Open Court: A Pain We Know • Wendy Cowan

One evening in 2017, delia and I met two young Arrarnta men on the lawns outside the John Flynn Memorial church as the Supreme Court was under construction.

The encounter went something like this

Hello, hello, werte

Have you seen the space ship?

Nah, where?

Pointing to the Supreme Court oval glass structure – its lit-up presence hovering over the trees.

Oh yeah, I am going there one day

I hope the aliens are friendly

Three light boxes installed in a vacant shop window along Todd Mall, Mparntwe-Alice Springs

Let all who are sad pass on these stories as gifts of grace unasked for in timeless boxes of light

These three stories began long ago…they are old…older than our bodies, our mothers, our fathers, our grandmothers, our grandfathers.

These stories are old

For years they have been passed on, hound us in their retelling so that we can become stronger, wiser than any given measure, larger than our own in/significance

These stories never really begin nor end although there is a beginning and an end to every story.

(Text written in the three light boxes located above the shop window)

Act 1: The Journey. Three camels aka three troopies travel the skin of Country. At dusk, galled and tired, they arrive to set up camp in the desert town of Mparntwe

Act 2: The Arrival in the presence of three puppies and a swarm of pesky flies Gathering along Todd Mall outside the newly built Supreme Court.

Act 3: The Trial. Three echidna dogs hold counsel to stories told

A blood red sky rises over the benches where the old men sit, where the young men spit. Inside they are delicate, nervous for this trial. Look again. Young women peer from behind the walls of Adelaide House – checking out their own epic narratives.

The sky turns an azure blue. The myths in this desert town say the same thing – to belong is to listen to and care for lively narratives.

In the remote Australian town, Mparntwe-Alice Springs, a trial is about to be held as the Supreme Court is being built, a panopticon, an all seeing glass eye. On a grassy patch outside the adjacent church, Indigenous women gather to sell their artwork, tourists stroll, trees shimmer in 40 degree heat, crows caw, flies swarm, dogs raise their heckles. These activities do not prevent their listening, their participation, their chorused concern for the court proceedings that are about to unravel.

And so the story goes…remixed and retold…

Listen carefully to the stories of the Furies, to what happens when wise women are harassed, when they stop singing, when their movements brush up against the same-old nasty stories. We have countless derogative names that silence, the brazen, witches, bitches, ungrateful whores, rubbish women, hashtag hags. In Ireland, she is called the Cailleach. In Ancient Greece they were the Erinyes, the Furies, or Eumenides. All sisters to myself and delia. The consequence of not respecting, not listening to otherworldly women is disfunction and wreckage.