Trying to write this has left me agitated.
False start, false start, false start.
Perception. Impression. Connection. I’ve tasked myself to write about me; what has shaped me, what has made me, who I think might be watching, and what I would like them to know.
But there’s a version of myself reading over my shoulder, watching as I type. And she’s eighteen and she’s twenty-five, twenty-two, and she’s even eleven years old. And right now I’m sitting by the Brunswick River, but then the breeze shifts directions and I’m smelling oak thistles on the baseball fields in Providence, or the warm rancid subway fumes from grates at my feet.
It smells like New York City smog as I watch the cormorants diving deeper into the river, moving slowly with the low tide. The late afternoon is overcast and the water is dark, reflecting the green tint of trees at the shoreline and what little light is left.
I thought I could write this, at twenty-seven. But these girls at my shoulder, they keep reading along. And we wince together in hot blushes. Back to rooms where we missed the mark. Why did you say that? Back to his car. Did you see the way he looked at you? Back to that meeting. Is that really what you wore?
I can’t write this about me without writing this about them. And they’re listening, they remember it in sharp detail.
“To notice the way we show up, the way others perceive us,” a well-meaning someone once explained to me, “is self-preservation. It’s your subconscious taking care of you”.
Taking care of me? I’m not so sure. Let me put it to you like this:
There’s a version of me that’s nineteen and she’s somewhere on Bedford Avenue just underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, frantically making it through her first shifts at a swanky Williamsburg cafe-meets-jazz-club-meets-vinyl-shop-meets-you-get-the-gist. She’s fresh to New York, fresh to dressing the part, fresh to heartbreak and side-eyes from strangers, bad first impressions and crying and kissing in public.
False start, false start, false start.
Perception. Impression. Connection. I’ve tasked myself to write about me; what has shaped me, what has made me, who I think might be watching, and what I would like them to know.
But there’s a version of myself reading over my shoulder, watching as I type. And she’s eighteen and she’s twenty-five, twenty-two, and she’s even eleven years old. And right now I’m sitting by the Brunswick River, but then the breeze shifts directions and I’m smelling oak thistles on the baseball fields in Providence, or the warm rancid subway fumes from grates at my feet.
It smells like New York City smog as I watch the cormorants diving deeper into the river, moving slowly with the low tide. The late afternoon is overcast and the water is dark, reflecting the green tint of trees at the shoreline and what little light is left.
I thought I could write this, at twenty-seven. But these girls at my shoulder, they keep reading along. And we wince together in hot blushes. Back to rooms where we missed the mark. Why did you say that? Back to his car. Did you see the way he looked at you? Back to that meeting. Is that really what you wore?
I can’t write this about me without writing this about them. And they’re listening, they remember it in sharp detail.
“To notice the way we show up, the way others perceive us,” a well-meaning someone once explained to me, “is self-preservation. It’s your subconscious taking care of you”.
Taking care of me? I’m not so sure. Let me put it to you like this:
There’s a version of me that’s nineteen and she’s somewhere on Bedford Avenue just underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, frantically making it through her first shifts at a swanky Williamsburg cafe-meets-jazz-club-meets-vinyl-shop-meets-you-get-the-gist. She’s fresh to New York, fresh to dressing the part, fresh to heartbreak and side-eyes from strangers, bad first impressions and crying and kissing in public.
[Read..]
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables
Charlie Trenerry
11.08.2025
This feeling of burn out. Akin to scratching at bare cave walls with fingernails bleeding, cuts and scabs days old, trying to leave a mark on an unmarkable place. A trapped snarling tigress; exhausted skin and bones, angry eyes glinting beneath thunderous brows, milk leaking from teats, belly still tender.
[Read..]
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables
Charlie Trenerry
11.08.2025
It’s not often that you wander (as I’ve mentioned I am wont to do) into your favourite local bookstore and are remembered well enough to be asked if you’ve read the new release from an author almost forty years dead.
[Read..]
Charlie Trenerry
11.08.2025
It’s not often that you wander (as I’ve mentioned I am wont to do) into your favourite local bookstore and are remembered well enough to be asked if you’ve read the new release from an author almost forty years dead.
[Read..]
Too Precious
Kate Middeleer
09.06.202
The unsettling feeling of screeching to a halt. And unanswered emails.
[Read..]
Kate Middeleer
09.06.202
The unsettling feeling of screeching to a halt. And unanswered emails.
[Read..]
Ours Everywhere
Thomas Hannah
09.06.2025
“Tu es partout”
Prose and experimental video.
Thomas Hannah
09.06.2025
“Tu es partout”
Prose and experimental video.
To Love The Empty Cup; An interview with Aafia Ali Shah
Thomas Hannah
22.04.2025
A philosophical look at the depth of personal identity and spirit, and its colourful translation onto canvas.
[Read..]
Do not be afraid of experimentation
Beba Rizzaro
28.03.2025
A graphic designer encourages you to play.
[Read..]
28.03.2025
A graphic designer encourages you to play.
[Read..]
What is Community?
Sabastian Fardell
11.03.2025
Northern Rivers Community Photo Club.
[Read..]
Stephanie Alvarez x Julie Rrap
14.02.2025
An open look at vulnerability and love, vulnerability in love. Poetry from the Northern Rivers, visuals from the
Sydney MCA Gallery.
[Read..]
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea
Charlie Trenerry
06.01.2025
Instagram would have definitely given Jean-Paul Sartre motion sickness.
[Read..]
Trump got re-elected, so we went to life-drawing
Natalie Woods
01.12.2024
HOTMESS. A little bit surrealistic, a little bit raunch, and a whole lot of incredible costumes.
[Read..]
Sabastian Fardell
11.03.2025
Northern Rivers Community Photo Club.
[Read..]
Stephanie Alvarez x Julie Rrap
14.02.2025
An open look at vulnerability and love, vulnerability in love. Poetry from the Northern Rivers, visuals from the
Sydney MCA Gallery.
[Read..]
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea
Charlie Trenerry
06.01.2025
Instagram would have definitely given Jean-Paul Sartre motion sickness.
[Read..]
Trump got re-elected, so we went to life-drawing
Natalie Woods
01.12.2024
HOTMESS. A little bit surrealistic, a little bit raunch, and a whole lot of incredible costumes.
[Read..]
Friends With Grain
Kate Middeleer
29.09.2024
A motion-picture community lab, looping systems, and experimental film-making.
[Read..]
Kate Middeleer
29.09.2024
A motion-picture community lab, looping systems, and experimental film-making.
[Read..]
Wispy Dreads South
Miica Balint, film McTavish, photography Jill Bontempo
29.09.2024
Wispy speaks to the secluded breaks
of our mountainous Antarctic-nearing relative.
[Read..]
Greet Me With An Open Palm
Daniel Stevenson
29.09.2024
To lay it all out, to simply be.
[Read..]
Time To Grow DownAsher Packman, photgraphy Marta FDZ
29.09.2024
A TedX talk at the height of the pandemic, grief, milk, and a roadside pickup.
[Read..]
A Lonely Girl Is A Dangerous Thing
Charlie Trenerry
09.09.2024
An unapologetic look into the gruesome and beautiful guilt of female desire.
[Read..]
Il Dolce Far Niente (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing)
Sabastian Fardell
04.09.2024
Panarea Island in pursuit of nothing.
[Read..]
In Preparation
Kate Middeleer
07.08.2024
A personal essay on cause and effect and Joan Didion.
[Read..]
The laying On Of Hands
Charlie Trenerry
08.08.2024
Charlie replaces food money for books this
week. Alan Bennett.
[Read..]
Streetscapes and Sagga-Firing
Kate Middeleer
04.08.2024
“You have to have thick skin to be a ceramicist.”
[Read..]
Duck Rodeo
Jordan Rochfort, photography Miica Balint 19.07.2024
An introduction to the new Art Gallery in Lismore, Flying Arch.
[Read..]
Joel Melrose Kate Middeleer
05.07.2024
Tattooist. Designer. Painter. Sculpter. In conversation with our neighbor,
Joel of House House.
[Read..]
Joel of Blanc Studio
Kate Middeleer
21.06.2024
A serendipitous meeting on the beach, and now we’re eating soup with one of the mag’s first partners and fast friend, Joel.
[Read..]
Bayou’s Charlie and Tom
Miica Balint
21.06.2024
Tom used to roll through Bayou asking for a job. Now he owns it. And lives above it.
Longtime partner and friend of the mag, he gives us our film and guilts us to surf.
[Read..]
Diary of the Northeast Side
Scout O’Donogue
25.06.2024
A guppy in brackish water. Scout tells of her transition to life in London.
[Read..]
Scout O’Donogue
25.06.2024
A guppy in brackish water. Scout tells of her transition to life in London.
[Read..]
Quantum Organica Part Two
Dane Harrison
05.07.2024
05.07.2024
More on quantum physics and carp
ponds in Indonesia.
[Read..]
Let us Compare Mythologies
Charlie Trenerry
06.06.2024
Each word and letter and line of illustration belongs where it lays on the page. And they will absolutely break your heart because of it. Leonard Cohen.
[Read..]
ponds in Indonesia.
[Read..]
Let us Compare Mythologies
Charlie Trenerry
06.06.2024
Each word and letter and line of illustration belongs where it lays on the page. And they will absolutely break your heart because of it. Leonard Cohen.
[Read..]
Quanta Organica
Dane Harrison
14.06.2024
14.06.2024
Quantum physics and carp ponds in
Indonesia. One fifth philosophy,
three fifths fiction, one fifth
quantum physics.
[Read..]
Indonesia. One fifth philosophy,
three fifths fiction, one fifth
quantum physics.
[Read..]
In Conversation with Karlee Mackie
Kate Middeleer
20.04.2024
The home studio of one of the best.
Aliens, mould, exhibitions, surf, vaginas.
With added joyful insight from Karlee’s
son Koda.
[Read..]
The Art Exhibition That
Commemorated
our Launch
Miica Balint, Kate Middeleer
05.05.2024
A look into twelve artists in our region. We figured there is no more apt a launch to a collaborative magazine, than by way of a group art exhibition.
Commemorated
our Launch
Miica Balint, Kate Middeleer
05.05.2024
A look into twelve artists in our region. We figured there is no more apt a launch to a collaborative magazine, than by way of a group art exhibition.
The Little Poet Book Store
Teagan Kruse
17.04.2024
The tale of the eclect ic bookshop that was most often everything but that.
[Read..]
Immortal Soil
Scout O’Donoghue
10.02.2024
Earth is their church and nature their playground.
[Read..]
Letters to a Young Poet
Charlie Trenerry
12.02.2024
12.02.2024
One of those little books that may change your life. Rainer Maria Rilke.
[Read..]
It’s Maeve
Kate Middeleer
04.03.2024
A lady who is not dictated by any
one job, but does many, really well.
[Read..]
[Read..]
It’s Maeve
Kate Middeleer
04.03.2024
A lady who is not dictated by any
one job, but does many, really well.
[Read..]
Balance and Breath
Kate Middeleer
25.04.2024
25.04.2024
Martial arts and health fads.
[Read..]
[Read..]
info@northernrip.com
info@northernrip.com