Category Archives: Bondi Beach

unremembered love

We belong to the world and are of the world because our formative experience was one of relation and involvement – with the maternal body, and through it, with the world. It is from that primary relation that we derive our ability to love, to feel loved and to be with. But we don’t remember it. We don’t remember the oneness of the womb or our infantile intertwinning with our mother’s bodies because memories belong to subjects and this foundational love was laid down before we became identifiable subjects [bounded subjects before an objective world].

Memory is about parts, separated and put back together. Member, dismember, remember. It is the job of the subject to undertake that ‘recollection’ of discrete events and experiences and forge them into a coherent narrative. But the primary experience I am describing happens to a self that doesn’t have parts, in a world that is without separations. Continue reading unremembered love

Bondi: Yooka Symonds

‘There, but for the grace of God, go I’

Renowned Bondi figure, Bill ‘Yooka’ Symonds, died in September 2015 at the age of 93. His twin brother, Curly, died 6 days later. In 2007, we interviewed Yooka in connection with research we were doing at the Norman Andrews House, a Bondi drop in centre for the homeless. We asked Yooka to tell us about his voluntary work (for which he received an OAM).
Continue reading Bondi: Yooka Symonds