Mobways, time spans everywhen1. Time is not a straight line with a start and finish – an individual beginning on a journey from one end, facing the future, back to the past, their position along the line as they travel the present. Nah, not mobways.
Some mob describe our time2 as spirals, circling around and back over and over. Our time and all within it is as alive as we are. It is omnipresent, it breathes with us, breathes as us. It is all. Always all. No pastpresentfuture. Only all.
If we were to be placed in pastpresentfuture time, if we had to locate our being within it, we would not be the present. We would not be the border between the past, and a future that we definitively travel towards.
And if we were placed in pastpresentfuture time,
which is to say if we were to try to translate our ways of being into the language and epistemologies of the coloniser,
or rather,
to be subjected to the scalpel3,
a colonial project,
a weapon
of epistemic violence4,
that dissects and distinguishes and defines,
by choice or by force or by something in between,
we would be angled towards the ‘past’. Towards what is known so as to know to not know, to never assume to know. To face towards the future would be to assume to know. And to assume to know is violence.
And so, mobways, to oracle is to remember.
But cripways, I do not remember.
Cripways, I can’t tell if it’s my autonomic nervous system, or shifts in barometric pressure, or trauma, or the heat, or degranulated mediators, or the tomato I ate earlier, or the dead tissue in my high left frontal lobe, or my thalamus, or gravity, or any other number of things, that disrupts my remembering on any given day.
Often there’s no point trying to assign responsibility to a single perpetrator anyways. Always all? Only all?
The colony taught me to locate my problem, my pain, within myself. The colony taught me to wage a war on my body. To slice it up into distinct systems that I had to check reports and Google to confirm, to remember, to write into this piece. And in the spirit of this logic, a lone perpetrator must be identified, and found, hidden, lurking, as only the guilty do, and put on trial, reprimanded, punished. Naughty. Bad body. Your fault. You did this to us.
In doing so, the colony absolves responsibility for its violence, disappears into the soil (our soil, our Kin), only mist (manufactured – not our mist, not our Kin) remaining, hovering above the soil’s surface, until it too fades away. Such a gentle performance for such a violent Act.
A tale as old as time.
But not our time.
A time that pins us against walls, puts us in boxes, throws us in cells, hides us, chokes us, sends us home before we’re ready. The time that put me to sleep and then discharged me with injuries that weren’t there before I went under, but that it couldn’t have done. Which is the same time that took a child from his mother because he was acting up, put him in a boy’s home, horrors known later reduced to Royal Commission findings. The same time that pointed to the child’s bloodline to explain his shit parenting, called me disordered for being subjected to it. The time that wrote the book on the same disappearing act it claims typifies Black fatherhood when the child performs it. Where do you think he learned it from? How old is that time, really, anyways?
I try not to break apart my body into blame anymore.
But I do not always remember not to.
Oracle, to remember, to oracle, as in a verb, as in a doing word, an action, a choice. Not merely a passive feeling or state of being.
Not remember, as in the absence of a choice, as in the removal of choice. A violation of autonomy. A violation of sovereignty.
Who is to blame for not remembering? Who violates such sovereignty? Who cracks and fractures and dissects and siloes and pulls apart and butchers and shatters and rips and takes and takes and takes and—
The mist evaporates.
I am the only one here.
As I write this, blood has started trickling down from my left nostril.
Is this the fault of my nose? My blood? My fingernail, the one that may have scratched the inside of my nostril? My body, sullied by clopidogrel and aspirin, weakened, useless, malfunctioning in the 34-degree heat?
This isn’t a metaphor.
I need to go clean this shit up.
What is mobways anyways, hey? Is it, too, a product of the scalpel? One sometimes named ‘pan-Aboriginality’? There is no one mobway. I bear the blood of a Country that this body has never known. Was born outways. Grew up on that one up there Country. But not there anymore. Living down here on this one Country. But also spent time out on that there Country, in between this one and up there. Taught mobways by Country and Kin from all over. All with their own relationships with the whens and wheres and whos of their trajectories. So my mobways is a bitza diaspora mobways. It is mine and mine only, in the same way that it is, in fact, not just mine at all. But all. Always all. Only all.
If it doesn’t make sense, I know I’m doing it justice.
If it’s frustrating for the white reader, good.
If it’s a bad explanation, shit writing, poor expression, contrived, lazy, then what the fuck is:
Small 4mm restricted diffusion in the high left frontal lobe white matter favours a small lacunar infarct. No significant mass effect. Basal cisterns are preserved and no shift in midline structures or hydrocephalus. Unremarkable MRA TOF.
Mobile interatrial septum and patent foramen ovale with significant right to left shunt. Strong positive bubble study, with right to left shunting detected at rest and post Valsalva.
Baseline tilting showed marked postural hypotension. Supine blood pressure was 130 mmHg with a heat rate of 90 bpm in sinus rhythm. Vasodepressor hypotensive pre-syncope.
The PFO was closed under TOE and fluoroscopic guidance with a guide wire. A 25 mm PFO occluder was then delivered across the defect and deployed under TOE and fluoroscopic guidance. Atrial tissue was noted between both discs throughout deployment. Following deployment the device appeared stable and well seated without interference to the aortic root or mitral valve.
Oh, no, that’s just very specialised knowledge.
You just don’t understand.
Not all.
Never all.
Only some.
Only few.
Alright.
So, mobways I oracle, but cripways I do not?
Well, no. To say so would be to succumb to the scalpel again. Same scalpel, though disguised. Always same. Always all. Only all.
There’s plenty I don’t remember mobways, too. And there’s plenty I do remember cripways. Because I have it written down.
Memory and trauma under anaesthetic – is it better to not remember even though the body does? Relationality/relativity of memory b/w traumatised patients and traumatising healthcare ‘professionals’.
Figure out who my LAC is & link in w them/their org re reviewing my stuff before it’s submitted & ongoing advocacy etc. I also need to look into specifics around cultural support & advocacy (like I want actual mob not just someone “trained” in “cultural safety” but idk how realistic that is) and support that is queer/trans confident/competent/safe.
Medications
Aspirin – can decrease blood pressure when taken before bed
Quetiapine – can exacerbate high or low blood pressure
Ritalin – can increase blood pressure
Reandron – can increase blood pressure
Depo provera – no significant impact on blood pressure
17/09 7:00AM arrival
Building A level 2 green couch
Fasting from midnight
Nurse will call on Wednesday
Discharged 6 hours post-procedure
(procedure 8-10ish) – somewhere between 2-4
Bring medicare
Will go on a second blood thinner post-surgery
If I die
If i have another stroke in my sleep and die tell redacted it was worth it for the opportunity to know a love like theirs and that I’m so sorry they have to experience this pain again
Don’t smoke weed again. It’ll make u feel like shit.
I’m too scared to talk to people about my feelings because they won’t know how to reply so I’m writing them here instead
Being forced to confront my own mortality is overwhelmingly terrifying and physically debilitating. It feels like a trauma response.
I am scared because I don’t know how long I have left to love redacted. I only want for them to be happy. I want to be here to make them happy.
What if I die before redacted? He won’t understand why I left and never came home.
I am scared I will respond by either doing absolutely nothing, or trying to make changes so drastic that I end up doing more damage (terrified of my mental health either way).
I’ve worked so so so hard to get to where I am but I still have so far to go. I want to live long enough to make a meaningful contribution to community.
I’m always thinking about and planning for the future. Living in ideas about the future. I don’t want to die waiting for my life to happen.
I could’ve died because of medical negligence. I may still.
I believe that applying for disability is the best thing for me. It will allow me to save a good amount of money for moving to melbourne and my future studies which will make me much more comfortable going into university. it will also allow me to earn enough income in order to satisfy the requirements of living on campus, which is the reason my application was previously denied. Finally, I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of working at this point in time. It is very anxiety inducing and not something I think I’m capable of. However, I do aspire to get a job when my mental health is somewhat better. I can work up to 15 hours a week/fortnight? while receiving disability benefits which I think is ideal for the less stressful environment I need to learn more about my recently diagnosed mental illnesses and how to manage them. It also, again, allows for more time building my experience and skills via volunteer work and extra curricular activities such as theatre club.
I’ve never been so deeply genuinely sorry about something as I am for being mentally ill.
I think about you constantly. In all states of rationality. Yet in each of these states, whether during a hellbrain meltdown, a hypomanic frenzy or a sensible calm, I come to the same conclusion, I make the same deductions.
Maybe no matter what state I’m in, I’ll never be able to consider the situation rationally. Maybe I’m completely wrong.
All I’m certain about is that I yearn for the day that I can stop thinking about it. The day that the monster in my stomach can cease to consume me from the inside out when you enter my mind. The day that you don’t appear vividly in my nightmares. The day that my view of you isn’t skewed by the persistent inkling that you do not give a single fuck about me. Even if only for 24 hours.
Years of crip knowing, crip being – cripways. Fixed in place and time by a date written above, as if an overseer. As if an oracle. And if a date is an oracle, and to oracle is to remember, and the past is time, and time is all, always all, only all, and it breathes with me, it breathes as me, then I am time, then I am oracle, I do oracle, tracing cripways each time I mark paper with pen, write thoughts in phone notes.
I do not pretend to like or agree with all of the remembering. I do not pretend that I don’t sometimes wince at it. But I do not blame the knowledge. I do not blame the author. I do not blame the oracle. To oracle is to know pain. I hold the pain with love, with care.
This is not just cripways.
Mobwaysiscripwaysismobways. Always one. Always all.
Reread those notes and tell me you don’t feel the colonial stench wafting from them, hard and thick, hitting with a sharp sting.
Reread those notes and tell me you can identify where mobways begin and where cripways end.
Tell me you see clear borders and boundaries between The Colonial Violence and The Ableist Violence.
Tell me it doesn’t make sense, it’s lazy writing, it’s pastpresentfuture, it’s some, only some, only few.
Gorn.
Wield the scalpel.
I dare you.
VI.
If a tree falls in a forest,
And the tree was Throwing Leaves5
Before it fell, and while Throwing Leaves,
The tree saw death in a Blackfulla brain,
But did not tell for longtime,
Held in, sharp breath, for longtime,
And if the tree, once fallen,
Had Throwing Leaves stolen
By a thief so clever, so devious,
She robbed the dead before joining them,
Robbed the living once beyond them,
Robbed the tree of its name,
Declared herself in its place,
Who in the tree, peeled back a mask,
Once obscured by Leaves, now bare,
Revealing a mirror that owned the secret,
Does the tree fall mobways or cripways?
I.
Hi.
It’s me again.
I’m writing so that you can remember.
So that you can oracle.
Mobways.
Cripways.
Allways.
When I have a lapse in memory that feels scarier than usual, I often try to recall whether it’s of a severity that I experienced pre-stroke. But I did not know that I would have a stroke at 21.
Or was it 20?
20.6
I did not know that I would have a stroke at 20 before I had one. So I did not write down anything about whether I attempted tasks multiple times within short periods only to realise I’d already done them, over and over. I didn’t record whether I’d ever been convinced that something I had just written was written by someone else, because I had no recollection of writing it, and it didn’t seem like something I’d write. I don’t know if I ever reread pages of a book to find I’d somehow misread most of it.
But I know now. And this knowledge terrifies me. Because I wonder about what else I should be writing down. I wonder what else I’m depriving you of because I don’t know, right now, at this moment, that it’s something I should record.
I’m sorry there’s so much of yourself that is unfamiliar and unknown and unexplained because I didn’t know to write it down.
I don’t know whether I should tell you that my eyesight has gotten noticeably worse in the past 6 months, and I always have to wear my glasses now. I don’t know whether I should tell you, because I’m sure it’s just because I started reading again, so my eyes are working a lot harder than they used to.
I don’t know whether I should tell you that I’m sitting at the kitchen table in my Always Was shorts and recently-cropped Mitski shirt, and that the back of the chair is scratching up against the gap between them.
That I’m listening to the carbonated bubbles of my Vanilla Coke burst inside the can less than a metre away. Counting the seconds between pops like lightning to measure how flat it is.
That I’m eating a gross, grey TV dinner–a vegan shepherd’s pie that’s been sitting in the freezer since I bought it when I was terrified that I was going to get COVID. Almost exactly a year ago now. I lathered it in shredded cheese to try disguise the look and textures I know I’ll hate.
I feel like I should tell you that I know my heart has felt funny in ways that it didn’t before surgery.
I get the sense that this is something you should remember, because it is so vivid to me now, but I don’t want to assume. I also don’t want to underestimate the power those doctors hold over you, and your memory and sense of self.
The medic alert bracelet on my wrist still reads redacted.
Please don’t forget that that’s not your name anymore.
Not an end.
Darcy Hytt is a storyteller living on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Their practice navigates a space between the lived reality of colonial violence, and the dreaming of a liberation beyond the colony’s imagination. Darcy can be found on Instagram at @wetdirt2008.
1 ‘Everywhen’ is a term first used by white Australian anthropologist W.E.H Stanner to describe mob conceptions of time, particularly in relation to our Dreamings. (Though, from my understanding, Stanner’s observations and opinions on ‘Australian Aboriginal societies’ were predominantly based on mobs in the so-called Northern Territory.) The term ‘everywhen’ has been broadly re/used, re/imagined, re/defined, and re/located since its first recorded use in 1953. As colonised communities, we often exercise power and sovereignty in re/claiming and re/appropriating the language and conceptualisations of the coloniser.
2 This is only one mob way of knowing time. We have many times and even more ways of understanding our times.
3 he idea of the scalpel comes from Unflattening by Nick Sousanis (2015).
4 See: ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988).
5 Throwing Leaves, or ‘Maroondah’, belongs to the Woi-wurrung Language of the Wurundjeri Peoples and Country.
6 I was, in fact, 21.
demos journal acknowledges the Ngambri and Ngunnawal people on whose lands this journal is made and imagined. Sovereignty of these lands was never ceded. Always Was Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.
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