Welcome to Phoenix’s world-changing Salon

A port­manteau. A treas­ure trove. A time cap­sule. A poetry book. A diary. A photo album. Memor­ies. Dreams. Wishes. Hopes. An open letter to an unsus­pect­ing public. An intim­ate con­fes­sion to close friends. A declar­a­tion of intent. A whis­per of love. A per­sonal record. An exper­i­ment in intro­spec­tion. A per­form­ance space. A polit­ical rant. A wild yawp. Why do any of us pub­lish our words and images online? Come, dream with me.

Adventures on the coast

by | Apr 18, 2007 |

Last night, Doug and I took his new toy for a wander over the moun­tain, on wind­ing roads through red­wood forests and oak and some­thing called cha­par­ral (which I’d never head of). We even­tu­ally fol­lowed San Gregorio creek down to where it met the sea, watched the…

The work situation

by | Apr 17, 2007 |

In the end, I left so quickly most of you don’t know the cir­cum­stances. I’m on a six-month tour­ist visa, a B2, which means I can’t do work for Amer­ican com­pan­ies as an employee but I can *look* for work here and I can *do* work for Aus­tralian com­pan­ies as a freelance…

Enormity and power

by | Apr 16, 2007 |

Everything is HUGE in the USA. Walk into a store, of just about any kind, and it will be seven times the size of any Aus­tralian equi­val­ent. This does mean more of everything. It’s a guzz­ling cul­ture of unbe­liev­able mag­nitude. And I can see how it seems hard to resist…

San Gregorio

San Gregorio

by | Apr 16, 2007 | ,

Last night, Doug and I took his new toy for a wander over the moun­tain, on wind­ing roads through red­wood forests and oak and some­thing called cha­par­ral (which I’d never heard of). We even­tu­ally fol­lowed San Gregorio creek down to where it met the sea, watched the…

Safe and sound in sunny California

by | Apr 9, 2007 |

Travel is one of those lim­inal events that leads to con­tem­pla­tion out­side of the self. In the inter­sti­tial space between point A and point B any­thing is pos­sible; everything is inde­term­in­ate. You arrive at your des­tin­a­tion and life coalesces into solid­ity. My entire…

The people of the Book vs the people of books

by | Apr 6, 2007 |

I really like this post from catvin­cent on reli­gion and The Book. And I think I have a new .sig: “Those three Peoples of the Book are at war again… All three are read­ing their Book more lit­er­ally, less meta­phor­ic­ally. The pages on com­pas­sion flash by as they look…

Export permit: stamped and paid

Export permit: stamped and paid

by | Apr 5, 2007 |

One of the many things I did today was a trip out to Cus­toms House to pay for Jeze­bel’s export permit. They said they could­n’t stamp her pass­port with an offi­cial AQIS stamp, but they did stamp the inside page with a “quar­ant­ine mat­ters” stamp. For those who haven’t…

The begining of the end

by | Apr 3, 2007 |

I have just sold Als­vidir to subtle_eye (may you both scoot well) and Serendip­ity is in the shop having a ser­vice. A note for those who don’t know already: Serendip­ity will be avail­able for bor­row­ing in the Mel­bourne area and for longer-haul trips. She has a bed in…

Ah, Howard. Crippling democracy one farce at a time.

by | Apr 3, 2007 |

From p_cat: HAVE YOU ENROLLED TO VOTE? From April 2007, the Howard Gov­ern­ment will be making it harder to enrol to vote. As of this date you will require numer­ous forms of ID and wit­nesses – a ”100 point” check, sim­ilar to open­ing a bank account – just to ensure that…

Go Max!!

by | Apr 3, 2007 |

From my fab­ulously tal­en­ted friend, xammy: Just let­ting you know that My Home, Your War will be screen­ing on SBS this Tues­day (April 3) at 8:30pm (Cut­ting Edge slot). Kylie Grey and I filmed this pro­ject in Bad­h­dad just after the US inva­sion, and we wit­nessed the…

Home stretch

Home stretch

by | Apr 1, 2007 |

I feel like I’m in the home stretch now. I haven’t quite said good­bye to Mel­bourne yet, but the rounds are start­ing. Friday was an intim­ate party at my place, excel­lent people, the best going-away present ever and a world-record attempt for number of people in my…

Farewell, Sydney

by | Mar 26, 2007 |

There are a couple of people I’m really sad I didn’t get to see this week­end. One in par­tic­u­lar, I’ve been call­ing every other day for about four weeks to talk about moving but he hasn’t called back at all. I’m now pro­cessing the sense of change. My best friend,…

Phoenix Emberstone

Phoenix Emberstone

pas­sion­ate polit­ical poet

These are poems and mean­der­ings that made their way to the page. I’d love to hear what you think of them. Want to get in touch? Drop me a line!

Photo of Rosanne Bersten

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I am also known as Ro Ber­sten, a com­mu­nic­a­tions spe­cial­ist with more than 20 years’ exper­i­ence. See my CV and pro­fes­sional projects.