Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Uncategorized Islands Andy Quan I am sleeping tonight side by side with my mother on spring and feather, matching queen-sized mattresses, in the adjoining room my brother and his family. We’ve escaped Vancouver where father has died for Victoria’s quaint tea and saucers, halibut and chips, cream-filled chocolates, Salish art, a visit to eldest brother’s duplex, parks for the grandkids to run free. Distract us. Today, I leveraged grief for a table at a packed restaurant. How long can we get away with that? Mom ponders. Now, she surprises me, channel- surfing: CSI New York, Evening News. Rest is all I want, the narrow corridor between our beds, thirty-five years between us, our islands of sorrow barely visible to each other but I understand my role as company, as witness. Andy Quan Andy Quan is the author of four books, including two books of poetry, the most recent of which is Bowling Pin Fire. He has lived in Sydney since 1999 where he edits, writes, cycles, facebooks, watches reality TV cooking shows and coaxes rainbow lorikeets to his balcony. Visit him here at www.andyquan.com. More by Andy Quan › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 1 December 20231 December 2023 · History ‘We’re doing everything but treaty’: Law reform and sovereign refusal in the colonial debtscape Maria Giannacopoulos I coined the concept of the colonial debtscape while working to understand the relation between debt and sovereignty in the wake of the 2007 Global Financial crisis. Despite the referendum held in Greece in 2015 where the people voted against austerity, austerity as punishment, was imposed anyway. As this was a colonising move, that is, the imposition of an external and foreign law on local populations against their will, it was to Aboriginal scholars here that I turned to begin to put the pieces together. First published in Overland Issue 228 30 November 202330 November 2023 · Urbanism The Plains exposes the psychic terrain of Victoria’s highways Fred Pryce The Plains charts the psychic terrain of the freeway in miniature, peeling back the lid of the private vehicle to expose just one of the millions of dramas taking place in simultaneity, severed from one another yet still part of the same city-wide traffic ballet.
