Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s SPACE issue. From the very small to the enormity of our imaginations, essays grow from the furtive earth-bed of mushroom forests to the stars. Granville Carroll’s afro-futuristic cover artwork “Becoming” places us in space. John Angerson provides the obligatory rocket-propelled photos. Matilde Gattoni reminds us that one’s freedom to explore space can suddenly be taken away. The connection with space doesn’t stop there. Melissa Tuckman’s aptly titled poem “Space Junk” connects space debris to modern living. A new section on New Nature Writing probes the world beyond our urban confines. In the second outing for Decolonising Travel, there are excruciating, painful stories, sexual imaginings in the steam room, and personal reflections on historical ties to oppression; all whilst giving writers who have come through VONA/Faith Adiele’s writing programme space to share their work. We finish the issue with a stroll through London — the most ethnically diverse world capital — through the lens of Books Editor Nicolas D. Sampson.
...I pulled on the rope cord that hung from the ceiling, and the attic steps yawned open with a creak and a groan. My sister and I slowly climbed the rickety ladder, the wooden steps wobbling as we eased toward the darkness. Musty air that smelled of old timber poured down as if freed from a cocoon. At the top of the stairs, I reached for the string that turned on a single light bulb hanging from the rafters and saw boxes stacked along one side where floorboards had been laid. In the far corners, where the light began to dissolve, old insulation the color of storm clouds was sandwiched between the joists. My parents had moved to Arizona for the winter, and my sister and I had returned to our childhood home in Washington, D.C., to help them prepare it for sale. Taking inventory, we slid one box after another into the cone of light in the center of the stuffy room. We discovered old school forms, checkbook registers, and bank statements, decades’ worth of dusty, musty minutiae. Then I opened another box and pulled out a thin, sky-blue folder.
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