativity - coming up with unique
and varied ideas - the participants
in the messy room were significantly
more creative. This may partly ex-
plain why artists are often truly messy
individuals - ideas often spring from
chaos. “There’s a multibillion dollar
industry to help people de-clutter
their lives,” said Vohs. “Relationship
partners, employers, everyone wants
you to be neat… but there may be
times being messy is good too.”
News 14

Travel in the age of social media

By Georgia Booth

Pre-social media, I took a film
camera on a trip overseas. I looked
patiently for moments or scenes to
capture, not knowing how they’d
turn out. No one knew what I was
doing, or where I was. I sat alone
watching the sunset over Tel Aviv’s
Gordon Beach. I wasn’t trying to
capture its most spectacular mo-
ment; I appreciated how the light
changed and was reminded of the
beauty behind the cliché. The mo-
ment was mine to keep.
My next trip was New York. It
was my first visit and I gathered tips
like a child chasing Easter eggs. I did my own research, trawling through
people I admired on social media to see where they’d been. To fit everything
in, each day was heavily planned. I only had two weeks and didn’t want to
miss anything.
Before I left, my friends encouraged me to post lots of photos: “We want
to live vicariously!” they said. And so I did - as I ticked off items on the
lists given to me, I dutifully took a photo, anxiously flicking between filters,
trying to find wi-fi to check how many likes I had.
Halfway through, buying a dulce de leche from a doughnut store, I real-
ised I was on a social media curated holiday rather than the one I wanted.
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find our-
selves,” says travel writer Pico Iyer. I hadn’t felt the thrill of an accidental
discovery, of spending days exploring aimlessly. I was concerned about hav-
ing an aesthetically impressive trip - going to the right places and taking
the best shots. I lost myself - but this time, in a world of likes and follows.

To live is
to consume
The average American adult spends
over 11 hours a day on electronic
gadgets, a Nielsen report found.
And the more screens we have
available in our lives, the more we
look at them. Economist Thomas
Schelling calls the mind a “consum-
ing organ” - we are built to consume.
While our ancestors spent the bulk
of their day gathering and preparing
food, today supermarket chains and
food outlets meet these basic needs
for us. So, having freed up time, spend most of our time consuming aging for nuts) to consuming ideas
we’ve moved onto consuming oth- concepts and information to meet (foraging for information in blogs),”
er things - a large part of which is psychological needs. “People have write Ariely and Norton in the pa-
conceptual consumption. Today, we switched from consuming food (for- per Conceptual Consumption.

Shari Erickson
Curating your own world
As soon as you engage in something specific, you no-
tice it everywhere. Let’s say you’re thinking about buying a
car, a red hatchback, and you’ve been researching this par-
ticular car online. Now, when out and about in the streets,
for some reason or another, you spot this car everywhere.
Suddenly, everyone is driving it. Why is this?
The answer lies in your brain, and its ability to selec-
tively choose which items to focus on, and which items to
ignore. Take a walk down the street and your brain is ex-
posed to innumerable visual items: rubbish, a jagged crack
in the concrete, a barking dog trapped behind a hedge,
the clouds moving across the sky. If your mind were to
take in every single item in its view, it would surely break
15 News
down, overloaded. “Only those items which I notice shape
my mind - without selective interest, experience is utter
chaos,” writes philosopher William James in The Principles
of Psychology.
In other words, your brain will selectively choose to
take in what interests you. You’ve been researching a
hatchback car, then your brain will actively seek it out,
ignoring other stimuli in its path.
Painters who work with colour will notice the indigo
hue of the sky; an engineer will notice the foundations of
a bridge and an advertising executive will notice the bill-
boards. “Only those items which I notice shape my mind,”
writes James. “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
News 16

The thatched ceiling Celebrating great Jamaican music

The International Reggae Poster Contest, founded by Michael
Thompson and Maria Papaefstathiou, celebrates international reggae
culture, encompassing all popular Jamaican musical genres including
Ska, Rocksteady, Roots Reggae, Dub, Dancehall and the unique Jamai-
can Sound System. The theme and mission of the contest is “Toward A
Reggae Hall of Fame, Celebrating Great Jamaican Music”. The contest
has received some 3,000 poster submissions from over 100 countries,
and Womankind is pleased to showcase in this edition a range of win-
ning entries from 2012 to 2014.

“I just can’t work under a female

boss.” It’s a concern when we hear
this expression bandied about, but
what’s most concerning is when it’s
a statement made by a woman.
The “glass ceiling” represents the
invisible barrier that prevents wom-
en from advancing to senior posi-
tions in large companies and organi-
sations. Senior ranking positions
are typically the most sought after:
they’re higher paid and hold greater
personal responsibility and autono-
my - attributes that make work, and
life generally, more enjoyable.
The World Economic Forum’s
latest report on gender parity found
that for every $1 earned by a man,
a woman on average receives little
more than 60 cents for the same
work. The report concludes that it
will take over 100 years before wom-
en can expect equal pay with men.
The glass ceiling will remain
impenetrable if women continue to
impede the progress of other women
up the corporate and political ranks.
You can easily spot these types in the
office - they’re the ones who refuse
to take orders from other women,
and who are unwilling to call an-
other woman “the boss”.
Seyyed Abbas Bagheri, Iran
Matt Vearncombe, United Kingdom
Photo: Caleb Kenna, Plane, Caribbean
 20
Making a fresh start
by Antonia Case
The sorrowful-sounding word ‘ennui’ re-
fers to the feeling of listlessness and dissatis-
faction that arises from a lack of excitement
in life. Ennui can set in when the wheels of
your life are turning, but you’re no longer
in the driver’s cabin. Instead, you’re oper-
ating on autopilot or “going through the
motions”, as it’s referred to at times, simply
moving from one routine to the next.
Sometimes ennui is so overwhelming
that you crave a fresh start. You toss up the
idea of taking up residence somewhere ex-
otic. Why not the Bahamas? Ruminating
on ‘fresh starts’ compels you to think about
what your life would be like in another
place - you think about your daily rituals,
what you’d eat, wear, and how you’d spend
your time. You begin to see your glittering
self in a fresh light.
And, of course, in this dreamed-up ‘new
life’ you’d eat spectacularly well; you’d be
fit, calm, and centred; you’d read extensive-
ly, study lots, and probably paint or write.
You’d no longer pick fights with strangers,
judge people harshly, or complain inces-
santly about the smallest things. Your glit-
tering fresh self will live the life you’ve al-
ways dreamed about.
But as author Alain de Botton wrote
in The Art of Travel, the problem with go-
ing away is that you take yourself with you.
Your habits - or the way you live your life
- will board the plane right alongside you,
attached like an unwanted travelling com-
panion all the way to your new home. Be-
fore long, your habits will ensure that your
‘fresh start’ will feel more and more like a
repeat of your old life.
“All our life,” William James wrote, “so
far as it has a definite form, is but a mass of
habits - practical, emotional, and intellec-
tual - systematically organised for our weal
or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward
our destiny, whatever the latter may be.”
Habits explain why we often feel as
though we’re on repeat - locked inside a be-
havioural maze. We may wish that life could
be different, but feel powerless to change it.
The control centre for habits in the
brain is the basal ganglia, and it’s located
deep, deep inside. When an activity is re-
peated enough times to become a habit, the

basal ganglia takes ownership over that set
of activities (called “chunking”), relieving
the rest of the brain from having to think
about it. When you wash the dishes, drive
your car, eat chocolate in front of the tel-
evision, well, the basal ganglia is in the box
seat while the rest of your brain has basi-
cally switched off. “Without habit loops,
our brains would shut down, overwhelmed
by the minutiae of daily life,” writes Charles
Duhigg in The Power of Habit.
“When a habit emerges, the brain stops
fully participating in decision-making. It
stops working so hard, or diverts focus to
other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight
a habit - unless you find new routines - the
pattern will unfold automatically.”
When chocolate addicts say, “Before
I knew it, the chocolate was gone,” they
aren’t necessarily lying. Practically speak-
ing, the basal ganglia has stored ‘eating
chocolate’ as an automatic behaviour,
and when chocolate comes into view, the
directive is to eat it. Almost without be-
ing aware, a chocolate addict has reached,
grabbed, and swallowed it whole.
“At one point, we all consciously de-
cided how much to eat and what to focus
on when we got to the office, how often to
have a drink or when to go for a jog. Then
we stopped making a choice, and the be-
haviour became automatic,” Duhigg writes.
21
The science behind habits explains why
for much of our life (and some scientists put
the figure at 40 per cent) we are actually
operating on automatic pilot. Life feels like
it’s passing you by? This scientific theory on
habit formation helps explain why.
Habits once made are stored forever
(explaining why, once learned, you never
forget how to drive a car or ride a bike).
You can’t rid yourself of a bad habit once
it’s formed, but you can override it with a
new routine.
The wish to flee - to start again - is of-
ten linked to a desire to break away from
routine, or habit; it’s a desire to learn new
things, to behave differently, and hopefully
to relieve oneself of ennui. It’s worth asking
yourself: If you were to make a fresh start,
what sort of things would you do each day?
In our ‘notepad’ - p65 of this issue of Wom-
ankind - we encourage you to write a list.
Vlisco
 23 Vlisco

Indigo is the most important dye in the colour portfolio of

Dutch textile designers, Vlisco, a specialist on African print
with a history going back 170 years. Vlisco originated the
wax printing technique, called ‘Wax Hollandais’, a unique
RTQEGUUQHHCDTKEETGCVKQPVJCVoUECTGHWNN[ƂPKUJGFD[JCPF

Vlisco
Vlisco
 25 Vlisco

Vlisco
Vlisco 26

Vlisco
Vlisco
Vlisco 28
29 Vlisco

Vlisco
Paulo Coelho 30

“Fortunate are those who take

the first steps.”

Paulo Coelho
Monica Barengo
 32

Rastafari has never lost its countercultural cool. On a

deeper level, its appeal is perhaps its universal themes
and yearnings: for freedom, for the right to self-expres-
sion, for living in the moment instead of subscribing
VQVJGYGUVGTPFTKXGUVQYCTFUCHƃWGPEGCPFRTQITGUU
both personal and collective.

DON’T WORRY,
BE HAPPY
by Lucy Treloar
Don’t worry, be happy 34
I’m sitting watching an episode of the British chil-
dren’s animation series Rastamouse, which follows three
undeniably cute Rasta mice who split their time between
crime-busting and their reggae band, wondering how
worship of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie came to
this. It’s a long story.
For most people, dancing to the intoxicating rhythms
of reggae, or having a Peter Tosh song playing a fixed
loop in their head, is their only window to an unfamiliar
world. The music conjures images of dreadlocked musi-
cians, vibrant colours, and an enviably laid-back lifestyle
focusing on peace, harmony, and a relaxed work ethic,
but people seldom draw closer to look beyond and to
wonder at its source and motivations.
Founded in the 1930s among the working class black
neighbourhoods of Jamaica, Rastafari’s first followers were
the descendants of colonial era slaves. They believed in
earlier prophecies that an African messiah would emerge
to liberate blacks from oppression. And when Haile
Selassie was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia, at that time
the only independent African country in the League of
Nations, Jamaican activists Marcus Garvey and Leonard
Percival Howell said the Messiah, soon known as “Jah”
(from Jehovah), had arrived.

It’s from a philosophical standpoint that Rastafari differs so
radically from Western understandings of the purpose of life,
standing in deliberate opposition to all its aspirations, values
and aims.
Selassie’s pre-coronation
princely title, Ras Tafari, inspired
the name of the new religion,
whose aims were to protest oppres-
sion (or “downpression”, as Rastas
say) from white society, to encour-
age black people to take pride in
themselves and their heritage, to
strive to follow the ancient laws
of Ethiopia, and to be repatriated
to their true homeland, Africa.
Other tenets are derived from Old
Testament laws, among them to
minimise consumption of animal
flesh, and to leave hair and skin
(hence Bob Marley’s death from
melanoma) uncut. They smoke,
not as an escape as is popularly
believed, but rather as a means to
deepen spiritual connection.
The movement spread quickly,
partly as a result of several extraor-
dinary and well-reported events.
In 1956 hundreds of Jamaicans
crowded the port of steamy
Kingston in response to a rumour
promoted by the Ethiopian World
Federation that Emperor Haile
Selassie had built ships that he
would use to collect them all and
return them to Ethiopia. His actual
visit in 1966 was witnessed by tens
of thousands, and led to soaring
Jamaican patriotism, nationalism,
and an increasing interest in Rasta-
fari. Later, racism directed towards
working-class communities with
significant Rasta populations led to
35
the notorious 1981 Brixton Riots
in South London.
These and other stories have a
larger-than-life quality, as if demand-
ing to be reported, polished, and
refined into the religion’s creation
myths, a process paralleled in the
ongoing examination and attempted
codification of its beliefs. (A person
might wonder whether the early days
of Christianity were not so different:
people hammering out agreed ver-
sions and interpretations of events
and understandings.)
Around one million people now
identify as Rastas, including about
10 per cent of Jamaica’s population,
and there are many more sympathis-
ers. For Nathaniel Murrell, author
of Chanting Down Babylon, Rastafari
is “a system of beliefs and a state of
consciousness”, one of “the most
powerful cultural forces among
youths in Jamaica” and a leading
trend well beyond its Afro-Carib-
bean roots - found as far afield as
Israel and Japan. From the number
of studies about it by scholars of
religion, politics, sociology, and even
anthropology, it seems he’s not alone
in his views.
It’s from a philosophical stand-
point that Rastafari differs so
radically from western understand-
ings of the purpose of life, standing
in deliberate opposition to all its
aspirations, values, and aims. Where
western ideology favours progress,
Don’t worry, be happy
economic growth, and competition
at every level of society, Rastafari
believes that evil is corporate, not
only personal.
For decades Rastas regarded
white people and the west (or
“Babylon”, as they call it) as evil,
seeing Africans as God’s chosen
people, and superior to white
people, whose enslavement of them
kept them from their God. There
would come a time, they said, when
black people would rise up and rule.
This hard-line stance has softened
over the years, and the concept of
Babylon, once more or less syn-
onymous with “white culture”, has
broadened to include all oppressive
and corrupt systems of the world.
Rastas now promote the multi-
racial appeal of the movement, and
are also becoming less patriarchal,
opening up to the influence of
“sistren” (Rasta women).
Most of us are familiar with
Rastafari beliefs without realising it,
through reggae music, whose lyrics
in many ways articulate its modern
manifesto. Bob Marley’s music, for
instance, is scattered with advice
and references to emancipation,
mental slavery, personal freedom,
feeling “all right”, and not worrying.
But they also hark back to a
grim past. “Buffalo Soldier”, about
the arrival of African slaves in
America, is a timeless expression of
quiet sorrow and anger at the slave
Don’t worry, be happy 36
trade, while songs such as “One Love” represent the
movement’s modern softening in attitude towards white
people. In fact, one of the fascinations of Rastafari is its
fluid evolution, and its ability to break through despite
its disputed beliefs and lack of coherence or traditional
power structures.
So what is the appeal of Rastafari to westerners?
Initially, as with so many other movements, it was
perhaps its novelty value. Western culture, like a levia-
than of the deep, trawls through seas of civilisations,
picking out morsels that it might make use of, before
digesting and commodifying them. From Rastafari it
has appropriated dreadlocks, a fashion attitude, and
reggae of course, removing them from their original
context to create new sounds, looks and meanings -
such as Rastamouse.
Despite this, Rastafari has never lost its counter-
cultural cool. On a deeper level, its appeal is perhaps its
universal themes and yearnings: for freedom, for the right
to self-expression, for living in the moment instead of
subscribing to the western drives towards affluence and
THE THOUGHT THAT EVERYTHING
WILL BE ALL RIGHT IF WE DON’T
WORRY IS AN ATTRACTIVE ONE.
progress, both personal and collective. Or perhaps it’s
Rastafari’s emphasis on what Guyanese minister Michael
Jagessar calls “the sacramentality of nature”; that is, that
human beings are called to celebrate and protect life as
well as the environment, aims for which capitalism dem-
onstrates a conspicuous lack of regard.
The thought that everything will be all right if we
don’t worry, as one song has it, is an attractive one. As
an attitude it’s a powerful antidote to the condition
that Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss identify and
discuss in their influential book Affluenza. The west’s
addiction to overconsumption has, they say, led to
high rates of stress, depression, and obesity. Numerous
studies conducted in Australia and elsewhere point to
rising poverty rates, and people are reminded daily of
the many things there are to be anxious about: housing
affordability, personal and financial security, the need
to “keep up”, and the omnipresent notion of progress as
both good and imperative.
The irony that young white people might find
solace, quiet inspiration, and an alternative to the
consumer realm that they inhabit in a movement with
profoundly anti-white roots is strangely moving. But in
a world in which environmental concerns and the need
for sustainable use of the Earth’s resources are becom-
ing increasingly important, the fact that Rastafari has
resonance for many as a more responsible way of living
than capitalism, a system that is failing so many, should
surprise no one at all.
By Shari Erickson
You can read an interview with
Shari Erickson and view more of
her tropical work on pages 92-96.

By Shari Erickson,
www.islandstudio.com
City woes and the car culture 40

IF YOU’RE A LOVER OF CITIES, THEN YOU’RE ALSO PROBABLY

MORE CRITICAL OF THEIR FAULTS.

City woes and the car culture

By Alecia Simmonds

Have you ever fallen in love with a city?
Has your pulse quickened with desire as the
kaleidoscope of urban life whooshes past you
- the terraces, abandoned factories, flowers
bursting from drainpipes, serpentine streets,
skyscrapers, and urban blight? Have you de-
lighted in the anonymity of dark, swarming
crowds; or fantasised about the liquid red
dangers of nightly worlds - bars spooked by
criminals and bohemia; or thrilled to the
freedom of communities of choice - the
city’s gift to its residents of self-invention?
As someone who moved from Moon-
bi - a sleepy Australian country town - to
Sydney, then Paris, then Rome, and then
Sydney again, I still experience the tingling
joys of the city. In Paris, it was the city’s de-
votion to pleasure that captivated me; in
Rome it was the sepia-tinted palimpsest of
history, and in Sydney it’s the glittery water
and abundant, overripe nature. It’s a feeling
close to falling in love, which probably ex-
plains why it stings so much when it fails us.
If you’re a lover of cities, then you’re
also probably more critical of their faults.
How do we incorporate the western city’s
mindless worship of cars and consumerism
into our romance with urbanity? How do I
reconcile the fear that I feel walking down
shadowy streets in the early hours with
my love of loitering? What do we make
of the city’s hostility towards women with
children in public spaces? Must a woman’s
relationship to the urban always be one of
ambivalent love?
When I set out to research the causes
of our cities’ woes, I thought I’d start with
1950s car culture, but historian Elizabeth
Wilson argues that we need to go further
back. If you’re interested in how cities
have historically excluded women then we
should begin with the 19th century. It all
goes back to the Victorian doctrine of sepa-
rate spheres: western cities were redesigned

IF YOU’VE EVER SPENT TIME
IN A EUROPEAN CITY, WITH
DECENT PUBLIC TRANSPORT,
CYCLEWAYS AND A
MEDIEVAL CENTRE RULED BY
PEDESTRIANS, YOU’LL KNOW
THE MISERY OF RETURNING TO
THE ROARING STUPIDITY OF A
CULTURE DEVOTED TO CARS.
by the urban planning movement around
the idea of the public sphere as an exclu-
sively masculine domain. Where women
were to be angels in the house fluttering
softly from room to room, radiating senti-
ment and piety to their family, men were to
inhabit the ordered, rational world of com-
merce and public affairs.
The thing is, this cultural division be-
tween male/female; commerce/love and
nature/culture had very tangible geographic
effects. Stark boundaries were drawn be-
tween the residential and the commercial
or the public and the private. Men could in-
habit both worlds, but a woman in the pub-
lic sphere was a site of sexual disorder. This
is why the word for “prostitute” in the nine-
teenth century was a “public woman”. Out-
side the authority of family and husband,
she was a figure of vice - subject to repres-
sive legal and social control. In short, the
city was imagined and built around ideas of
women’s appropriate (domestic) sphere and
it punished them when they transgressed it.
Why does this matter today? Because
the same logic lies behind our society’s hos-
tility towards mothers and children in pub-
41 City woes and the car culture
lic places, and it explains why there are so
few basic amenities like change rooms, seats
to rest on, or even lifts for prams in the cen-
tral business districts of western cities. Like
unruly women in the 19th century, it’s as
though today’s urban mothers are really just
women who have stepped beyond their so-
cially appropriate sphere. They’re perform-
ing supposedly private, invisible and mostly
unpaid labour in a very public fashion. They
and their children are occupying the same
public spaces that traditionally excluded
them. And there seem to be a lot of people
who don’t like it.
All over the western world the “mummy
wars” are carried out in inner-city cafés and
communal spaces. In Berlin, there are cafés
with stone bollards out the front bearing
pictures of prams with a cross through them;
a recent Start4Life poll in Britain found
that six out of ten British mothers choose
to hide their breastfeeding in public because
they are “embarrassed”; and in Australia
the newspapers are filled almost daily with
people complaining about mothers who are
“rude and undeserving”, “not contributing
to the workforce”, or in some instances just
City woes and the car culture 42
WE DON’T DESCRIBE THE
CITY IN TERMS OF AMBIENCE
OR SENSATION, INSTEAD
WE TALK ABOUT ROADS,
PIPES, WIRES, NETWORKS,
AND BUILDINGS THAT ARE
UNILATERALLY IMPOSED
BY BUREAUCRATIC OR
CORPORATE INTERESTS ON A
PASSIVE DISENFRANCHISED
POPULATION.
plain gross: one online commenter once
saw a mother changing her child’s nappy
“on a footpath bench, facing the traffic, on
a busy strip”.
The fact that women with children are
demanding a right to public life is translat-
ed as them being ‘too empowered’, too en-
titled, too pushy, too selfish. It also reveals
the fact that our society still doesn’t con-
sider parenting to be ‘real work’. The cen-
tral business district and its cafés are a place
for male workers who perform ‘productive’
labour in office buildings. ‘Reproductive la-
bour’ on the other hand - a labour of love,
not money - has no place in a commercial
zone. The very term ‘working mother’ is the
most obvious example of our disregard for
the labour of care.
Mothers are caught in a catch-22. If
they are seen calming screaming babies or
changing nappies, then they are damned
for making visible what was traditionally
private labour. But if a well-behaved child
gives them respite to chat with friends
then they’re condemned for being idle.
The fact that we voice these concerns al-
most exclusively when mothers are seen in
public spaces suggests that this is a prob-
lem of urban imaginings as much as a prob-
lem of gender.
Of course, our cities are not just the
product of Victorian-era values - they also
sprawled in the bloated affluence of the post-
war world. Yet this too bears the imprint of
the doctrine of separate spheres. Like the
19th century city, suburbia was built around
ideas of the ‘proper’ role of women, only it
turned the division between the public and
the private into a chasmic divide of mani-
cured lawns bridged by groaning highways.
1950s fantasies of home, family and bored
housewives found architectural expression
in brick-veneer fortresses, paranoid fences,
agoraphobic backyards, car-choked high-
ways, and gardens blithely indifferent to
nature. If this was bad for women, it was
catastrophic for the environment. To ac-
cess food, work and pleasure, residents now
needed a car.
If you’ve ever spent time in a European
city, with decent public transport, cycleways
and a medieval centre ruled by pedestrians,
you’ll know the misery of returning to the
roaring stupidity of a culture devoted to cars.
In America, theorists tend to blame car-cul-
ture and the corresponding lack of public
transport on what Kirker and Kuntham re-
fer to as “an irresistible coalition of lobbying
interests” that emerged in the 1950s: “the

combined might of the auto, trucking, oil,
tire, asphalt, cement, lumber, and construc-
tion industries and their unions”. It wasn’t
simply a case of people ‘choosing’ to drive
cars. Rather, massive federal subsidies built
an interstate highway system, refused to
fund public transport and so left little op-
tion than to buy a car. The result has been a
nation of isolated, unhappy drivers living in
unwalkable suburbs with dirty air.
But blaming a cabal between govern-
ment and automobile lobbyists is only re-
ally half the story. Before this, we needed
to have the very idea of suburbia as a ‘good’
in the first place. And this is something we
can attribute to middle-class desires to flee
working-class areas and to contain women
in weather-proof suburban boxes. And be-
fore even this, according to philosopher
Henri Lefebvre, we needed to have a vision
of urban planning as something that serves
the interest of a small group of speculators,
builders, and automobile industrialists,
rather than a democratic process serving
the many. Lefebvre refers to this as a vi-
sion of the city based on “exchange-value”
rather than “use-value”, by which he means
that the city becomes a space to be bartered
off to the highest bidder. The result is that a
disembodied, geometric language suited to
market dealings is imposed on the smells,
tastes, textures, and memories that in fact
constitute urban space. We don’t describe
the city in terms of ambience or sensation
- instead we talk about roads, pipes, wires,
networks, and buildings that are unilater-
ally imposed by bureaucratic or corporate
43 City woes and the car culture
interests on a passive disenfranchised popu-
lation. It’s a language of control and order
that has no capacity to fathom the human
need for play, sensuality, creativity and joy.
If we never think that we own our cit-
ies then we will accept the rules, regula-
tions, and decisions that are forced upon
us. But as the guerilla gardening movement,
the “lactivist” community, the squatting
movement, or even those neighbourhoods
that come together to save a tree or an
historic building show, we can take back
control over the spaces that we inhabit.
By encouraging political organisations and
social affiliations, cities have an extraordi-
nary utopian potential. And they also carry
boundless opportunities for women by pro-
viding communities outside of the strictures
of familial or patriarchal authority. Must we
always have an ambivalent relationship to
the city? I don’t think so. I think we need
to begin by thinking of cities as our own
and to reshape them to house our bodies,
desires, creativity and, more than anything,
our dreams of equality.
 The changing sea-
scape of our times
by Antonia Case

Jason deCaires Taylor

45 Jason deCaires Taylor

Submerged five metres below in

the south-eastern Caribbean Sea,
a circle of children stands serenely,
hands clasped, eyes closed. Their
creator, Jason deCaires Taylor, an
English artist and naturalist, floats
above, content with the knowledge
that over time his children will
be unrecognisable. “Time and the
environment impact on and shape
the physical body,” says Taylor, who
adds: “Children by nature are adap-
tive to their surroundings.”
Patrons to his art gallery, wearing
wetsuits and flippers, scuba dive
around his work, observing algae
and other marine life already trans-
figuring cement torsos and faces.
Within years, the children will be
utterly transformed.
Aptly named Vicissitudes, mean-
ing natural change, the cement
finish of the sculptures actively
promotes the colonisation of coral
and marine life, over time creating
an artificial coral reef. “Close to 40
per cent of coral reefs worldwide
have been destroyed,” says Taylor,
who hopes to use aquatic sculptures
to draw tourists away from fragile
natural reefs, many of which today
are under stress.
The founding idea of Taylor’s
art is that we must protect what we
love. “Artists have a crucial role in
engaging communities on an emo-
tional level, where facts, figures, and
voices fail to reach,” he says. Central
themes in his work are ocean threats
including over-fishing, water pol-
lution, ocean acidification, and
climate change. Determined to go
beyond art for art’s sake, his works
are better understood as conserva-
tion projects, or places of inspiration
to prove that we can revivify nature
if only we try.
Symbolic of this message is
Taylor’s dramatic Resurrection, a
Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor


magnificent winged woman who
emerges from the seabed to face
the reef currents head on. Resur-
rection is part of the monumental
underwater museum, Museo Sub-
acuatico de Arte, situated just off
the coast of Cancún in Mexico. It
is the largest collection of under-
water sculpture in the world. Tay-
lor argues that the entire ocean -
and not just his sculptures - should
be treated as a museum; a sacred
place to conserve and protect for
future generations.
47
Time will reveal the true beauty
of Taylor’s work. Submerged in their
new environment, spiny sea urchins,
hydroids, and brilliantly-coloured
sea sponges will strip the sculptures
of their earthly attire and dress them
in elaborate ocean garb. And the
digital cameras, television sets, and
other forms of technology that Tay-
lor regularly includes in his work -
symbolic of how central technology
is in 21st century life - will magi-
cally transform into majestic coral
and marine life habitats. “I feel that
Jason deCaires Taylor
Jason deCaires Taylor
many of us live our lives through
these [technological] devices and
become oblivious to our surround-
ings,” he says. “Being underwater
only emphasises this point.” Indeed,
as is often said, technology in west-
ern society is as ubiquitous as water.
“The figures are transformed
over time by their environment, and
conversely as this happens so they
change the shape of their habitat.
This natural process echoes the
changes exacted through growing
up. Social interchange shapes this
Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor


process, while conversely as the
product of a particular society we in
turn invoke change on the workings
and dynamics of that environment.
The sculpture proposes growth,
chance, and natural transforma-
tion,” he says.
Taylor’s largest underwater
sculpture to date is the colossal
Ocean Atlas (on pages 50 and 51),
located on the western coastline of
New Providence, Bahamas. Weigh-
ing sixty tonnes, Ocean Atlas is
modelled on a local student from
the Bahamas.
49
In Greek mythology, Atlas was a
deity who held up the sky, common-
ly identified with the Atlas Moun-
tains in Morocco. Taylor’s Ocean
Atlas is burdened instead by the
weight of the ocean, pressing down
upon her shoulders and neck. Her
face swivelled to one side, her palm
cradling the water’s edge, Ocean
Atlas - rising five metres from the
seabed - symbolises global warming
and the burden that will inevitably
fall on future generations.
Importantly, Taylor’s awe-inspir-
ing creations awaken in us a desire
Jason deCaires Taylor
Jason deCaires Taylor
to contribute positively in some
way - whether it’s planting flowers to
cultivate bees, growing trees to foster
bird life, fighting councils over de-
velopment proposals, we all must do
something to conserve and protect.
As for Taylor, he will continue
protecting what he loves. And as
the world turns its gaze to his monu-
mental aquatic work, he hopes we
too will learn to love this mysterious
world. “We are incredibly narcis-
sistic creatures,” he concludes, but
I hope to “use figurative forms as a
bridge to this other world.”
Jason deCaires Taylor
51 Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor 52

Jason deCaires Taylor

53 Jason deCaires Taylor
 54

6JGVGTOp$GTOWFC6TKCPINGqYCUƂTUVEQKPGFKP
by Vincent H. Gaddis in the magazine Argosy. Illus-
trated by a blood tinted skull, Gaddis’ feature on The
Deadly Bermuda Triangle was ominous: “What is there
about this particular slice of the world that has de-
stroyed hundreds of ships and planes without a trace?”

THE BERMUDA
TRIANGLE
by Niamh Boyce
Photo: Robert Harding
The Bermuda Triangle 56
Over the years, an area in the Atlantic Ocean has
witnessed a high incidence of unexplained disasters;
ships, boats and aircraft that appear to vanish, often
leaving no wreckage or evidence. This sea, located
between Bermuda, Miami, and Puerto Rico, has long
inspired mariner’s tales and superstitions. In 1492,
Columbus sailed into waters strewn with seaweed; his
entry in the captain’s log assumed land was near - it
assumed wrong. Seaweed usually does signal coastline
but not in the lethal calm of the Sargasso Sea. Medieval
Spanish galleons often became stranded there, with no
choice but to wait until a wind or current came to their
rescue. The “Horse Latitudes” were named after floating
dead horses hoisted overboard by sailors desperate to
conserve drinking water. Centuries later, the Sargasso
Sea has been mapped within the grid of a newer myth,
one known as the Bermuda Triangle.
The seas are ancient but the name is relatively
modern. The term “Bermuda Triangle” was first coined
THAT HIS COMPASSES WERE
“ERRATIC”, SUGGEST THEY WERE
NOT JUST OFF DIRECTION, BUT
RAPIDLY CHANGING.
in 1964 by Vincent H. Gaddis in the magazine Argosy.
Illustrated by a blood tinted skull, Gaddis’ feature on
The Deadly Bermuda Triangle was ominous: “What is
there about this particular slice of the world that has
destroyed hundreds of ships and planes without a trace?
Before this article reaches print, it may strike again...”
The Triangle’s birth amongst the pulp pages of science
fiction was portentous, and wildly speculative theories
would eventually become synonymous with its name.
Why did this particular triangle of ocean become
so notorious? For good reason it would seem, as a high
proportion of accidents occur in its waters. This fact
was conceded by the US Coast Guard, who consistently
insist the Triangle is just an “imaginary area”. Despite
the paradox of making official statements about some-
thing that doesn’t officially exist, the Coastguard asserts,
“though many aircraft and vessels have been lost over
the years, the coastguard confirms nothing indicates
that casualties were the result of anything other than
physical causes.”
Flight 19 haunts every book, article or documentary
made about the Triangle. One of the earliest and most
baffling incidents, the fate of the flight inspired Gad-
dis’ article, and later Steven Spielberg’s movie Close
Encounters of the Third Kind. On 5 December 1945, five
Avenger aircraft set out on a routine training mission
to Bimini. Their inter-plane messages were recorded by
the Port Everglade Rescue Facility. By 3:03pm, when
the pilots were set to return home, flight leader Charles
Taylor reported his compasses had become erratic. A
Stormy Weather at Sea, by Frank William Brangwyn,1889
The Bermuda Triangle 58
magnetic compass will not point towards true north in
the Bermuda Triangle; it points towards magnetic north.
This variation needs to be compensated for if a pilot
is to stay on course. This happens in one other place
on earth, an area off the coast of Japan known as “The
Devil’s Sea”.
This magnetic anomaly is often cited as the reason
for Taylor’s confusion that day. But surely a trained lieu-
tenant, familiar with his flight path, would’ve made such
calculations on previous occasions? That his compasses
were “erratic”, suggest they were not just off direction,
but rapidly changing. Whatever was happening, Taylor
felt disorientated enough to radio Powers, another pilot,
requesting he take over and lead the flight north-east,
back towards the coast of Florida. When the control
“WHEN THE FIRST MAN GETS DOWN
TO TEN GALLONS OF GAS,” TAYLOR
INSTRUCTED, “WE WILL ALL LAND
IN THE WATER TOGETHER. DOES
EVERYONE UNDERSTAND THAT?”
tower overheard, they tried to intervene. The only
response was Taylor’s “Hello? Hello?” The pilot couldn’t
hear them, yet control continued to pick up their com-
munications and disagreements.
Against Taylor’s wishes, Powers led them west. This
should have brought them over land, but three hours
later it became obvious that Flight 19 had just flown
further into the Atlantic. By following his compass
west, Powers had brought them north. “When the first
man gets down to ten gallons of gas,” Taylor instructed,
“we will all land in the water together. Does everyone
understand that?” Later, his voice was heard again. “Fox
Tare Three... Fox Tare Three... Fox Tare Three...” That
was the last communication from Flight 19. It occurred
hours after their fuel supply should’ve been exhausted.
The Ninth Wave, by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1850

Astoundingly, within twenty minutes of take-off, it too dis-
appeared. Intensive searches found no sign of the planes, no
wreckage, no debris, no bodies.
A search plane with a crew of thir-
teen headed immediately towards
Flight 19’s last known position.
Astoundingly, within twenty minutes
of take-off, it too disappeared. Inten-
sive searches found no sign of the
planes, no wreckage, no debris, no
bodies. An entire flight had been lost
without a trace. Captain Don Poole,
an officer in the tower that day, said,
“We don’t know where in the hell
those planes finally ended up”.
Since 1945, many other craft
have gone missing under mysterious
circumstances. Planes have faded
from the radar scope just as they’re
about to land. Pilots have radioed
hours after their fuel tanks should
be empty, only never to be heard of
again. Some have reported “weird
objects” in their flight paths. In
many cases compasses go haywire,
and in too many, there’s absolutely
no evidence to examine, not a
shred - as if the planes just vanished
into thin air. This has led to specu-
lations that some magnetic force
drags these vessels into a vortex,
one with properties similar to black
holes in space, and that the aircraft
and ships are either caught in time,
or have slipped into another dimen-
sion. Ivan Sanderson identified the
Triangle as one of twelve Devil’s
Graveyards - places on earth where
“vile vortices” lurk. From aliens, to
multiple universes, to time travel...
It seems the truth seekers them-
59
selves have slipped into the realm
of science fiction.
Yet, theoretically, some of these
speculations might be possible.
Take time travel as an example.
Using the propulsion of negative
energy, a space craft held inside a
specially constructed bubble could
travel faster than the speed of
light (sorry Einstein) and journey
through time. Not a million light
years away from the Time Warp ma-
chines in Star Trek, is it? According
to leading astrophysicist Professor
Tamara Davis it is possible, but
it’s a project still at the specula-
tive stage - one NASA is currently
working on. To paraphrase Stephen
Hawking, today’s science fiction
could well be tomorrow’s science
The Bermuda Triangle
fact. However, this is where I must
drag myself back down to Earth; for
despite the fascinations of specula-
tion, it’s equally possible that there
is no mystery to the mystery of the
Bermuda Triangle.
People still regularly fly and sail
through the area without incident.
Insurance companies like Lloyd’s of
London don’t even charge higher
rates for vessels that do so. Yes,
many freighters, airliners, mili-
tary vessels, and planes have been
lost in the Bermuda Triangle, but
statistically, doesn’t heavy traffic
normally lead to a higher number
of accidents? “Those cases weren’t
accidents they were disappearances,”
a believer might respond. “No
wreckage, remember?” But the Gulf
Stream could easily sweep away
evidence. And thunderstorms, hur-
ricanes, and water spouts are natu-
rally-occurring phenomenon that
can cause accidents and frustrate
salvage operations. There’s also the
possibility of human error. The US
Coastguard states, “the combined
forces of nature and unpredictabil-
ity of mankind outdo even the most
far-fetched science fiction.” It’s true
that a lot of theories explaining
the Bermuda Triangle leave human
error out of the equation. This may
be a grave mistake. After all, the
islands of the Bahamas themselves
were named the West Indies by one,
wildly off course, explorer.

Theories on how to change one’s life
rarely touch on the core of the matter - and
that’s ‘habit’. Real change isn’t a matter of
dyeing your hair, losing weight, or getting
a tattoo. Real change happens when you
change your habits.
Habits determine what sort of food we
eat, how we occupy our day, whether we
say good morning to strangers, or turn our
head askance. Habits dictate our health,
our love life, even our finances. Most of the
time we’re running on habit, much like a
robot, acting out a limited sequence of pre-
programmed moves.
Knowing the process behind habit for-
mation - how habits both form and stick -
is critical in understanding how to change
them. Unless you recognise that you have
habits in the first place, you will, indeed, re-
main a slave to them.
Let’s use an overly simplified example of
a boiling kettle. If you’re the type of person
who eats a biscuit with tea, then let us say
that the hum of the kettle isn’t going un-
noticed by your brain. Rather, water boiling
is a ‘cue’ interpreted by your brain to walk
to the pantry, take a biscuit from the tin,
and gobble it. This intricate dance of cue
(sound of kettle boiling), routine (search-
ing for biscuit), and reward (eating biscuit)
is happening deep inside your brain without
you even being aware of the process. This is
what’s commonly called a “habit loop” - a
preprogrammed cycle of behaviour.
61 Ideas for change
Another example is the ‘ping’ of an
email or text message. This sound acts as a
cue compelling you to dash across the room
to your phone or computer (the routine)
and read the message (the reward). Cues can
even be a time of day, say 9:15 am (time for
coffee), an emotion (alcoholics often drink
when they’re angry, sorrowful or manic), the
company of certain people, activities, smells,
and so on. In short, the brain stores these
‘cues’ plus their automated responses and
plays them out like an old cassette recorder.
So how do you break a habit? Straight
from the neuroscientist’s manual, the gold-
en rule for habit-busting is to keep the cue,
reward yourself at the end, but shift the rou-
tine. So, let’s say that Friday evening is your
‘cue’ for videos and chocolate. Plan in ad-
vance to do something different one Friday
night. Seat yourself outside in a clear spot
and look at the stars. If you succeed in this
stargazing mission reward yourself for your
effort. If you repeat this activity enough
times, then Friday nights will be forever-
more a much more enlightening, and re-
warding, experience.
Ideas for change 62

Think for a moment about someone

who’s self-obsessed. All this person can
think about is her own petty concerns - her
weight, hair, clothing, wealth (or lack of it)
and status. She anguishes over how people
perceive her, or whether she’s being noticed
at all. Life for such people is like existing
inside a miniature room, decorated floor to
ceiling in their own image. Barely taking a
moment to step outside of this windowless world around you - instead of playing a bit
prison, life becomes limited, monotonous, part as consumer of products, shopper, or
and more desperate by the day. client at the hair salon and nail clinic.
A sure-fire way to go insane is to self- But your quest for social change
obsess. There’s ample evidence to suggest shouldn’t just be about you; it’s not about
that the more you cut yourself off from the giving speeches, signing autographs and
world, thinking only of your own needs, the getting on television. Instead, it’s about
more miserable you will become. peeking outside the windowless self and
Child psychologists often look for cues beholding a marvellous place. As Robert G
to assess a child’s development - sharing, Ingersoll once said: “Reason, observation
acknowledging others, and forfeiting things and experience - the holy trinity of science
to attend to another’s more pressing con- - have taught us that happiness is the only
cerns are signs of a flourishing human be- good; that the time to be happy is now, and
ing. To stay selfish one’s whole life is to stay the way to be happy is to make others so.”
developmentally stunted.
By embarking on a social project of
change you can escape the windowless
prison of the self. Regardless of how ridicu-
lous your quest may seem to others, by com-
mitting to social change you can affect the

Some people live in the blue shadow of
uncompleted tasks for much of their life.
Like a gigantic mountain, these uncom-
pleted tasks loom so high overhead that
they seem insurmountable.
Procrastination is an activity much stud-
ied by scientists because it can make oth-
erwise bright and competent people hope-
lessly unproductive. Psychology professor
Joseph Ferrari argues that procrastination
has nothing to do with time management,
and has everything to do with emotion.
We put off doing things, not because we
don’t have the time, but because we’re not
emotionally engaged. “I won’t write that
research paper now because I’m not in the
mood for it. I will write it later when I’m
in the mood.” This extends to exercise: “I
won’t exercise now because I’m too tired.
I’ll exercise later on when I am feeling more
energetic.” And so on. We postpone, put
off, and procrastinate because we don’t feel
as though we’re in the mood, all based on
the incorrect assumption that our mood
will be somehow lifted in the future.
By putting off tasks we enter a procras-
tination loop - we feel guilty for not having
accomplished something, which saddens,
depletes, and makes it even less likely that
we’ll be ‘in the mood’ later on. Procrastina-
tion loops can be disastrous. When emails
are left unanswered, for example, email in-
boxes start to flood, and then problems sur-
63 Ideas for change
face; more emails are generated that then
require a response.
The best way to defeat procrastination
is to do something, rather than nothing.
Make yourself complete two minutes of a
task - that’s it. Just two minutes. By doing
something - rather than nothing - you get
the ball rolling. And the momentum cre-
ated will most likely propel you into accom-
plishing even more.
Interestingly, Ayelet Fishbach believes
that we learn about ourselves in much the
same manner as how we perceive other
people. We notice someone outside our
window at 5am practising tai chi and we in-
stantly have a view of them as calm, disci-
plined and stoic, perhaps. But we too, Fish-
bach believes, can convince ourselves into
thinking that we’re a certain kind of person.
By attending a philosophy class, for exam-
ple, we learn to see ourselves as committed
to the pursuit of knowledge; by going to an
art class, we learn to see ourselves as more
‘creative’ and ‘artistic’.
If you were to make a fresh start some place else, what sort of activities and practices would you
engage in daily? How would you live differently? Lastly, think about how you could incorporate
these ideas into your life today.
The psychology of worry 66
The psychology
of worry
THE ART OF WORRYING CAN BE PASSED DOWN
FROM ONE GENERATION TO THE NEXT.
If you come from a
‘worrying’ family then
you probably know
how to worry too. The
‘art’ of worrying can be
passed down - much
like music appreciation
or knowing how to cook - from one genera-
tion to the next.
Does the sound of an ambulance siren
make you jumpy? What about a phone call
late at night - do you immediately envisage
disaster descending upon a loved one?
18th century poet and essayist Samuel
Johnson called worry “a disease of the imag-
ination” because worriers can be most fan-
ciful in their ruminations: planes crashing
into seas, exotic diseases, burning houses,
infidelity, bankruptcy, job loss, the list goes
on. Worrywarts can add a twist of disaster
to any tale.
by Antonia Case
But is this a good way
to live?
Unlike joy, kindness,
sadness, or love, humans
are hard-wired to fear
things and worry about
what could go wrong.
Our ancestors had a lot of stuff to worry
about: poor harvests, unpredictable weather,
warring tribes, savage beasts. To worry was
to build precautions against what could go
wrong. To worry well was to survive.
Worry is what propels civilisations to
construct armies (what would happen if
someone attacked us?), to build elaborate
health care and education systems. Scien-
tists speculating about the outbreak of a
killer disease will set out to build inocula-
tions against it. It’s often said that the most
successful entrepreneurs and CEOs are the
biggest worriers. “Only the paranoid sur-

vive,” said former CEO of Intel, Andrew
Grove. “I worry about factories not perform-
ing well, and I worry about having too many
factories. I worry about hiring the right peo-
ple, and I worry about morale slacking off.
And of course, I worry about competitors. I
worry about other people figuring out how
to do what we do better or cheaper.” Grove
urges entrepreneurs to be active in worry -
to dissect worry and then to do something
about it.
But not all of us take such a positive ap-
proach to worry.
“Some people worry so intensely that
worry becomes much more than an annoy-
ance: it hinders their work, their personal
lives, or both,” writes Edward Hallowell in
Worry: Hope and Help for a Common Con-
dition. “Worry is a core component of nu-
merous medical disorders and is central in
many solvable, if not, medically diagnos-
able, problems in life, such as excessive
67 The psychology of worry
pessimism, timidity, procrastination, and
underachievement.”
Hallowell separates “good worry” from
“toxic worry”, the habit-forming rumina-
tion that’s practised daily, and rears its ugly
head even at life’s finest moments such as
weddings, banquets, and newborn babies.
“Toxic worry is usually a deeply-ingrained
habit,” he notes.
Toxic worry, writes Hallowell, “is in-
sidious and invisible, like a virus… it di-
minishes your ability to enjoy your family,
your friends, your physical being, and your
achievements because you live in fear of
what might go wrong.” The virus of toxic
worry will destroy the emotion of joy - those
rare fleeting feelings that arise when life
isn’t taken too seriously.
Some people almost “feel out of touch
with reality if they are not alarmed or wor-
ried over something”, writes Hallowell.
They “scan the environment looking for
something to worry about”. They may have
had “an ideal childhood and a tranquil life”
but they never know a quiet moment. Toxic
worriers are often exhausting partners and
friends, sapping the optimism and energy of
those around them. It’s difficult to be crea-
The psychology of worry 68

tive, adventurous, free-spirited, and joyful
in the presence of a toxic worrier.
Hallowell seems to think that the worry
dilemma is deserving of an equation:
Worry = Increased Vulnerability
+ Decreased Power
In other words, we worry most when we
lack control over the outcome of events. We
worry about making a speech (and how peo-
ple will view us), getting a medical test (and
what the results will be), flying in a tin plane,
and being laid off. Most of our worries are
about things that are out of our control and
this heightens our feelings of vulnerability.
In a strange way, some people feel safer
by worrying, seeming to think that by en-
gaging in the practice of worry, things are
less likely to go wrong (worry as an act of
prayer). It’s as though we make a deal with
fate: by worrying, we will somehow improve
the outcome.
But outcomes are rarely up to us. Most
of the time in life, disaster arrives unherald-
ed. What we can control is our behaviour,
and our actions.
If you’re worried about getting laid off,
for example, you’re better placed working
hard than worrying about getting the sack.
If you’re worried about your health, for in-
stance, you should eat well and exercise,
69 The psychology of worry
rather than attacking your nervous system
with worry. “Worry is like blood pressure,”
writes Hallowell. “You need a certain level
to live, but too high a level can hurt you.”
The trouble is: how do you break the
“toxic worry” habit?
Hallowell has some suggestions (other
than plying people with chemicals, which
could have much worse side effects). Exer-
cise is key, he says. “Exercise is probably the
best natural antianxiety, antiworry agent we
have.” He also recommends meditation if
you have the time and patience for it; and
lastly, one that may just do the trick - give
it a label, either a “good worry” or a “toxic
worry”. In other words, if the worry is imagi-
nary, out of your control, or something that
you simply cannot do anything to fix, call it
toxic and rid yourself of it. A good worry, on
the other hand, is a call to change, to take ac-
tion. Decide to act upon it immediately.
Womankind’s challenge 70
WOMANKIND PUT FORWARD THE CHALLENGE TO ITS READERS TO ATTEMPT TO MEDITATE
FOR FIVE DAYS IN A ROW. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED.
WOMANKIND ’S
MEDITATION CHALLENGE
Lia Weston
Along with mastering a cro-
quembouche and watching Citizen
Kane, establishing a meditation
practice has been on my to-do list
for some time. Womankind’s chal-
lenge, therefore, was perfect.
Day one: I plan to meditate be-
fore work, and, of course, complete-
ly forget. I then decide to meditate
at lunch, but, again, forget as I’m
too busy shoving salad into my
face while standing over a sink. No
other opportunities present them-
selves until bedtime. I settle myself,
inhale through my nostrils, and ex-
perience a glorious twenty seconds
of peace before my husband says,
thoughtfully, “How does a bullfrog
manage to eat a snake head-first
without the snake biting it?” And
that’s my evening Zen gone.
Day two: The small gap of time
between my morning kickboxing
class and my pre-work shower will
be perfect. Still sweaty, I roll out
a yoga mat in the corridor and at-
tempt to make a sacred space be-
tween stock racking. It’s so nice to
lie down. Meditation is great. This
is really, really great. I feel awesome.
I should do this all the time! Why
don’t I do this all the time? This is
amazing! Wait, am I still meditat-
ing? Is this an endorphin rush? ... It
is. Damn it. I’m having a runner’s
high, which is lovely but not really
helping. I put my mat away. I am so
crap at this.
Day three: A customer at work
tells me a story that has no point,
no relevance, and goes on for so
long that time seems to stand still.
My ears fill with a high-pitched
hum. My eyes glaze over. I feel nei-
ther pain nor joy. If I can keep this
up for five minutes, I’m considering
it a win.
Day four: I roll out my mat
again after struggling with the first
draft of my novel for hours, lie
down, and promptly fall asleep. I
twitch awake forty minutes later. I
don’t think it counts.
Day five: I officially give up on
the challenge, depressed at four
days of failure. I take my dog to the
parklands. He bounds through the
trees, joyfully snuffling and weeing
on things. Dogs are always in the
moment, no meditation challenge
required. I resist the urge to ask him
his secret. As I watch the lorikeets
fighting in the wattle overhead,
I realise how shallowly I’ve been
breathing - the asthmatic legacy

I’ve been ignoring. I concentrate
on slowly inhaling and exhaling
to match my steps as we trace our
route through the vegetation. My
mind gradually clears as my breath
slows. Ten minutes pass in a whisk-
er. Success!
So that’s my key: walking medi-
tation. Because, as I’ve discovered
this week, if you wait for the perfect
moment to meditate, that perfect
moment never comes.
Madeleine Figg
It was a piece of advice my moth-
er gave me, before she died. Said
cautiously, the worry and care evi-
dent in her voice. “You should learn
to meditate, to live in the moment.
I think it will be important for you,
in your life.” I was in my early twen-
ties at the time, in the grip of some
emotional storm or another. Now, in
my mid-twenties, my mother’s sug-
gestion, a niggling, precious stone,
has sat in my mind quietly waiting
to be taken up.
Herself a conscientious practi-
tioner, her chosen affirmation - I am
well in body and mind - kept her fo-
cused during 30-minute sessions of
71
‘relaxation’. Whilst the latter may
well have been true, the former was
a lovely, sad lie. And as her mind be-
came stronger and her body weaker,
I felt the reverse was true of me. She
became resolute; I became doubtful.
She grew calm; I grew panicked. I
took up lifting weights; she could no
longer reach to put on her shoes.
Now, I’m sitting at the window
of a B & B, rented for four weeks of
work in a quiet Tasmanian town by
the sea. Prompted by the challenge,
I figure it’s a good opportunity to fi-
nally, properly, try. Pink peonies bob
in a vase, obscuring my vision of the
streetscape and I’m already distract-
ed. Nonetheless, I set the timer on
my phone for five minutes.
I close my eyes and try to regulate
my breathing. It’s difficult. I start to
feel anxious that I can’t get the tim-
ing right. Inevitably, thoughts come
rolling in like oversized beach balls; I
try to gently push them back. I focus
on the small physical sensations: the
warmth of the sun through the win-
dow, the screech of the gulls, the feel
of the scuzzy carpet on my freshly-
showered feet. The time creeps by,
slow as cold honey. But when I even-
tually open my eyes, the sun rushes
in and I feel good. Calm. Content.
Womankind’s challenge
The next time, I use one of
Mum’s tools and try to wrangle my
unruly thoughts into a mantra: I am
doing my best, I am doing my best,
I am doing my best. I overslept,
had a long day at work and an even
longer dinner with my accommoda-
tion hosts. I don’t have a chance to
meditate until 11pm; the third day
of the challenge is almost over. I sit
cross-legged on my bed, longing to
lie down. I am doing my best.
As I come to the end of the week,
I know I’d like to continue the prac-
tice. I also know how easily it will
fall off the list of my priorities once
I’m back to my usual routine. But
I promise myself I will try. Because
I’ll bet that this small piece of my
mother’s advice, this niggling stone,
is really a pearl.
Annette Ong
As someone who has periods
of anxiety, meditation was recom-
mended to me by my health profes-
sional. So I decided to try it.
Day one: It’s Monday and the
start of the week brings new chal-
lenges. I commit to five minutes
every morning to clear my head.
Womankind’s challenge
Typically, my mind cannot focus
on my breath and remain there. It
bounces from random thought to
thought. This is okay though; it is
the nature of the mind to ‘think’,
and I remind myself that it is not
necessary to get caught up in the
web it weaves. I bring my attention
continually to my breath.
Day two: Today I find my mind
more settled than usual and that’s
an encouraging sign. Sitting com-
fortably, I focus on the breath as
my anchor and allow thoughts to
come and go. I offer no resistance to
thought but watch silently as a wit-
ness. All thoughts, whether helpful
or unhelpful, come and go; they are
temporary like most things in life.
When I strongly identify with my
thoughts, I run into trouble; that is
the seed of anxiety, where it takes
root and grows.
Day three: My bird is singing
and calling from outside so I find it
difficult to concentrate today. My
meditation session seems rushed
and pointless; I feel like I haven’t
really achieved anything. Perhaps,
it’s because I’ve got appointments
to attend and work to be complet-
ed. I persist and sit quietly but my
mind is crowded by thoughts jos-
tling for attention.
Day four: My meditation session
goes well today. I’m able to sit qui-
etly with little distraction and focus
on my breath. As the day unfolds
my awareness clouds over; I begin
to notice that it’s the meditative
moments that clear the fog. Even
the simple act of sitting still is a
form of meditation; slowing down
and just ‘being’ helps to revitalise a
weary body and mind.
Day five: I cannot believe how
I have gone without meditation for
72
so long. If only I had learned this
in school, I think I’d have been a
much calmer adult. I find myself
looking forward to my daily prac-
tice; it has become routine for me,
just like brushing my teeth.
Meditation reminds me of my
finite time on this planet; that all
the insignificant things I worry
about are not worth my time. It has
revealed to me that anxiety, fear,
love, joy, anger and grief are all part
of the human experience, that one
is not more or less important than
the other. Meditation has taught
me to accept all my emotions, even
the challenging ones, because there
is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of feel-
ing. Admittedly, I have also dis-
covered that the biggest obstacle
to finding my own joy and peace of
mind is me. If I can get myself out
of my own way, I’d be unstoppable.
Melissa McArthur
When I read about the medita-
tion challenge I thought, yep, this
is exactly what I am going to need
to get through the chaos that will be
this week at school, testing, mark-
ing, monitoring, report card writing,
heat, cranky children, cranky teach-
ers… I sit in my chair, close my eyes
and start to focus on my breathing,
slowly inhaling with purpose and ex-
haling what I was taught was stress
and tension. That’s when the distrac-
tions begin. The cat saw my lap and
jumped up, the dogs relocated them-
selves to my feet, licking my toes. I
try, in vain, to keep focusing on my
in and out breaths but only succeed
in getting annoyed because I am not
relaxing. I tell myself that this is not
what meditation is meant to be.
Day two: Today is hot. Sitting
inside this time to avoid loving
pets, I go back to the ‘breath’ work.
This time focusing on counting my
breaths was easier without the con-
stant meow or licky puppy. This time
I find my mind wandering to new
topics: Have I got enough exams
printed? Did I put that photocopy-
ing in? What are we having for din-
ner? I try to let these thoughts come
and go, like I have been taught to,
but in reality it is really hard! Maybe
I can’t meditate on demand? Maybe
I need to let it happen randomly and
not plan for it? About ten minutes
later I got up and made a green rose
tea and felt better.
Day three: I decide to try a differ-
ent approach today: do my normal
afternoon/evening thing and see if

some focused thinking will just hap-
pen. Letting myself be in the mo-
ment feels more natural than trying
to plan to relax. The ten or so min-
utes I spend sitting and reliving my
day settles my mind far more than
anything I have experienced in the
two days prior.
Day four: Today is hot and horri-
ble and I have the attention span of
a goldfish, but I remind myself that
I am not planning to meditate, just
deciding to be in the moment and
mindful. It’s easier today to close my
eyes and still my thinking, well for
about two minutes it is. Again the
overactive brain kicks is and my
mind wanders to its own place.
Day five: I tried a morning medi-
tation today. I thought perhaps it
might be easier to still my mind be-
fore the day puts myriad thoughts
into it. I am sticking to the simple
mindfulness idea of focusing on
one thing and clearing my thoughts
around it. This morning I am choos-
ing a rose from my garden. Examin-
ing something in close detail is quite
interesting and surprisingly calming.
I look at my Mr Lincoln rose bud,
not trying to experience anything
specific, simply letting it fill my sens-
es with colour and fragrance. While
some might not think of this as a
meditation, I am feeling quite cen-
tred and in the moment. The chal-
lenge will be to keep this feeling as
my day progresses.
73
Alli McClean
Day one: My alarm went early
on Monday morning, and with
minimal snoozing, I arose to sit
on my meditation chair (aka the
armchair in my room previously
referred to as the ‘chairdrobe’. This
week, it is the meditation seat). I
put the app on, tried to follow the
instructions, experienced a bit of
monkey mind, and then proceeded
with my day. I tried to reflect if the
sense of calm during the morning
was my imagination, knowing that
there was an expectation that my
meditation should ‘work’.
Day two: Today, I flew out on a
work trip, having finished my pack-
ing after my morning meditation.
This morning I felt distracted mid-
meditation as I was in my list-mak-
ing mentality and had to concen-
Womankind’s challenge
trate all of my efforts on listening
to the voice talking me through the
day’s meditation.
Day three: I did not sleep par-
ticularly well last night, partly due
to all of the little LED lights in the
hotel room, all desperate to tell me
the time or temperature as I struggled
to settle. As a result, I indulged in a
sleep in this morning, and opted for a
short walk following my meditation.
I sat down with my app ready for ac-
tion and watched my mind wander
between diligent focus on my abdom-
inal breathing, and once again frol-
icking through fields of distraction.
Today I think I managed to catch it
earlier and gently return to the focus
point, but perhaps I am also looking
for progress. Regardless, I completed
my fifteen minutes, a luxurious time
of no distractions, no questions, no
external stimuli (other than the
quiet voice guiding me through the
task), nowhere to go and nothing
to do but breathe and observe what
happens. This to me is the real magic
of meditation. This time is one of the
few times each day where I am utterly
undisturbed (including disturbances
of my own doing, e.g. social media).
One of the things today I noticed
was during an evening walk by the
beach. I glanced up at the moment a
bat flew towards a tree and its wings
were lit from behind by a streetlamp.
I observed the way its wings looked
more translucent, almost sepia toned;
I caught myself thinking that I
wouldn’t have noticed this on non-
meditation days. These are the subtle
moments that I savour as a result of
fifteen minutes of sitting in the morn-
ing. Fleeting moments.
Womankind’s challenge
Day four: After a night in my
own bed again, I hoped I’d wake up
feeling refreshed and ready to set my-
self up for a great day by meditating.
After crawling into position, I real-
ised that my attention was unsettled,
with moments of focus but many
more moments of planning. Plan-
ning what the day required, mental
list making, entertaining thoughts
and worries, and then the ensuing
guilt that I was not doing what was
advised in the guided meditation. I
still find it amusing that I beat my-
self up for not meditating properly,
or not doing it correctly, rather than
noticing that today I’m distracted
and continuing to try.
Day five: I rose feeling rather flat
again this morning - an overlay from
the end of Thursday perhaps. I could
just blame the beautiful huge full
moon that has been looming over-
head in the evenings, but I feel that
is one of many variables. I sat with
my legs crossed and commenced my
morning meditation - there were
again moments where I couldn’t tell
you what had just been said in the
guided meditation, but today there
was a lot more consistency and the
speed with which I returned to the
point of the exercise was slightly
better. Still no Zen Buddhist monk,
but an improved awareness and at-
tention during the exercise I think.
74
Ange Wu
Being someone who has almost
always struggled to focus, I wasn’t
sure if I could handle five days of
meditation practice. I’m a full-time
cook and part-time student, and my
brain balks at the thought of five
minutes of mindfulness.
Day one: Today’s meditation
practice was with mindfulness col-
ouring. This activity has gained
popularity recently, and I have been
colouring for a couple of months. As
I choose from assorted markers and
apply colour to sections of a design,
I try my best to focus. When my
thoughts begin to stray, I rein them
in by concentrating on the colour
I’m using, and then think about my
breathing as I fill the page.
Day 2: Practising mindfulness
whilst eating is something I have to
put conscious effort into, to get it
right. This morning I took care to
plate up a hot breakfast, then sat at a
table to eat it, without a book/phone/
colleague nearby. It sounds like an
ordinary thing to do, but I some-
times go weeks without. Breakfast
seems much more satisfying when I
pay it full attention. I still found that
I felt an urge to rush the last few bites
and reach for my phone.
Day 3: I devoted part of my
evening walk to mindfulness, and
turned off music and fitness apps on
my phone. Perhaps it was the lack
of stimuli, but I found it difficult to
estimate time or distance. I didn’t
want to keep looking at my watch,
so I tried to concentrate on my steps
and my breathing instead. It was a
concerted effort to not just count
my steps or breaths to figure out how
much time I had left. When I final-
ly looked at my phone, I had only
walked for seven minutes, but it had
felt twice as long.
Day 4: Preparing for a work func-
tion had me peeling carrots to prac-
tise mindfulness. I soon established a
cycle of lifting a carrot, rotating it as
I peeled, dipping it in water to loos-
en stray peel, then putting it into
another container. After finishing a
certain amount of carrots, I felt déjà
vu, as if I’d tried meditating over a
sink full of carrots already. I’m not
sure if this means I’m getting better
or worse at single tasking.
Day 5: To finish the challenge I
chose a more typical form: I lay on
the floor, eyes closed, body relaxed,
and focused on my breathing. I had
some conversations with myself.
At first I tried narrating, mimick-
ing a muscle relaxation exercise
that I know. Then I kept imagining
a blank space and tried to focus on
that nothingness whilst breathing. I
then admonished myself for letting

my thoughts drift, or for getting tired
and not concentrating. I might have
had a microsleep because I didn’t
feel like I had been conscious for a
whole ten minutes.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned,
it’s that meditation and mindfulness
don’t come naturally to me. I am
interested in practising more, as I’m
convinced that getting better at it
would be beneficial. Unfortunately,
there doesn’t appear to be quick fix
injection of knowledge and skill, so
I will just have to keep working at
it… five minutes at a time.
Courteney Cuomo
Hunger is a primal condition
that has always mystified me. This
week, I will meditate when I am
hungry. I will close my eyes, sit with
my hunger like an old friend, and let
it speak.
Day one: I am crammed between
two women on the subway and I am
thinking about sandwiches. There
is crinkling as someone unwraps
their bagel. Something vulturous
twitches inside me. I breathe deeply
to stifle the groans in my belly, to
hush my uneasy morning thoughts.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
75
Day two: At my 9-5, I’m sitting
at my desk. My stomach rumbles for
dinner. I’ve spent another day with
my brain and body idle, my dreams
unfulfilled. I am starving for a
change but too scared and exhausted
to do anything big about it. I medi-
tate on the small, impossible steps I
need to take.
Day three: Hunger feels like a
hollow ball crammed between my
jaws, connected by dehydrated pas-
sageways to a larger hollow ball in
the pit of my stomach. Everything
churns with longing. There is slurp-
ing and chewing orchestrating
around the dinner table. Hunger is a
pest, a threat, a physical reminder
that I will always crave something
more, something other people have.
Day four: Meditating on my
hunger before a Thanksgiving feast
with family makes me think of the
things I need most in life, the things
I already have. Chatter about the
mysterious location of the spatula
makes it difficult to concentrate and
easy to burst into laughter. Today the
challenge feels lighter. The people
and things I hunger for most are at
arm’s reach. I think about those who
are not so lucky.
Day five: On a train to visit
friends - there’s something about be-
ing in motion that always makes me
hungry. The instinct to eat is inten-
sifying, but luckily my mum’s pump-
kin cookies are in tow. I hold a cook-
Womankind’s challenge
ie on my palm and look at it, hard. It
is easy to meditate on hunger when
the promise of satisfaction is within
grasp. But what about when it isn’t?
Every day there is hunger - for
that steaming batch of fries, for an-
other hour of sleep, for a more satis-
fying life. Meditating on my hunger
was not easy, but when it happens,
every now and then, I will use it as
an opportunity to learn what I’m
truly hungry for.
Pip Finter
In my mind, meditation has nev-
er been available to me because of my
atheistic outlook. It’s tangled with
the idea that somehow you have to
be a spiritual person to practise any
kind of proper meditation. I’ve never
been a spiritual person. Once a psy-
chologist told me to go to an inner
sanctuary, and I couldn’t find one.
My mind has about 8-15 trains of
thought at any given moment. I pic-
ture them as actual trains running in
tracks through my brain, so I suppose
my inner sanctuary at this point is a
station I’ve never come to rest at.
Day one: I’ve decided that medi-
tation is a morning ritual that I’d like
to take up just to get into the mo-
Womankind’s challenge
ment before anything else happens.
However, it’s 5:30 am and my four-
year-old is already awake, so I have
to get him organised with something
to do while I meditate. By the time
I’ve organised the four-year-old, the
eight-year-old wakes up and wants
breakfast. I fix breakfast and clean
the kitchen, make the beds and do a
tidy up. It’s now 8:07. I wanted to go
to the farmers’ market this morning,
but it doesn’t look like I’m going to
get there before it rains.
I have a small window of time to
call my partner, who is working away,
and I can’t find my phone. Frustra-
tion ensues. Finding my phone I call.
No answer, presumably I’ve missed
the window. I sit down to a five-min-
ute breathing meditation while the
kids are busy with each other...
I’m slightly amazed. Just con-
centrating on my breathing for five
minutes felt like 30 seconds. There
were some intrusive thoughts, but
mostly I could bring myself back to
just breathing. And as my timer went
off at the five-minute mark, as I softly
open my eyes, the four-year-old yells,
“Mummy, where are you?”
Day two: Had an active morning
so practised breathing meditation
in the afternoon. Much harder at
this time of the day to stay focused
on breathing and not let the day’s
thoughts intrude. Mornings are defi-
nitely easier, which is ironic because
mornings are also harder.
Day three: Woke up at 3-4am
with kids jumping into bed with me.
Even with this early start the morn-
ing ran late, probably due to sleep
deprivation slowing me down. By
10:40 I have five minutes to medi-
tate and I’m afraid that if I close my
eyes I’ll probably end up asleep.
76
I try anyway and yawn three
times in the first two minutes. I de-
cide to wait until I’m more rested be-
cause I have a tired headache coming
on. Usually I would push through the
day, but instead when my son took
his nap I followed suit and had a nap
as well. When I woke up before him
I was able to do my five minutes of
meditation unencumbered by him or
my sleep deprivation.
Day four: I have a girl’s night out
tonight and while I’m busily get-
ting things organised I forget to eat
lunch. It takes five minutes to heat
so I’m able to use the cooking time
as my meditation time. I don’t know
if this is ‘cheating’ because it is mul-
titasking during a meditation! I’m
specifically meditating to try and get
my usual 15 trains of thought all the
way down to one in my brain, so do-
ing a separate task (albeit just stand-
ing around waiting for the oven to
chime) seems counterproductive to
the cause, however productive it is to
my world. Today is the first day that
I take the time to come out of the
meditation and not go straight back
into life quickly. The meditation
helps me eat mindfully and enjoy my
lunch - so I’m counting it.
Day five: Today is one of my busi-
est days. I have to get three humans
(myself, my daughter, who has an
intellectual disability, and my four-
year-old) up and out the door early.
Instead of seeing meditation as a
non-viable action, I was able to rise
early and give myself the time and
even added an extra five minutes.
I mindfully carried the meditation
through the morning. This may well
be a case of placebo, but it’s a non-
harmful one and I find that I don’t
want to question it.
Skye Cleary
Day one: Ten years of power yoga
and I’ve never understood medita-
tion. Yet, I embrace it: legs crossed,
hands facing upwards and resting on
knees, thumbs and middle fingers
touching. I take a deep breath and
splutter with the remnants of last
week’s flu. Composing myself, I ag-
gressively exhale this morning’s job
interview. Adamantly I inhale the
Maya Angelou tweet that I saw af-
ter the meeting: “This is a wonderful

day. I’ve never seen this one before.”
My face bathes in second-hand sun-
shine reflecting off the apartment
windows across the road. That is
wonderful.
Day two: Grinding my brain and
despairing over my latest project,
I close my eyes and breathe in the
musty library air. It feels heavy with
words. I imagine I’m inhaling sen-
tences. It’s almost sensuous. I envis-
age the Buddha telling me to extin-
guish the fires of my desires to reach
nirvana. I attend to distant sounds:
the shuffling of paper and indiscrimi-
nate whispers. Blood pulses through
my eyelids. They are exhausted from
the day’s gluttonous consumption of
books and yet they cannot find peace.
A chair screeches along the floor. I
look at my phone and struggle not to
be cross with myself because I did not
reach nirvana in five minutes.
Day three: I wake to a silent
apartment and since I’m already in
‘Shavasana’ pose, I begin the chal-
lenge. I try to think of nothing. I
laugh. How appropriate it is to think
of nothing in corpse pose! I tell
myself that it’s not funny because
that’s probably the point. I hear a
helicopter, a coffee cart clunking its
way over the sidewalk, and a pair
of five-year-old feet thumping their
way towards the kitchen. I look at
the clock and wonder if only four
minutes means I’ve failed. Footsteps
coming my way vanquish my sense
of inadequacy.
Day four: Knowing that five
minutes of sitting still will not work
for me today, I turn things upside
down. In my headstand, fingers
77
laced behind my head, I am reas-
sured of my core strength. Yet, I
notice how fragile it is. I feel the
threat of my legs, poised to ambush
my balance. I wonder if I am my
own worst enemy - in this moment
and beyond. I scold myself for al-
lowing my mind to wander.
Day five: I brush my teeth in
my pink flannel onesie, fight my last
battle of the day with my quilt, and
collapse into corpse pose. Deflated,
I wonder how to judge meditation
success. If it’s a matter of clearing the
mind, resisting distractions, restrict-
ing thought, or oppressing passions,
then it’s not for me. I reminisce on
the sound of a helicopter breaking
the day, the pungent scent of prose,
the delicate warmth of mirrored sun-
shine, the exquisite echo of little feet
in the morning, and the reminder of
an inner vitality. I love these micro-
impressions of my quotidian. If this
counts as meditation, then I love it.
Womankind’s challenge
Carina Mancinone
Day one: I begrudgingly decided
to find a quiet space in which to at-
tempt meditation in the afternoon.
I say begrudgingly because, having
never meditated before, I felt un-
sure about how to establish a rou-
tine. Perhaps I was afraid I wouldn’t
be able to stick to the five days. I
downloaded a free meditation app
on my phone. I was welcomed to the
program by quite an amiable voice,
which guided me through simple
breathing activities. I found it hard
to stay focused. I consoled myself at
the end of the session by thinking
that, just like any activity, practice is
necessary in order to improve.
Day two: I woke up at 7:30 and
decided to meditate instead of read-
ing emails or going on social media.
I felt in a much more relaxed state.
I was guided through exercises that
bring awareness to the body; I was
told to focus on my breathing, my
mouth, my upper back, and my
thighs. Whether it’s because I only
just woke up or I was experiencing
the benefits of meditation, I was
aware that I was thinking less about
menial things and letting my mind
Womankind’s challenge
be still. I found the experience to be
a nice way to welcome the day and
felt a sense of invigoration.
Day three: After feeling particu-
larly exhausted on this day, I did a
quick three-minute meditation fo-
cused on breathing: in on one count
and out on two. With each day of
meditation, I am amazed by how
such simple techniques and practices
can make a world of difference. I’m
noticing that after each session I feel
inspired to launch into a creative
project that has been on my to-do
list for far too long.
Day four: I woke up after a
sleepless night and didn’t feel at all
enthusiastic about going to work.
A five-minute guided meditation
session, which again focused on
breathing, set me on the right path
for a productive and not-as-bad-as-
I-thought-it-would-be day. I am re-
alising why meditation and wellness
have become such popular activities.
The ability to block out almost all
thought is a welcome reprieve from
all of the worries that I tend to dwell
on more than I should.
Day five: I’m going to fess up and
admit that I missed a day of medita-
tion after a tiring day at work. As
a student, I work casual hours at a
bakery, which requires a lot of stand-
ing for long periods of time. I only
notice how exhausted I feel when I
get home, and it’s easy to just want to
78
veg out, which seemed like the most
appealing thing to do at the time.
However, I really missed meditating
and noticed my thoughts were very
erratic. I found it harder to fall asleep.
On the actual 5th day, the medi-
tation was a welcomed activity. The
session was about how we tend to slip
into auto pilot mode. It is a common
thing for our minds to wander and to
not keep our attention on daily tasks
immediately at hand. I quite enjoyed
this session and would like to con-
tinue to train my mind on staying
present in the moment, as I feel like I
am always thinking about things that
have to be done in the future. As a
motivated individual, I don’t think
this is a flaw as such, but I’m learning
that it’s important to take time to de-
velop mindfulness and to just relax.
Heidi Crockett
I’ve meditated off and on since
I completed a ten-day Vipassana
meditation retreat eight years ago.
As part of a New Year’s resolution,
I downloaded a meditation app
and started meditating during my
30-minute bus ride to work each day.
When I read about the reader chal-
lenge, I thought “I got this!”
Day one: I settle in for my guided
meditation and am reminded of the
challenges of meditating on public
transportation. In addition to the
usual bus sounds, the woman sitting
beside me carries on a phone conver-
sation for the entire trip into town. I
can focus my attention on the hum
of the engine and tune her out, but
the man sitting directly in front of
me is apparently experiencing gas-
trointestinal distress. This is difficult
to ignore. Maybe it’s time to choose
another time and place to meditate.
Day two: I decide to meditate at
the end of the day today, but forget
that I’ve made this decision until I’ve
already climbed into bed and turned
the light off. While I know that it’s
not recommended to meditate ly-
ing down, I proceed with some deep
breathing and visualisations… and
very shortly doze off.
Day three: I’m on vacation for
the next three days. Since I usually
meditate on my way to work, being
on vacation always throws off my
meditation routine. I’ve again wait-
ed until night-time and have made
use of my meditation cushion. Af-
ter convincing one of my cats that I
don’t need supervision, I settle into
the kneeling position I generally pre-
fer and begin my meditation… slow-
ly becoming aware of the gradual loss
of sensation in my lower legs.
Day four: I try night-time medi-
tation again, but find a much more
comfortable seated position this
time and have a lovely, deep, fo-
cused session. I sleep well, but am
not sure the effects have lasted
through to the morning. I feel like
meditating at the end of the day
lays waste to the benefits I enjoy
most: the lovely calm, clarity, and
focus that morning meditation es-
tablishes as a baseline for my day.

Day five: I meditate on the go
today, riding in the car with my fam-
ily. I have more than 20 minutes at
my disposal and am able to create a
calm, expansive space that carries
over noticeably into our outing. To-
day’s experience highlights for me
the value in seizing opportunities
to practise ‘presence’ whenever and
wherever they arise.
This five-day exercise has been
less about meditation than a micro-
cosm of the problem I’ve had since
I returned to a management level in
my career several years ago: between
the increased demands at work and
my three daughters becoming teen-
agers, finding time to do any of the
things I enjoy and that recharging/
restoring my ‘self’ has been daunt-
ing. This week has confirmed what
I have suspected: my best available
time for personal pursuits is early in
the morning… or else it’s catch-as-
catch-can.
Sylvia Huang
Recently diagnosed with Bipolar
2, I’ve been actively seeking ways to
manage my condition, which comes
with severe depression, general anxi-
ety disorder, and hypomania. When I
came across this challenge, I thought
79
it could be good for me to aim for
five minutes of meditation a day.
Day one: Like a kid who refuses
to eat her vegetables despite know-
ing that it’s good for her, I kept put-
ting off my meditation till it was
almost midnight and time for bed. I
was terribly laden with guilt as I had
been surfing the night away on social
media. I climbed into bed, set a tim-
er on my meditation app, got into
a comfortable position and closed
my eyes. Soon after, I began feel-
ing small waves of peace sweeping
through my body. The next thing I
knew, I jolted out of sleep and over
an hour had passed since my attempt
to meditate. What a fail!
Day two: I woke up experiencing
tightness in my chest, so I decided
to see my psychologist. Leaving the
clinic, I felt lighter but a sense of
anxiety remained. I found a sun-
drenched spot in Hyde Park and sat
on the grass. I phoned my partner
and told him I couldn’t get myself
to relax. We spent the next ten
minutes meditating together with
him guiding me by saying instruc-
tions like “when thoughts come,
watch and let them go” and “feel
your feet touching the ground”.
The exercise left us feeling calmer
and somewhat recharged.
Day three: I decided to do my
meditation first thing in the morn-
ing, so I would have no chance of
putting it off. It was a peaceful one,
sans app for a change, where I fo-
cused on deep breathing. By the
time I was done, I had done over ten
minutes. Unlike the other mornings
where I was frenetic - trying to cook,
Womankind’s challenge
clean, and get ready for work - I felt
more grounded. As Marie Forleo
aptly puts it, “There are 1440 min-
utes in a day. They’ll all go better if
you take 10 of them to meditate.”
Day four: This morning I chose to
focus my practice on forgiving myself
and on letting go the searing criticism
from my mother. Over the course of
fifteen minutes, I recalled all the pain
I experienced and visualised those
feelings as a pool of red welling up
within me. I then imagined waves of
warm white light slowly washing over
me until I’m ‘cleansed’. This simple
exercise was challenging to do but it
felt cathartic after.
Day five: I woke up hung over
from a girls’ night out the evening
before and hoped the meditation
would soothe my pounding head.
The practice was no wonder pill but
I did find myself less easily agitated
than how I would normally be. This
cure worked great too as a damage
control tool for my relationships,
sparing my partner, friends, and col-
leagues from having to deal with a
hungover grumpy cat.
Unconventional wisdom 80

UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Our future selves are more likely to

lament not doing something than doing
it, regardless of the consequences.

Regret or not regret

We don’t want to be full of regrets when we’re older,

but it’s tricky to know today what we’ll regret tomorrow.
As a rule of thumb, failure to act is typically regretted
more than acting upon something, even if our decision
to go ahead turns out badly. In other words, our future
selves are more likely to lament not doing something
than doing it, regardless of the consequences. No one
wants to be left with the lifelong feeling: “Oh, if only I’d
done it, then I’d be… and life would be…”

Enemy of the people

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the en-

emy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane
your whole life... I think perfectionism is based on the
obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting
each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die.
The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of
people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to
do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun
while they’re doing it.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some
Instructions on Writing and Life.

Perfectionism is the voice of the
oppressor, the enemy of the people.
It will keep you cramped and
insane your whole life.
Meditation
on the run
If you don’t have the time to sit
for a half-hour meditation session,
then meditation on the run might
be an option. Indeed, some medita-
tion practitioners argue that medita-
tion - a practice that trains the mind
- can be done in short bursts, such as
a minute or two, and can be under-
taken when sitting on a bus or train,
or even when waiting in line. If any-
thing, short meditation bursts teach
us to ‘be’ in the moment, to hear,
and sense our surroundings - even if
it’s just for a fleeting moment.
81
Errors in
thinking
American psychiatrist Aaron
Beck realised that many of us don’t
think all too clearly, and our in-
accurate, distorted thinking can
make us unnecessarily pessimis-
tic, anxious, and even depressed.
Beck reasoned that if we can clean
up our thinking, we can clean up
our act. Typical errors in thinking
about situations include arbitrary
influence (quickly drawing conclu-
sions without evidence); overgener-
alisation (“Oh, this always happens
to me”) and personalisation (blam-
ing ourselves). Bullying thoughts
and unhelpful thinking, advised
Beck, should be singled out and put
to the test.
Unconventional wisdom
Smart reasons
to be fit
Few people say that they’re going
for a run to become smarter, but ac-
cording to neuroscientists physical
exercise acts as a brain boost. Stud-
ies of the effects of physical exercise
on children, adolescents, and older
adults link aerobic activity to larger
hippocampal volumes (the hip-
pocampus is that seahorse-shaped
component of the brain responsible
for short- and long-term memory)
and improved cognitive function.
Physical exercise may also delay the
onset of memory decline in older
adults. So if the idea of bicep sculpt-
ing doesn’t get you motivated, re-
member that physical activity - and
that includes resistance training - is
also building brain tissue.
“We take no pleasure in
existence except when
we are striving after
something.”
Schopenhauer
 “With possessions, or
the certain expectation
of it, our demands imme-
diately increase and this
increases our capacity
for further possessions
and greater expectation.”
Schopenhauer
 83 Unconventional wisdom

The media is forever talking about The phantom

‘public opinion’, but who exactly
are they talking about?
Why apples first
Ever wondered why supermar-
kets place the fruit and vegetable
section near the entrance? It de-
fies logic when you think about it:
a trolley lined with soft fruit and
vegetables, only later piled high
with tins and boxes. Why isn’t the
fruit and vegetable section last? Re-
searchers on consumer behaviour
noticed that when we first load up
our trolleys with healthy options -
a feeling of having ‘shopped well’
- this increases the likelihood that
we’ll buy more as we head further
into the store. As an experiment,
take the opposite route around the
supermarket maze. See if your shop-
ping experience changes.
public
The media is forever talking
about ‘public opinion’, but who
exactly are they talking about?
Presumably the ‘public’ is code for
a very large group of people, how-
ever a group of people cannot own
a single opinion. Philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard argued that this fiction-
alised “phantom public” - where
everyone is treated as a single mass
entity - stifles individuality and in-
dependent judgement. Upon learn-
ing from the media that the ‘public’
thinks one way (code for majority
opinion), an individual is more like-
ly to jump on the bandwagon too,
when in actual fact, the opinion has
derived from a phantom source.
The poetics
of space

“Maybe it is a good thing for

us to keep a few dreams of a house
that we shall live in later, always
later, so much later, in fact, that we
shall not have time to achieve it.
For a house that was final, one that
stood in symmetrical relation to the
house we were born in, would lead
to thoughts - serious, sad thoughts -
and not to dreams. It is better to live
in a state of impermanence than in
one of finality.” Gaston Bachelard,
The Poetics of Space.
“Many would-be novelists and
poets read only their contem-
poraries and often not even
these, justifying this laziness as
a bold bid for freedom from
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GUECRGURGEKƂEKPƃWGPEGTGUWNVU
in unconscious surrender to the
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current popular taste.”
Michael Foley, from The Age
of Absurdity
 84

The reggae revival cannot be captured in a single head-

line. At the heart of the resurgence is a commitment
amongst its members to a shared political and spiritual
vision, one that harks back to the Rastafari of the origi-
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again returning to Kingston.

REVIVING
REGGAE
by Rhian Sasseen
Elisa Baldissera, Italy
Reviving reggae 86

Seyed Abbas Seyed Ebrahimi, Iran

 87 Reviving reggae

Hyde, an American, first came to Jamaica on a Fulbright fel-

lowship in 2010, and returned in 2012 after dropping out of
graduate school, motivated by the people and places she expe-
rienced when first living on the island.

What do you think of when you
think of reggae? For many of us out-
side of Jamaica, the sounds of roots
reggae conjure up a hazy image of
the past, of Bob Marley and Burn-
ing Spear and that span of time in
the 1970s when all eyes were on the
island and all ears were fixated on
its sounds. In the thirty years since
Marley’s death, both Jamaican and
international tastes have shifted
and changed, and new genres have
ballooned and deflated across the
charts. For the last twenty years, the
electric rhythms of dancehall have
been synonymous with the Jamai-
can music scene.
But live music is once again
returning to Kingston, and spear-
heading this shift are the young
musicians, artists, and writers who
have been dubbed the “reggae re-
vival movement” by various media
outlets, and occasionally by them-
selves. They are a multidisciplinary
bunch: yoga features prominently
in the singer Jah9’s music videos,
while visual artists like Matthew
McCarthy have painted on stage as
the band Protoje perform alongside
them. The singer Chronixx has
performed on a popular late night
television show in the US, while
organisations such as Touch the
Road, who describe themselves as a
destination management company,
conduct tours of Kingston’s cultural
events and music venues for curious
travellers.
But like most artistic move-
ments, the reggae revival cannot
be captured in a single headline.
At the heart of the resurgence is a
commitment amongst its members
to a shared political and spiritual
vision, one that harks back to the
Rastafari of the original reggae
renaissance in the 1970s. And,
like the original reggae movement,
today’s revival is coming to terms
with how it sees itself versus its
global impact and scale.
The term “reggae revival
movement”, in fact, makes Iset
Sankofa laugh. “It’s a media label,”
she says, “because, fortunately or
unfortunately, the media by and
large feels like it has to have a label,
that it has to have a slant to run
with.” Sankofa, a former broadcast
journalist now turned DJ, is the
force behind the Sankofa Sessions,
a weekly music and arts showcase
held every Tuesday at the Kingston
venue Nanook. It’s an event that
combines an eclectic array of jazz,
dub, roots, and Afro-pop with live
art demonstrations, dancing, and
food. “I’m not sure if anyone within
the reggae revival actually sat down
and said, ‘Hey, you know, let’s name
this a reggae revival.’”
Ashley Hyde, the creative
director for both Gabre Selas-
sie, the founder of the Kingston
Dub Club, and the band Raging
Fyah, agrees. “This is not the first
nor the last ‘reggae revival’,” she
argues, “but it is a continuation of
the consciousness that has always
existed on the island.”
Hyde, an American, first came
to Jamaica on a Fulbright fel-
lowship in 2010, then returned
in 2012 after dropping out of
graduate school, motivated by the
people and places she experienced
when first living on the island.
“When I arrived in Jamaica in
early 2010 for the first time,” she
remembers, “I had no idea what
to expect, and honestly at first I
was a little disappointed. Having
always dreamed of Jamaica being
full of vibrant deep roots music
booming from every speaker, I
actually arrived at a time when
dancehall” - that is, the fast,
electronic dance music of the
Reviving reggae 88
Jamaican club, often but not always featuring violent
or sexually-suggestive lyrics - “was at a high… As an
enormous hip hop fan, I was and still am able to over-
stand [appreciate] dancehall music and its place in
Jamaica. But as a woman this music was very difficult
for me to embrace.”
“People haven’t stopped making hardcore dance-
hall,” Sankofa is quick to point out. “Dancehall hasn’t
stopped inspiring us creatively. But for all intents and
purposes, we see [the reggae revival] as a good look,
because it’s not easy when you’re bombarded by a par-
ticular perception of Kingston, or a particular percep-
tion of Jamaica all the time.”
This commitment to one’s community, and a more
holistic approach to life, crops up again and again in
the new reggae music. “I sing ’cause I care,” goes a lyric
in Jah9’s ‘Intuition’, from her first album ‘New Name’,
“and wouldn’t want none of these sons and daughters / To
go asking where I could have paved the way.” Jah9, born
Janine Cunningham on the rural west coast of Jamaica,
embodies this sentiment in her own life: she left behind
a promising corporate career in Kingston in order to
become a musician and practising yoga instructor.
“What the training offered me,” she says, “was a kind
of community environment, because there were a lot of
people in my particular training who were not your typi-
cal practitioners of yoga - they were other Rasta people.
I never really intended to be a yoga teacher travelling
the world… I really just wanted to learn this thing so
I could share it with my community.” Since then, she’s
helped organise free yoga clinics in Kingston, includ-
JAH9, BORN JANINE CUNNINGHAM ON THE
RURAL WEST COAST OF JAMAICA, EMBODIES
THIS SENTIMENT IN HER OWN LIFE: SHE LEFT
BEHIND A PROMISING CORPORATE CAREER IN
KINGSTON IN ORDER TO BECOME A MUSICIAN
AND PRACTISING YOGA INSTRUCTOR.
ing sessions with a centre for girls who have been taken
from their homes.
“I did it as sort of a female thing,” Jah9 says of the
latter. “The women who worked at the centre felt this
amazement at how powerful a tool this was, and I think
that is when it really was confirmed in my mind that,
yes, this is what we have to do. The people who need it
the most are the people who are going through the most
trauma and suffering.”
When asked about what it’s like to be a woman in
the reggae revival, and if she’s ever felt overlooked, she
says, “it’s an interesting issue. I think a lot of it has to do
with our own journey as women. Even being a woman,
your role in creation is so different from the mundane
world, and so the music industry itself is not something
that is as flexible and open as the experience of being a
woman. There are things about you that you will have
to compromise, or will just have to just completely let
go of, in order to fully assimilate and climb through the
ranks like a man.”
Jah9 acknowledges that her journey has been dif-
ferent. “It’s been slower, and it’s caused me to serve
other people, even the other musicians around me... the
89 Reviving reggae

Avi Marciano, USA

Reviving reggae 90
system isn’t designed for women - we don’t live in that
kind of world here,” she laments.
“It’s not just the music industry,” she goes on to say,
“it’s more to the hemisphere or the social systems that
we’re in. They are inflexible, they are not holistic. A
woman has to very carefully navigate her way through,
so that she doesn’t lose herself.”
Still, a sense of optimism remains. “Unlike the time
of Bob & friends,” writes Hyde, when “whoever had
financial backing made it around the world, it’s very
different now. This reggae revival was made possible by
social media and the internet. It’s not like everyone flew
to Jamaica, hung out in Kingston, found this music and
returned home with physical CDs or vinyl (some did),
but most found it online first. Which makes it very easy
for all ages, nations, and people to embrace the music.”
Dariush Allahyari, Iran
Sankofa says that people have to realise that with
the Kingston-led reggae revival, “it is also an African
retention. It is us examining our pride and our place.
It is us looking at where we’ve been, where we are, and
where we’re going to go. That is what I take from this
whole movement. So whether or not someone wants to
give it a label, that is a sentiment that holds through.”
She doesn’t think that any other movement “has had
this kind of impact save and except for, I think, the
Harlem Renaissance”.
Sankofa smiles. Her enthusiasm is infectious. “King-
ston has become this magical place,” she says. “Kingston
has become like a time capsule right now.” And, like a
time capsule, the young artists of the reggae revival both
look to and appreciate their past, even as they forge
ahead towards the promise of their future.
“A WOMAN HAS TO VERY
CAREFULLY NAVIGATE
HER WAY THROUGH, SO
THAT SHE DOESN’T LOSE
HERSELF.”
Aida Nayeban, Iran
By Shari Erickson

ISLANDERS LIVE IN THE MOMENT INSTEAD OF CHASING THINGS ON A LIST.
Shari Erickson
What inspired you to focus on
the Caribbean for your art?
In art college I was a figura-
tive artist just venturing into col-
our with enthusiasm. I remember
a couple of instructors suggested I
explore a greyer palette. Obvious-
ly, that didn’t take. Then in the
‘80s, my artist husband, Douglas
Gifford, was painting colonial
architecture, which led him to
Haiti - and me to a world without
greys. The lush landscapes, can-
dy-coloured villages, and gener-
ous people were enchanting. We
started backpacking throughout
the Leewards and Windwards for
more subject matter and inspira-
tion. The Virgins, Saba, Bequia,
Iles des Saintes, and Tobago were
some favourites.
Recently, the Out Islands
of the Bahamas have revealed
their colourful history to us. It’s
becoming an annual quest to find
the rapidly-disappearing, authen-
tic corners of the Caribbean.
You live and paint in the Appa-
lachian Mountains, at some 4,000
feet in altitude. What is it like to
work from this perspective?
93
by Antonia Case
Below: Shari Erickson
Doug and I escaped city life
twenty-five years ago and moved to
Cashiers, a small mountain commu-
nity in western North Carolina. Life
here is not unlike island life with
all its natural beauty and slow pace.
Many neighbours are musicians,
painters, writers, and sculptors. Our
cabin is perched on a granite cliff
overlooking the Nantahala Nation-
al Forest (the ancestral home of the
Cherokee Indian Nation). A stone
path through a tiered rose garden
leads to my painting studio where
no phones or internet disturb.
Whenever I’m at work, my cat,
Otis, guards the door and has been
known to chase the black bears
away. They have fun. Painting one
paradise from the privacy of another
paradise is embarrassingly lucky.
Your perspective of the Carib-
bean is so positive, blissful, almost
mirroring the kind of life we
secretly dream that we could lead.
In your experience, is living in the
Caribbean the idyllic life?
It’s pretty damn idyllic. But
besides the warm breezes and
turquoise waters, I think it’s local
attitudes that flavour the days. Is-
An artist’s hideaway
landers live in the moment instead
of chasing things on a list. If my im-
ages express a positive outlook, I’ll
take that as a thank you, but I give
all credit to the people and places.
What can westerners learn
from Caribbean culture?
Some insight might be found in
some of the signage I’ve seen in the
Caribbean…
“Smile, it won’t break yuh face”
“De worst of livin’ is better than
the best of dead”
“Shut mouth, no catch fly”
“Every day a fishin day not every
day a catching day”.
What is your creative process?
I have to leave my safety zone
both while travelling and then when
facing a blank canvas in the studio.
I start with sketches, photos, a note
on a napkin, and anything that
helps me envision the project. Once
I actually start painting, it quickly
becomes intuitive and time both flies
and stands still being in ‘the zone’.
When the piece is finished (which
is always in question), it’s time for a
cocktail in the garden.
You can see more of Erickson’s beautiful
tropical work on pages 37-39.

By Shari Erickson,
www.islandstudio.com
By Shari Erickson
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 98

More than twelve million Africans were shipped across

VJGKPHCOQWUN[JQTTKƂE/KFFNG2CUUCIG VYGPV[RGTEGPV
chained up in the holds died before they arrived) be-
VYGGPCPF/CP[GPFGFWRQPUWICTRNCPVC-
tions where their lives were short and brutal: most
survived an average of only seven years.

THE STORY OF
WHITE GOLD
by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
The story of white gold 100
Sugar may taste sweet, but for some it holds bit-
ter memories.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries abolition-
ists produced pamphlets painting sugar - the engine
that fuelled the slave trade - as imbued with sweat and
tears. “No - I abhor thee tempting food / Purchased by
many a Brother’s blood,” read one poem. Rather than
white and pure, sugar was dirty and polluted.
Today sugar is ubiquitous, the hidden ingredient in
most processed foods: in America the average person
consumes more than 126 grams of sugar per day (the
equivalent of three cans of soft drink). If any agonising
goes on at all about sugar in popular culture, it is how
much it is adding to our waistlines.
Yet this now common carbohydrate was once so
valuable that the fortunes it created helped to con-
struct some of Europe’s most majestic cities. In London
the Tate museums were built on the back of the Tate
ROYALS HANKERED AFTER IT.
ELIZABETH I SUFFERED BLACK
TEETH BECAUSE OF HER SUGAR
HABIT (THE QUANTITIES SHE ATE
WERE A SIGN OF HER POWER)
AND WHEN QUEEN ISABELLA
OF CASTILE GAVE A CHRISTMAS
PRESENT TO HER DAUGHTERS, SHE
PRESENTED A TINY EXQUISITE BOX
OF SUGAR.
& Lyle sugar empire; the sublime All Souls College in
Oxford, likewise, was erected from profits of the trade.
Sugar, for colonialists at least, was nothing short of
‘white gold’.
It is a substance that has long been revered as
given by the gods: Alexander the Great dubbed it the
“sacred reed”. Until the discovery of the New World
by Christopher Columbus in 1492, sugar was a luxury
as rare as musk and as expensive as pearls. The first
Britons to have tasted it were most likely Crusaders,
who returned with stories of a sweet tasting honey
from their wars with the Muslim world.
Royals hankered after it. Elizabeth I suffered black
teeth because of her sugar habit (the quantities she ate
were a sign of her power) and when Queen Isabella of
Castile gave a Christmas present to her daughters, she
presented a tiny exquisite box of sugar.
It was only in the mid-18th century when sugar
became a mass commodity affordable to the middle
classes, accounting for a fifth of all European im-
ports. Annual consumption soared in Britain from four
pounds per person in 1700 to 36 pounds by 1850. Sold
in the form of tall, hard, conical sugar loaves, it was
still costly enough, however, to be kept in the home
under lock and key.
“If oil was the thing that turned the world in the
20th century, it was sugar that did for the 17th, 18th

With few records kept of slaves’ individual lives, laboured
and lost, they have all too easily been written out of history.
and parts of the 19th centuries,”
says Andrea Stuart, author of Sugar
in the Blood: A Family’s Story of
Slavery and Empire. “It was the most
important commodity [traded] and
it enriched people involved an
enormous amount.”
But if a handful of people
became wealthy, many millions
more suffered. It was Columbus who
first brought sugar cane, native to
southeast Asia, to the Dominican
Republic, where it flourished in the
warm, wet, and fertile climate. From
there Spanish settlers, and later the
French, Dutch and English, began
101
to set up sugar plantations in South
America and the Caribbean.
Plantations needed workers
and production was notoriously
labour-intensive. Initially, islands
such as Barbados were serviced by
indentured Scottish, English or Irish
servants and prisoners. Exposed to
diseases and suffering from the back-
crippling workload, they perished
at a rate of fifty per cent. As the
indentured workers dried up, refus-
ing to travel across the world to their
deaths or becoming too expensive
to hire, planters came up with a new
idea: African slaves.
Artist: Drawn by James Hakewill, Engraved by Sutherland
The story of white gold
More than twelve million
Africans were shipped across the
infamously horrific Middle Passage
(twenty per cent chained up in the
holds died before they arrived) be-
tween 1450 and 1850. Many ended
up on sugar plantations, where their
lives were short and brutal: most sur-
vived an average of only seven years.
For planters they were disposable; it
was most cost effective to work them
until they dropped and then simply
replace them with yet more slaves.
Life in the sugar mills was
comparable to “Dante’s inferno”,
according to Stuart. “Near-naked
The story of white gold 102
slaves laboured in the glow of the flames and the roaring
noise and the ferocious heat of the boiler room.” Axes
were kept on hand should the need arise to hew off limbs
caught up in machinery. (With slave populations often
far outnumbering the white population, rebellion and
uprisings were also a constant source of fear.)
The Barbadian-British author is both “exploiter and
exploited”: a descendent of an African slave and a white
slave owner. “Sugar and blood, that’s my story,” Stuart
explains to me. Although now based in London, as a lit-
tle girl she spent her childhood visiting her grandmoth-
er, playing in the family’s Barbadian sugar plantation.
The English blacksmith George Ashby, Stuart’s an-
cestor, was among the first flush of arrivals in Barbados,
touching down just after the island had been claimed
by the British in the 1620s. Ashby used the equivalent
of three years’ wages to pay his way, knowing he would
probably never return.
Landing in the unknown he would have found
a tropical wilderness (camels were transported from
Africa to manage the terrain) - an unruly ecosystem
that has since been tamed and flattened by centuries
of plantations.
The Ashbys flourished over the generations.
Slaves would cook up hearty breakfasts including
claret, hot and cold meats, and sweet jellies or lavish
dinners. Robert Cooper Ashby, who took over the
plantation in 1795, not only kept slaves as concubines,
who bore him multiple children, but a ‘body slave’ who
would hold his chamber pot at night. Meanwhile, his
workers toiled, waking before sunrise to face punishing
18-hour long days.
When the slave trade was finally abolished
throughout the British Empire in 1833, it was the slave
owners who were compensated financially, not the
slaves. Today sugar beet only provides around 25 per
Artist: Drawn by James Hakewill, Engraved by Sutherland
 103 The story of white gold

When the slave trade was finally abolished throughout the

British Empire in 1833, it was the slave owners who were
compensated financially, not the slaves.

cent of the world’s sugar produc-
tion, high-fructose corn syrup
having become a pervasive (if con-
troversial) replacement, and the
sugar cane industry, in developed
countries at least, functions largely
on machinery rather than the toil
of men.
Last year African-American
artist Kara Walker addressed
slavery and the sugar trade in her
piece A Subtlety or the Marvelous
Sugar Baby. The vast, evocative,
sphinx-like sculpture measures 22
metres long and 10 metres high
- and is made from eight tonnes
of confectionary sugar. It takes its
title from the tradition of ‘subtle-
ties’, the name once given to sugar
sculptures created by royal chefs in
Europe to flaunt their wealth.
Although raw sugar is brown,
the sculpture is luminous white.
As Hilton Als probes in The New
Yorker, the sphinx shows up our
assumptions: “She has ‘black’
features but is white? Has she been
bleached... or is she a spectre of
history, the female embodiment
of all the human labour that went
into making hers?”
The sugar sphinx crouches
regally “beaten down but stand-
ing. That’s part of her history,
too,” adds Als.
Made in America, she
stands proud and defiant, even
as she is a reminder of the
slaves whose lives the quest for
sugar destroyed.
In Britain, by contrast, a nation
whose might and power was built
on sugar, there remains a conspicu-
ous lack of soul-searching. Stuart
calls this a “consistent and aggres-
sive determination” to forget the
atrocities of the slave trade. With
few records kept of slaves’ indi-
vidual lives, laboured and lost, they
have all too easily been written out
of history.
As for Stuart’s own family
plantation “the story is finally end-
ing,” she says. The Ashbys’ home
of Plumgrove in Barbados now
stands derelict and will soon be
made into apartments.
Blaise Pascal 104

“All of humanity’s problems

stem from our inability to sit
quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal
Monica Barengo
 106

What is it about the castaway that fascinates us? He

or she - though most often he - is a literary hero, pop-
ping up in our books, poems, and movies time and time
again, a romance of humanity against the elements,
civilisation versus the wild, the modern man against the
so-called savage. The castaway relies on his or her
cleverness to survive.

CASTAWAY
by Rhian Sasseen
Castaway 108
An island is a landmass, formed by built-up layers of
volcanic eruption, or the erosion of land linking conti-
nent to isle. This is the physical definition.
An island is a concept, too - a metaphor for the hu-
man condition. “No man is an island,” goes the saying,
meaning something about community, and snatched
from a John Donne poem. The poem goes on to say,
“Every man is a continent, / A part of the main… Any
man’s death diminishes me.” An island is only one piece
of the puzzle.
The other is the castaway. The survivor of a ship-
wreck, maybe, or a sailor left to die. A castaway is the
protagonist, the audience stand-in. A castaway is also a
fantasy: most people drown.
What is it about the castaway that fascinates us? He
or she - though most often he - is a literary hero, pop-
ping up in our books, poems, and movies time and time
again, a romance of humanity against the elements,
civilisation versus the wild, the modern human against
the so-called savage. The castaway relies on his or her
cleverness to survive. Odysseus was a castaway, along
SHIPWRECKS, FOR THOSE
WHO CAN SURVIVE THEM,
MEAN EXOTIC EXPERIENCES,
AND FABULOUS RICHES.
with his crew; together, they escaped the temptations of
the witch Circe, the laziness of the lotus-eaters, and the
terror of the island Cyclops (now modern-day Sicily).
Women and magic and monsters and drugs: all of life’s
little decadences, vanquished by the virtuous Odysseus.
Sinbad the Sailor, a hero of The Thousand and One
Nights, was a castaway, too. Over the course of his tale,
Sinbad takes seven wondrous voyages from his home of
Baghdad, and is either accidentally abandoned or acci-
dentally shipwrecked at the beginning of every one. He
collects great treasures, meets strange people; the seeds,
in these ancient tales, are planted. Shipwrecks, for those
who can survive them, mean exotic experiences, inter-
esting sights, and fabulous riches. Who wouldn’t want to
be a castaway?
On the eve of European industrialisation, the legend
changes. The castaway again takes over the hearts and
minds of the public, but now represents something dif-
ferent. No longer a king or aristocrat; now, the castaway
is one of us. Virginia Woolf, in an essay on Daniel Defoe,
touches on this new element that Defoe’s 1719 Robinson
Crusoe brought to the conversation. “Nothing could be
plainer, more matter of fact,” she observes of the book’s
beginning, where Crusoe devotes pages to assuring his
reader that he is, in fact, a member of the middle class,
“than that beginning. We are drawn on soberly to con-
sider all the blessings of orderly, industrious middle-class
life. There is no greater good fortune we are assured than
to be born British middle class.” Aha! And so the thrill
of the castaway’s story, the idea of an uncharted territory,
 109 Castaway

This is a hilariously twenty-first century way of approaching

the castaway romance: anything can happen, as long as any-
thing means an entertaining viewing experience. The casta-
way’s actions and decisions are no longer private, between the
castaway and the island, but televised.

becomes the early justification of co-
lonialism. To read Robinson Crusoe
in 2015, with the knowledge of all
the terrible things that have already
occurred and that will follow, is a
light bulb moment.
The castaway fiction of the
19th century was full of these kinds
of moments. The best parts of The
Swiss Family Robinson, all of their
marvellous ingenuities - shells for
spoons! An elaborate tree house
as their home! Porcupine soup!
- seem rather silly in retrospect,
when one realises that the main
theme of Johann David Wyss’ story
is a kind of self-reliance last seen
in the Protestant Reformation.
The tree house was better in the
movie, anyway, as were the added
pirates - Disney, which adapted the
story into a Technicolour family
drama in 1960, has always had a
flair for the dramatic.
There’s something strangely
sexual to this adaptation, too - all
those torn garments and that lush
island topography. It knows its
audience: a middle class that’s no
longer so smug about being in the
middle. A middle class that’s be-
ginning to want something a little
more extravagant.
Eventually, the fantasy becomes
too much for even the boundaries of
pure fiction. The American real-
ity show Survivor, which premiered
in the spring of 2000, the dawn
of a new millennium, brought the
castaway story to ‘real life’. The
premise, borrowed from a Swedish
reality show called Expedition Rob-
inson (in this one, the inspiration
is even more explicit), was simple:
strangers are marooned on an island
and compete against each other as
tribes, foraging for food and water
while voting against each other in
so-called “tribal councils”. This is
a hilariously 21st century way of
approaching the castaway romance:
anything can happen, as long as
anything means an entertaining
viewing experience. The castaway’s
actions and decisions are no longer
private, between the castaway and
the island, but televised.
“Islands make people competi-
tive,” the novelist Heidi Julavits
observes in her diary, The Folded
Clock. They make it so that “the
subconscious fear of shipwreck and
survival permeates even the most
casual outing. Who will lead the
masses when the weather turns and
the food runs out? Who will be
sacrificed to feed the starving useful
people, the ones who can fish and
make fires and sing morale-building
sea shanties? I often contemplate
my odds of surviving a shipwreck
and how to improve them.”
In real life, the odds are not
very good. Even those who sur-
vive the shipwreck itself have to
deal with surviving the island. In
1541, a young French noblewoman
named Marguerite de La Rocque
was left for dead on the so-called
Isle of Demons in Newfoundland,
following the discovery of her love
affair with a sailor. In her account
of Marguerite’s survival, the Queen
of Navarre, also named Marguerite,
writes that all who were abandoned
on the island in punishment -
Marguerite’s lover, Marguerite’s
baby, Marguerite’s maid - died, save
for Marguerite herself. To survive,
she hunted wild beasts; years later,
Basque fishermen discovered her
and she was returned to France.
Back in her home country, writes
the Queen of Navarre, she became
a schoolteacher and settled down
in southwestern France. The rest of
her life remains unknown.
Did the Isle of Demons even ex-
ist? By the 17th century, it begins to
disappear from maps. Did Margue-
rite exist, too? A few records of her
life and voyage survive, but they’re
vague. Whatever their validity, the
story goes that Marguerite survived,
but barely. There are no shell
Castaway 110

By Shari Erickson,
www.islandstudio.com
 111 Castaway

Hers is a tale of real survival: there is little song and dance,

only snow. The white of snow, the white of polar bears, the
whites of Blackjack’s eyes as they widened, frightened, once
she realised she was alone.

spoons in this story - only the rag-
ged, desperate, human need to live.
‘How to Cook a Wolf’, indeed.
Then there’s Ada Blackjack, the
heroine of an even more extraordi-
nary tale. This one is most certainly
true. Blackjack, an Iñupiat Inuit
woman born in Alaska in 1898, was
hired as a seamstress for a Canadian
mission meant to colonise the Rus-
sian Wrangel Island, located 140
km off the coast of Siberia. She was
23. Two of her children had died,
and another needed costly medi-
cal attention. Blackjack joined the
mission in order to earn the money
needed to care for her son.
They set out. It was 1921, and
the island remained mostly un-
known. Ice fields surrounded it; fog
and snow covered the land, like the
White Witch’s curse on Narnia. But
this was no fairy tale. “When we got
to Wrangel Island,” Blackjack later
recounted, “the land looked very
large to me, but they said it was only
a small island. I thought at first that
I would turn back, but I decided it
wouldn’t be fair to the boys. Soon
after we arrive I started to sew.”
She sewed and the men ex-
plored. Spring came and passed,
as did summer, autumn - and then
winter arrived. Supplies dwin-
dled. People grew ill. Three of the
expedition members set off to find
help, leaving Blackjack to care for
E. Lorne Knight, an American crew
member who was too sick to move.
Blackjack never saw them again.
Knight died. Now, Blackjack
was alone - just her amongst the
snow and wild. White on white, her
days spent amongst ghosts. Once,
a polar bear almost killed her: “I
realised it was a polar bear and I was
four hundred yards from my tent.
I turned and ran just as hard as I
could until I got to my tent. I was
just about ready to faint when I got
there, too.”
But Blackjack survived. Hers
was a case of tenacity. She hunted
seals and avoided polar bears and
somehow was rescued in August
of 1923, when a boat arrived and
saved her. She survived, but later
died poor, scraping together enough
money to move to Nome, Alaska,
with her sons, herding reindeer and
hunting game to eke out a living.
No fabulous tall tales concerning
Blackjack’s survival were made, no
Technicolour Disney movies. Hers
is a tale of real survival: there is lit-
tle song and dance, only snow. The
white of snow, the white of polar
bears, the whites of Blackjack’s eyes
as they widened, frightened, once
she realised she was alone.
The Icelandic author Sigurjón
Sigurðsson (Sjón) wrote in The
Guardian what it’s like to live on an
island. “Being born and bred on a
small island,” he says, “is being born
and bred within most people’s liter-
ary metaphor… in the end, all of
us islanders are nothing more than
the bastard half-siblings of Cali-
ban.” The island is a metaphor. The
island is a placeholder. The island
is a paradise, but to survive we must
turn cruel, we must become some
half-mad almost-monster willing to
hunt and kill and wait. The island is
a symbol; the island is a destination,
real and unreal, that we will all visit
at some point in our lives.
The question is, do you have
what it takes to survive?
112

Maria Stone

womankind
PHOTOGRAPHERS’ AWARD V: ‘FAMILY’
We are pleased to present the winning photographer
and the finalists in the Womankind Photographers’ Award
V: Family.
The winner of Award V is photographer Maria Stone,
for her adorable portrayal of family life entitled Special
Bond Between Generations. Maria says, “This is my spe-
cial son with his devoted grandfather (my Dad) sharing a
morning cuppa in their matching pjs! They share such a
special bond. I will always cherish these moments, just as
they both do. Family is my everything and I am so blessed
to have these two in my life.”
In second place is Annette Liu’s engaging depiction
of family life. Liu regularly moves countries with her fa-
113 Womankind Photographers’ Award V
Annette Liu
ther, a diplomat, and her mother. “The photo is a reen-
actment of the first few days after our shipping container
arrived four years ago when we moved to Canberra. It
depicts a familiar scene of unpacking, something we have
had to do upon each of my father’s postings, and my fam-
ily’s ever-growing collection of books.”
Finalists in the Award include Maria Colaidis’ bril-
liant photograph of new family life; H.L. Anderson’s
lovely portrait of fatherhood Walking Down Pershing Road
with Dad.
Responsible by Louisa Clayton and Devi Lockwood’s
Isimeli’s Kindergarten Graduation, taken in Fiji, are equally
captivating.
Womankind Photographers’ Award V 114

Maria Colaidis
115 Womankind Photographers’ Award V

H.L. Anderson
Womankind Photographers’ Award V 116

Louisa Clayton

Devi Lockwood
 Photographers’ Award

EXPLORES THE
CONCEPT
OF VOCATION

AWARD VII: WIN $500 AND GET

PUBLISHED IN THE NEXT
We are looking for photographs that ISSUE OF WOMANKIND
depict the concept ‘vocation’. The word MAGAZINE
‘vocation’ means a strong desire to spend
your life doing a certain kind of work.
This may entail a particular occupation,
business, profession or calling.
Modelling shots are not appropriate. We
do not accept violent images, or images
depicting nudity or semi-nudity.
Open to readers only.

DETAILS

CLOSING DATE: 31 May 2016

FORMAT: One photograph per entry.
Entries must also include a separate
photograph of the latest edition of
Womankind.
APPLICANTS: Open to male and female
amateur and professional photographers.
FILE SIZE: Please send entries in 300dpi,
minimum 2000x2000 pixels. The winning
entries must be provided in a size sufficient
for publication.

For full details visit: womankindmag.com/award

Send to: award@womankindmag.com
OPEN TO ALL READERS
Bob Marley 118

“The day you stop racing, is the

day you win the race.”

Bob Marley
Monica Barengo
Books 120

Books

“IF YOU HAVE A GARDEN AND A LIBRARY,

YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED.”

Cicero
 121 Books

A Brief History of The Power of Habit : Why We Do

Seven Killings What We Do, and How to Change

Marlon James Charles Duhigg

Winner of the Man Booker Why do habits exist and

Prize 2015, A Brief History of how do they work? Can we
Seven Killings is inspired by change our habits? Duhigg
the day seven gunmen storm brings to life a whole new
Bob Marley’s house with ma- understanding of human
chine guns, just weeks before nature and its potential
the general election and two for transformation. He
days before Bob Marley was discusses why some people
to play ‘Smile Jamaica’. Mar- struggle to change despite
ley survived and went on to years of trying, while oth-
perform, but the following ers seem to remake them-
day he left the country and selves overnight.
didn’t return for two years.

A Short History Elizabeth Barrett

of Myth Browning
Karen Armstrong Margaret Forster

Human beings have always This biography of Elizabeth

been mythmakers. From the Barrett Browning argues that
rituals of the Palaeolithic the poet was a strong and
hunters to the ‘Great West- determined woman largely
ern Transformation’ and the responsible for her own incar-
displacement of myth by sci- ceration in Wimpole Street.
ence, the history of myth is The author traces her life
the history of humankind. from her early childhood,
Through myth - through our drawing a picture of early Vic-
stories, our beliefs, and our torian family life and aims to
attempts to understand the show that Browning was self-
world - we are linked to our willed, witty, and courageous.
ancestors and each other.
What’s on
N AT I O N A L G A L LERY O F CANADA
Ottawa, Canada
Mirrors with Memory:
Daguerreotypes from
Library and Archives
Canada
UNTIL 28 FEB 2016
The invention of the daguerreo-
type in 1839 was a revelation.
These jewel-like, reflective objects
were capable of capturing likeness-
es with incredible clarity, to the
delight and astonishment of their
viewers. This exhibition, drawn
from the collection of Library and
Archives Canada, offers exam-
ples of “Daguerreotypomania”,
a worldwide phenomenon that
lasted through the 1850s. Intimate,
detailed and captivating, these
objects provide some of the earliest
photographic glimpses of Canada.
122
W h a t ’s o n
H AY-ON-WYE
Wal es , U K
Hay Festival
26 MAY - 5 JUNE 2016
For 27 years Hay Festival has
brought together writers from
around the world to debate
and share stories at its festival
in the staggering beauty of the
Welsh Borders. Hay celebrates
great writing from poets and
scientists, lyricists and come-
dians, novelists and environ-
mentalists, and the power of
great ideas to transform our inspire revelations personal, politi-
way of thinking. The exchange cal and educational. Hay is, in Bill
of views and meeting of minds Clinton’s phrase, “The Woodstock
that these festivals create of the mind”.
SYDNEY OPERA H OUSE All About Women celebrates its fourth
year in 2016 as part of the Sydney Op-
Sydney, Australia
era House’s Ideas at the House program.
The festival aims to invigorate discus-
sion on important issues and ideas that
All About Women
matter to women, delving into global
6 MARCH 2016 and Australian perspectives.

B O TANI C PAR K
Adelaid e , A u s t r a l i a
WOMADelaide
1 1 - 1 4 M AR CH 2 0 1 6
Over the March long weekend
WOMADelaide celebrates its
20th festival in Adelaide’s stun-
ning Botanic Park. More than 30
countries represented across seven
stages showcase incredible talent
from around the globe as well as
the delights of The Planet Talks,
Artists in Conversation, Taste the
World, and the Electrolounge.
TAT E GALLERY
Lond o n, U K
Artist and Empire
UNTIL 10 APRIL 2016
In 21st century Britain, ‘empire’
is highly provocative. Its histories
123 What’s on
of war, conquest, and slavery are UNIVERSIT Y OF
difficult and painful to address, SOUT H ERN CALIFORNIA
but its legacy is everywhere and
L o s A n gel es , U S A
affects us all. Artist and Empire will
bring together extraordinary and
unexpected works to explore how
artists from Britain and around
Festival of Books
the world have responded to the APRIL 9-10, 2016
dramas, tragedies, and experiences
of the Empire.
The Festival of Books began in
1996 and has evolved to include
live bands, poetry readings, chef
demos, cultural entertainment, and
artists creating their work on-site.
There’s also a photography exhibit,
film screenings followed by Q&As,
and discussion panels on some of
today’s hottest topics. 150,000 peo-
ple attend each year from around
the world.
Documentaries 124
Documentaries
Akwantu: the Journey
Akwantu: the Journey documents the struggle for free-
dom of the Maroons of Jamaica, who were able to flee
the plantations and slave ships to form communities
in some of the most inhospitable regions of the island.
Queen Nanny, a spiritual leader, kept her people safe
by utilising effective ‘guerilla warfare’ tactics to defend
against British firepower.
Tortoises and Sea Turtles
Sea Turtles, often referred to as living fossils, are
some of the oldest living creatures on Earth. This
simple documentary, designed for children, discuss-
es the history, biology as well as the environmental
dangers facing sea turtles today.
The Secrets of Sugar
Many people identify sugar as an essential component of
great tasting foods, and of blissful culinary gratification.
Its presence is all but unavoidable, even in foods that
promise higher levels of nutritional value. The Secrets of
Sugar examines this addiction and its perilous effect on
our wellbeing.
Reggae : The Story of
Jamaican Music
This three-part documentary series first aired in 2002
on the BBC network. The documentary explores the
origins of reggae, its worldwide recognition during the
60s and 70s, and its influence on western music.
 125 Documentaries

“None but ourselves can free our minds”.

Bob Marley

Akwantu: the Journey The Secrets of Sugar

Tortoises and Sea Turtles Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music

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T O S U BS C RIBE

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2. Email us: subscribe@womankindmag.com

 127

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 129 Ithaca

ITHACA
As you set out for Ithaca
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
By C.P. Cavafy
angry Poseidon - don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvellous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

womankindmag.com