Helena Pantsis

Degrees of Separation

  • In 1997 my mother visits a fertility clinic; she is told she will never have children—she falls pregnant naturally three months later.
  • Julie Radford writes Flu at the Zoo, published in 1997, in which the zoo is closed due to a bout of influenza spreading amongst the animals and the zookeepers.
  • The zoos close due to a global pandemic, and my brother returns from the Phillipines with a pain shooting up and down his leg.
  • Banjo Kazooie, a Nintendo 64 game following the adventures of a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie who thwart the evil plans of a witch named Gruntilda, is released in 1998, the same year my brother is born.
  • Beyonce, featuring Sean Paul, records the 2003 pop hit Baby Boy, in which Beyonce sings about a man she is enamoured with.
  • In the hit series H2O: Just Add Water, Cleo and Lewis first kiss in Season 1: Episode 12.
  • My brother pulls his muscle teaching in the pool; when he goes to the doctor he finds out he has a tumour in his bone. It is benign, but if he keeps walking on it his bone could fracture and permanently damage his hip.
  • The film My Sister’s Keeper, by director Nick Cassavetes, tells the story of a sister who is born to keep her sister alive.
  • Daxter is a video game released in 2006, recounting Daxter’s adventures searching for Jak prior to Jak 3, who is stuck in prison.
  • In 2020 Victoria goes into lockdown; my brother has the tumour cut out of his bone, and spends three weeks alone in a hospital at the height of the pandemic.
  • Saw, directed by James Wan, sees two men chained to a bathtub with hacksaws intended to be used to cut their feet off through the bone.
  • My brother comes home in a wheelchair and has to learn to walk again—he cannot do a thing by himself, and he spends the first few months bedridden.
  • Walking to Work is a poem written by poet Frank O’Hara. Frank O’Hara shares a room with writer and artist Edward Gorey when attending Harvard University.
  • Edward Gorey never marries, shows little to no interest in romance, and never has children.
  • I burst an ovarian cyst in late 2020, and face the prospect of potential infertility.
  • Mother for Dinner, by Shalome Auslander, tells the story of a culture who consumes their dead.
  • Hannibal, the TV series produced by David Slade, follows the relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham and forensic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter.
  • David Slade also produces the short film Do Geese See God? (2004)
  • The poem GOD! by Phillip Miller ends with the penultimate line “as if I were a god myself.”
  • My brother, with a name that translates to Christ has risen, finds a lump in his body. This cancer is malignant.
  • Brian Piccolo, a running back for the Chicago Bears, died at 26 years old from an aggressive form of testicular cancer.
  • Brown bears experience delayed implantation, where the egg floats in the bear’s uterus for approximately five months before implanting
  • Oil floats on water because the water molecules pack close together, sinking to the bottom
  • A class of molecules called human milk oligosaccharides have many important functions, not only in the gut, but also throughout the body and brain
  • Anabolic steroids taken for body building interfere with the hormone signals that are needed to produce sperm, causing infertility
  • My brother visits a fertility clinic, where he is told he may never have children.

 Helena Pantsis

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is a writer, student, and artist from Naarm, Australia. A student of creative writing, they have a fond appreciation for the gritty, the dark, and the experimental. Her works have been published in Overland, Island, Going Down Swinging, and Meanjin. More can be found at hlnpnts.com.