The first time I saw the snake charmer was in a bazaar in the part of the city they warned us to avoid at all costs. He played his hypnotic melody and the python rose and swayed in time.

The sun was fierce, it was nearly noon and the smell of meat about to turn permeated the marketplace.

There is a Japanese saying that awareness is the key to survival.

I was acutely aware that my money was about to run out and that I had not made any plans other than wanting to be in this place at this time.

I felt for the note in my pocket, recalling the many warnings of pickpockets targeting tourists, and I knew I stood out by my dress and the colour of my skin. The three zeros that followed the number five may have looked promising at first glance, as did the lucky elephant motif on the mauve background, but I knew it was not enough to get me by for much longer.

I couldn’t afford to buy anything, as this was all I had left for food until I could meet up with my travelling companions, who had stayed in the relative safety of the town.

I stopped at a hut where a man was spruiking drinks, which may or may not have been alcoholic. I didn’t care, I just needed something to quench my thirst. As I turned to enter, I felt something brush against my leg and I spun around. Although I couldn’t see anyone, I felt a shiver; suddenly it was cold.

I put my hand into my pocket and the note was gone! In its place was something metallic. I pulled it out and gazed at a red sequined hair scrunchie.

This did not belong to me, my hair is cropped short and spikey.

I began to panic, but as I felt the tiny spheres and marveled at their ruby colour a wave of happiness spread over me. I looked around for the donor-thief, but the bustling crowd made seeking him out as impossible as paying for a drink.

I rejoined the throng, until finally I reached a space where the stalls blended into shanty-studded laneways.

The sun blazed and my shirt was dripping with sweat. I could hear the vague lilt of the snake charmer’s spell, then time seemed to stand still and the only sound was the ringing in my ears, as the sky exploded and the sun was nothing but a dirty orange splodge behind the clouds of smoke, ash and debris that filled the air.

There were people lying prone and bleeding in the dust, and others were running in my direction, away from the bazaar. They were screaming, I could tell by their open mouths and anguished faces, but I could hear nothing. It was almost impossible to breathe. I was aware of a tugging on my sleeve and a child of about ten beckoning me to follow her.

She wove in and out of the sea of panic, all the time turning to make sure I was still in sight. Eventually she stopped and waited in front of a ragged, tent-like building. Taking my hand, she led me inside. The last thing I can remember was the array of coloured sequins, which hung from the beams like rainbows.

My mother must have been 24 when she married. I know this because the date is inscribed in her wedding ring, which later became mine. She was barely 30 when her husband, her four-year-old son, her baby daughter, father and brother were killed in a head-on accident near Barham, on a straight stretch of road on a fine afternoon. My mother was holding the baby girl. It was the 1950s in the days of bench seats in cars and no seatbelts. They were returning from an Anzac Day picnic. Her father was driving when they hit a drunk driver coming the other way. My mother woke up in hospital and asked where her family were. The nurse said they were all dead.

I think of that scene sometimes. The nervous nurse. My sedated mother. Coming out of her shock and with barely a scratch. Her mother had also been in the accident and was in another part of the country hospital, quietly fighting for life with half the top of her head missing.

Months later, my mother and grandmother finally out of hospital, they holed up at home. Friends and neighbours delivered food. They couldn’t face seeing anyone else. Eventually the town GP came to visit and insisted that my grandmother go back to playing golf, and that my mother go back to work. She’d given up working in the bank when she got married. My mother said she never forgot the first time they walked down the street. Everyone that saw them stopped to stare.

Years went by and my mother eventually met my father. He was a farmer, a kind and empathetic man who said he didn’t mind when my mother said she couldn’t face having children again. He understood. He was happy to have her. But a few years later my sister came along, and then me. Every Anzac Day, on the anniversary, my mother would take to her bed and wouldn’t come out. My father shooed us away and said she had a migraine, but my sister and I knew it was the day of mourning and didn’t complain. We had known the story of the accident for as long as we could remember. A framed portrait of the curly haired boy, a cherub named Andrew, hung on my parent’s bedroom wall. There were no photos to frame of the baby girl, Merrilee. I tried not to think of my mother’s sadness. Without the death of these children, my sister and I would not have lived.

Years later my mother died from cancer, after a life long with laughter and friendship and sadness and regret, a divorce from my father, hard years on the farm and then illness that scared her and made her weak and thin. I was in her country town, visiting the graves of the people I’d never known but felt like I had, going through council records and microfiche at the library, reading about the accident, trying to bring closure. I was taking a while on the microfiche, and could see an old man waiting to use it. I apologised and said I wouldn’t be long. He asked what I was doing and I told him a little. He probed further and then revealed that he had been best friends with my mother’s brother, the nine-year-old who had died in the accident. He had been in scouts with John.

This man had been at the funeral, a service for all five, held in a local church. He was with all the other scouts, dressed in uniform. It was the biggest funeral the town had ever seen. Over 1000 attended, spilling outside the church. There were 350 floral tributes. More than 200 cars followed the five coffins to the cemetery. John’s teachers and headmaster carried his coffin. The old man remembered the day of the accident, when every ambulance in town had gone screaming down the main street and he knew something terrible had happened. He said John was very smart and an excellent swimmer. I realised it was the first I knew anything about him. He still had a bracelet that John won in a swimming competition. He said he would post it to me. Six weeks later the package arrived. There was the bracelet worn by my uncle, my mother’s brother. I held onto it like a sacred item.

It’s been almost 12 years since my mother died and I think about her every day. I always remember her smiling. Despite everything that happened in her life, she always smiled. I remember that about her most of all.

            The first time I turned into a horse it was only from the waist down. I still had arms, then. But my bottom half was unmistakably horse: stippled silver and cream, smooth and glossy. When I was annoyed, my tail – a white-blonde, though I was dark as a pirate – flicked back and forth.

My husband saw what had happened. He looked over the top of his paper while I brewed the tea, circling the leaves in the fat pretty pot, and said: ‘a lady walks with a light step.’

Something his mother says, I’m sure of it.

It was true that my tread was heavier; when I walked down the corridor, the people downstairs hit the ceiling with brooms. There is a Japanese saying: a heavy step means a heavy heart. I do not know that this is true. I never liked my thighs, my calves, when they were slender and quiet. To be honest, I was sorry they came back.

The second time I turned into a horse, only my head remained human. Later that day, I was making dinner for my husband and his friends. They were playing dice around our kitchen table, smoking and throwing down two dollar and five dollar bills as if they were nothing.

‘You are clumsy,’ my husband said, as I tried to bring the food to the table using my teeth. ‘A woman should be graceful.’

The next day, when I woke up a woman, I waited until my husband had left for work and then made droppings in our garden. It seemed a more pleasant way of undertaking the task. Besides, by then I had become used to it. After I became a horse, I never had trouble loosening my bowels the way I once had. The aperture opened, shut, without effort or resistance.

The woman from downstairs came into the garden to put out her washing and saw me stand up.

‘This does not belong to me,’ I said, gesturing, but she turned back and hung the clean white sheets on her line, where they billowed like sails.

The last time I turned into a horse, it was the middle of the night. I woke and I felt a burning pain which began in my woman’s parts and radiated outwards. Ah yes, I thought. By then it was a familiar sensation. But suddenly, I was very cold. I shivered and my skin shirred and gooseflesh appeared and coarse horse’s hairs began sprouting.

I walked down the hallway to the mirror by the door and oh yes – there was the proof – I was all horse, from mane to fetlock to rump. I breathed hotly and loudly, and my nostrils vibrated and the fringe on the lampshade trembled.

I tried kicking my back legs, and even as the idea of a kick was forming in my mind my rear legs flew backwards and knocked a vase from the mantelpiece. It had been a gift from my mother-in-law. It shattered.

I should sweep that away, I thought. Only I couldn’t.

At that thought, a wave of happiness washed over me. I made my way to the kitchen, disturbing everything as I went. My tail swished – gone was our wedding picture. I shook my head. Down came a decorative clock. With my teeth I opened the cupboard door and found a bag of sugar and tore it open with my lips. I crunched it, spilling sugar everywhere, joyful in my big strong teeth, in the long plush tongue I had grown.

I could see out the kitchen window. The woman from downstairs was outside. She was becoming a peacock. Green and blue feathers were closing in on her face. She nodded a greeting and I nodded back.

My husband appeared in the kitchen, mussed from sleep.

‘You mustn’t do this’, he said.

I ignored him.

He stepped forward then and slapped my rump. I continued to ignore him. He slapped it again. There was a sharp sting that went through me each time but he kept slapping and slapping and down went my ears and I stamped my hooves and my skin prickled with irritation.

But my husband doesn’t know much about horses. He doesn’t know what a slap will make us do.

He slapped and slapped, and he would not stop, until finally I lifted my nose from the sugar, and obeyed him, and started to run.

The first time I saw Hong Kong was 1993. I touched down that day after 12 weeks in Thailand. A brief stopover before I returned home.

I looked down at the black band circling my wrist and smiled. It was a symbol from my past, my today and my future. A simple black band. Wound round my wrist in a juvenile attempt to claim me by the body that housed one half of the group of cells that would soon be life partner – at least for the next 18 or so years. My body flushed at the thought of the body of the man-boy and our brief inappropriate affair.

There is a Japanese saying that says “be careful what you wish for, it might just come true”. Here in another Asian country, I reflected on the power, the fear and the beauty behind that idiom.

As the bundle of cells multiplied that little bit more, no longer doubling or tripling in a matter of seconds, but rather adding the layers of details that was to become my new baby, I looked up the sun and down at the world. The daisies in the park opposite smiled. The hoi poloi sailed past.

A cloud shadowed the sun, turning the world monochrome, dulling the daisy smiles. My heart started to pound. I feared my arrogance – I do not walk the world boldly enough to deserve this.

At that thought I turned cold. I felt my womb contract, deep, too hard. The contraction wrapped itself up around my heart, clenching it so tight I thought it would smother the beat. I slithered down to the gutter, bringing my knees to my chest, hiding my contorted face from well-meaning citizens.

A wave of horror as I realised what was happening – my baby, that baby that I could never let myself believe was mine, was leaving me already, without once giving me a smile or a restless night.

Wave after wave of contractions, loss, grief and blame were my audience for my mourning walk back to the cheap hotel. I washed away promise and hope in a shared bathroom. In that scolding water, I cried and cried and cried until finally I said goodbye.

When my world turns inward after too many gins, I can admit to myself that you left because I wasn’t brave enough to hold you tight.

This year, particularly in the last few months, the urge to write has been so strong, “write, write, write, write” is a constant whir in my head. When I close my eyes, a big neon sign lights up and says “FOR GOD’S SAKE WRITE SOMETHING” So, this year and particularly in the last few months, my house has been damn fucking clean.

I can’t start writing until I see a smooth clean freshly made bed, a gleaming clear kitchen bench, clothes tumbling in the washing machine. Oh god, I love the smell of jif in the morning. I can’t start writing until the clothes are away, until the cupboards are re-organised, as per instruction from Marie Kondo’s book The Life Changing Art of Tidying Up, until I have reorganized some furniture and fluffed up some decorative cushions on the living room couch. Take a guess at how many words I have written so far? Yeah, none.

“Today, I’ll start writing” but first l’ll clear out all the shit I’ve been hoarding for my entire existence from the spare room and create a modern Scandinavian inspired work space with a beautiful desk, comfortable desk chair, tasteful floor covering and an incredibly impressive fiddle leaf fig tree that I don’t kill. Because I can’t possibly start writing, I haven’t got an inspirational quote above my desk or a piece of abstract art that I painted myself in response to “how the ocean makes me feel” … no, I can’t write a word.

For the first time tonight – I ignored the dirty dinner dishes, half chopped vegetables, cold pasta on the stove, a half sucked mango pip and old coffee cups from the morning screaming “help us, we’re dyyyinnnggg.” I turned a blind eye. I ignored the voice in my head, “maybe just quickly pop those away and wipe down the bench before you write anything”. I walked to the spare room with my nose in the air and opened my computer. “Hmmmm, what are you doing with this room and desk that you don’t use, sure it wouldn’t help you’re writing to clear off this space, what is all this random shit? An old shell from a holiday in Tasmania? Some old scribbled notes? Vacuum cleaner parts, why don’t you use those more? They’d be good for vacuuming the car. Maybe you should go vacuum the car before you start writing? Wait you’re writing? Who are you? You can’t write with that stuff blocking your writer’s flow? There’s nothing Scando about this room at all … you can’t write with all that shit around can you?

Turns out I can and I just did.

Write first, clean second.

Most people take drugs. Just ask your kid’s school teacher (pot), financial adviser (coke), or local politician (all of them).

From our morning coffee, to our wind down wine, to the occasional line or puff for a good time. Something so widespread should be considered rather ordinary and unexceptional, given that illicit drug use is a majority experience and the majority of that is unproblematic.

It’s common amongst conventional, successful, and privileged people. And most common amongst rich, university educated young people.

The paper-thin line which separates legal and illicit substances is as confounding as it is cruel; the law deems convicted illicit drug users criminals, so we treat them as such. We use demeaning labels, like ‘junkie’ and ‘deadbeat addicts’, to separate them from the normal people who take drugs.

Applying criminal penalties to people who possess and use drugs causes more much harm than than it prevents. It makes criminals of people who aren’t, leads to the stigmatisation of people who use drugs, and creates barriers to treatment and rehabilitation.

Our government refuses to reshape policy to respond to evidence and statistics, outcries from Alcohol and Other Drug experts, and needless drug related deaths. So what is the basis of our drug policy?

In Victoria alone, there have been four previous amendments to the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substance Act 1981 since 2010. Each change claiming to reduce or prevent drug-related harms in the community. And yet there remains no evidence that these interventions have been effective at reducing drug-related harms in the community.

Our drug policy is outrageously flawed, outdated, and it’s dragging down people who use drugs down with it.

Drug use can be safer through standard dosages, transparent labelling and no contaminants.

Drug use can be as positive as it can be by decriminalising and de-stigmatising people who use drugs and addressing the drivers of problematic drug use.

Drug use as can be more ethical by taking drug profits from organised crime to fund services like schools and health care, and promoting personal responsibility among people who use drugs.

Drug use can be more honest if we provide drug and health education that teaches the pleasures and excitement alongside the potential harms of use.

We can advocate that drug use should not be a crime by voting for political parties with a drug law reform policy platform. We can publicly support the idea that drug use should not be a crime, pointing to Portugal as a successful, living model of decriminalisation. We can also donate their time and money to organisations that are fighting against blanket drug prohibition, stigmatisation of people who use drugs, and better drug policy. And most importantly, We should not look down our nose for what people choose to put up them.