AustLit

'There are two ways to walk from my workplace to the post office. If you take the long way, you can walk past the old-fashioned bookbinding office where the dog with bowed front legs lives. and ere are pedestrian lights on the long way. The shortcut takes you down a narrow laneway, behind other offices and studios, past old terraces tucked away, facing inwards, oblivious to the traffic just around the corner. Along this laneway lives an enormous, thriving bougainvillea vine. As the city warms it grows noticeably thicker and more determined. It is sturdy and wide and appears so solid and plump that you might imagine one of Anne Geddes' babies curling up there for a coral-tinted nap. Is there a picture of early infancy more dreamlike, more implausibly serene than the ones Anne Geddes staged? The babies of that world do not scream, or cry, or ask for anything at all. they are chubby and quiet, they are still, and they sleep. They appear safe, as though their future is assured.' (Publication abstract)