WildDust @wilddustphoto - Tumblr Blog

Portraits of friends

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pieces of suburbs in too much light

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Seaside prickly pear

Sydney,

Oct 2022

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Before I left for Thailand I was in a solitude, in an alien world of my own. My physical body was aimless and floating, like dust in the room. I’d catch the light when it was at the window tickling the curtains, or when it flickered through the leaves of the indoor plants that made shadows dance on the wall. I was lost to find inspiration in anything else. I ate like a bird. Coffee on the stove was my comforter, (it still always is - most of this still always is). I left the house to walk on the beach, or the cliff to try and find ‘doorways’, small revelations would do. My mind however, was working hard, pushing up against reluctant translucent barriers that kept me separated from a peace of mind... Feeling “vulnerable” doesn’t explain the truth of it really, even though the meaning of the word is correct... but this is not a vulnerability that anything can save you from, or protect you from. It is walking in darkness even though everything is light. It is tripping and falling into bottomless holes even though you’re walking on hard ground. I discovered the Empty Place is always there. I just get busy so I don’t get to know it... and I wasn’t busy. I’d lost the ability to know how to be busy. To know how to move ahead. And there lay the dragon of panic. Smirking at me. Getting ready to make a move. It may be that not having more than $7 on my bank card helped push me on the slippery-slide to this underworld. But I realised this deep, cavernous space I found myself in was a timeless and ancient one. A place that was there before I was born and a place that will be beyond me when I’m gone. It’s there, whether I’m visiting it or not... “So what are my foundations?” was my question. “Where is my rock? So that even in these dark hours I can swim to safety. So that I can sit somewhere warm and feel calm, and an unexplainable joy?” Maybe there is always fear and deep dread, constantly. But I must have known the opposite for this to exist... It makes sense. Where am I then? When the darkness of confusion doesn’t knock me from my centre? This time I felt like I was grappling at the rocks while the ocean currents surged and hurled me under. As if Ariel was at work with the spirits, on curled clouds and sea spray and all the kinds of magic in the air, doing the strong bidding of his great master to keep me away from knowing Myself. All in jest, all as a test, I see.

Sydney, Oct 2022