Emerging from the parentheses

Issue 43, November 2025

The semester is over and the weeks since have had a sluggish quality as I wade through a molasses of hours in a state far removed from the cleaning, decluttering and gardening frenzy I’d imagined between the end of uni and the start of December.

Even my latest attempt at Chani’s breakthrough course has been my slowest, with a long pause between days 9 and 10, and now stasis between 10 and 11 as we inch towards the third new moon since day 1 of this iteration of the course. Yet it has been the most profound to date, forcing an encounter with my shadow self and uncanny replays of old stories with new actors.

The molasses has become a little less viscous this weekend, with two mowing sessions and the beginning of a long awaited planting in my front garden inspired by a local nursery’s native tubestock sale (not Black Friday related—pretty sure the cash in a…