Arid
Arid is not a word I would use to describe inland, or outback Australia, a land so alive that even rocks bleed. If seeing is believing, then I believe in hued earth which undulate against flatlands. Staining my imagination as I peer at breaks through clouds through an airplane window, during a four hour flight. Passing below are red-greyed expanses, colour of gruel. No, too grey, there exists a shimmering heat, even if information on the map tells me outside temperature is -51c.
I believe in humble clouds that stoop to humanity, but like fickle gods they rouse into storms capable of a race past me. Outside sky travelled sliding over earth, given thrust by sun’s colours. Arid may explain the dirt roads driven on, impossible for me to even detect movement in such emptiness. But still I see defiant life all around me. Once on the ground, proud pillars of termite mounds, creatures that brood in their shade. An impossible road train flustered with calico dust, squashed bugs snakes through a horizon, like a lizard rippling in the afternoon heat. Dali’s delusions imbued in the dust.
I am not sure what to make of years of existence packed into my small suitcase. Minimalism may be a virtue, but does one box really encompass my entire life? Or enough to get by with? Looking around others are much more laden than me. Years of doing without, perhaps?
I said goodbye to my friends, my family, and people I barely knew who wished me well. Closest thing to enjoying my own funeral. And all of that when I cannot explain why I am leaving, except that I am heeding a call – a call more like a slow burn of taking my family seriously. A preternatural post-it note that says, Hit the road and I’ll tell you later.
A reason to glimpse a land I have not known, or not my house. Head across more than 3,200 kilometres to the other end of the continent. Lord help me. As I view a safety video, following multiple decades of our national airline. Toward the end I encounter an image of the Great Southern Ocean, off a place I know is named Esperance. Just inland from this unending shore, about to form the Great Australian Bight I can see the bright pink of Esperance’s Pink Lake. Last there in my teenage years, this image brings tears to my eyes. I have no reason to be emotional. Other than closed borders, and needing to serve two weeks quarantine before I can see my family again. A childhood memory, a native land which reduces me to emotion. Is this the lot of my life?
All too soon I shoot through, fly over what might be considered Australian Savannah. Great clumps of seemingly unadulterated land. But unexpectedly, deserts that captivate me and that define my long voyage across this country. With no sound but the drone of an aircraft engine. I would love to roll down windows, so I can breathe and I behold: wait don’t forget the outside temperature.
My plane is fragile vessel, a piece of jewellery up between clouds and earth. Flying through air, making me think of life, children and relationships as in turn accidents. A few words can ruin everything. A few gulps of oxygen are all that stands sacred, and protective.
One day, I will be standing on the lip of a rocky river to see sun eclipsed by a black moon. Surrounded by strangers gazing up with filtered lenses at an event once thought to portend rise and fall of civilizations. Later that evening, while jaunting through dunes of alabaster sand, I see same sun tip into dry, tropical atmosphere, keeling into an indigo mist. Another day, another sun, lost somewhere in the land of the Larrakia Nation. Might be possible to take a detour into a dusty road flanked by wildflowers blazed in brilliant light. Connect again with memories of Western Australian springs, where my father long searched for bee sites where such teeming masses would produce good honey.
Numinous silence strikes me, a quiet that draws me in to something greater than myself. Without chatter, blitz of needless information, I am stuck only with noises of my thoughts and memories unravelling, until all left is my empty spool of self and the earth around me. Desert becomes my cathedral, I realize I am alone. Everything, all the people I knew may as well be on another planet. My quest of a million questions – or just one: Will I ever find a place where I belong or will I always remain rootless? If finding happiness means swapping out parts until you make it all fit. Is that what I need?
But the desert is a good friend, its presence endures my meandering and my existential fears. Through my window, snake grass blurs into red clay as I speed past, long brushstrokes across a caked, sun-bleached canvas. As I pass under a small, fire seen from the air, not far from the airport, only nine minutes to landing. I wonder was this caused by last night’s delayed Territory Day, or efforts to maintain scrub and natural vegetation I see underbelly of a gravid smoke.
What am I running from? It is said that there is a way of running that resembles pursuit, but whatever it is I am pursuing, I suspect that it will take me into the desert of my own soul, that arid place I fear. There, too, I will move in silence through the naked plain and the fickle scrub, bereft of all demands of this busy world that cries, Urgent! And in the hued wilderness where only I can tread, perhaps I can breathe and behold – I will name beauty and I will name life. Image of childhood which speak to formless earth. I like to think that we each have our own desert, joined at the extremity of our collective fears and of our loneliness. Journey long enough with hope and we will soon find each other by sounds of our longing, our yearning for affection and dignity.
A zeal common to us all, for things born again after fire and dreams of childhood.
I believe in humble clouds that stoop to humanity, but like fickle gods they rouse into storms capable of a race past me. Outside sky travelled sliding over earth, given thrust by sun’s colours. Arid may explain the dirt roads driven on, impossible for me to even detect movement in such emptiness. But still I see defiant life all around me. Once on the ground, proud pillars of termite mounds, creatures that brood in their shade. An impossible road train flustered with calico dust, squashed bugs snakes through a horizon, like a lizard rippling in the afternoon heat. Dali’s delusions imbued in the dust.
I am not sure what to make of years of existence packed into my small suitcase. Minimalism may be a virtue, but does one box really encompass my entire life? Or enough to get by with? Looking around others are much more laden than me. Years of doing without, perhaps?
I said goodbye to my friends, my family, and people I barely knew who wished me well. Closest thing to enjoying my own funeral. And all of that when I cannot explain why I am leaving, except that I am heeding a call – a call more like a slow burn of taking my family seriously. A preternatural post-it note that says, Hit the road and I’ll tell you later.
A reason to glimpse a land I have not known, or not my house. Head across more than 3,200 kilometres to the other end of the continent. Lord help me. As I view a safety video, following multiple decades of our national airline. Toward the end I encounter an image of the Great Southern Ocean, off a place I know is named Esperance. Just inland from this unending shore, about to form the Great Australian Bight I can see the bright pink of Esperance’s Pink Lake. Last there in my teenage years, this image brings tears to my eyes. I have no reason to be emotional. Other than closed borders, and needing to serve two weeks quarantine before I can see my family again. A childhood memory, a native land which reduces me to emotion. Is this the lot of my life?
All too soon I shoot through, fly over what might be considered Australian Savannah. Great clumps of seemingly unadulterated land. But unexpectedly, deserts that captivate me and that define my long voyage across this country. With no sound but the drone of an aircraft engine. I would love to roll down windows, so I can breathe and I behold: wait don’t forget the outside temperature.
My plane is fragile vessel, a piece of jewellery up between clouds and earth. Flying through air, making me think of life, children and relationships as in turn accidents. A few words can ruin everything. A few gulps of oxygen are all that stands sacred, and protective.
One day, I will be standing on the lip of a rocky river to see sun eclipsed by a black moon. Surrounded by strangers gazing up with filtered lenses at an event once thought to portend rise and fall of civilizations. Later that evening, while jaunting through dunes of alabaster sand, I see same sun tip into dry, tropical atmosphere, keeling into an indigo mist. Another day, another sun, lost somewhere in the land of the Larrakia Nation. Might be possible to take a detour into a dusty road flanked by wildflowers blazed in brilliant light. Connect again with memories of Western Australian springs, where my father long searched for bee sites where such teeming masses would produce good honey.
Numinous silence strikes me, a quiet that draws me in to something greater than myself. Without chatter, blitz of needless information, I am stuck only with noises of my thoughts and memories unravelling, until all left is my empty spool of self and the earth around me. Desert becomes my cathedral, I realize I am alone. Everything, all the people I knew may as well be on another planet. My quest of a million questions – or just one: Will I ever find a place where I belong or will I always remain rootless? If finding happiness means swapping out parts until you make it all fit. Is that what I need?
But the desert is a good friend, its presence endures my meandering and my existential fears. Through my window, snake grass blurs into red clay as I speed past, long brushstrokes across a caked, sun-bleached canvas. As I pass under a small, fire seen from the air, not far from the airport, only nine minutes to landing. I wonder was this caused by last night’s delayed Territory Day, or efforts to maintain scrub and natural vegetation I see underbelly of a gravid smoke.
What am I running from? It is said that there is a way of running that resembles pursuit, but whatever it is I am pursuing, I suspect that it will take me into the desert of my own soul, that arid place I fear. There, too, I will move in silence through the naked plain and the fickle scrub, bereft of all demands of this busy world that cries, Urgent! And in the hued wilderness where only I can tread, perhaps I can breathe and behold – I will name beauty and I will name life. Image of childhood which speak to formless earth. I like to think that we each have our own desert, joined at the extremity of our collective fears and of our loneliness. Journey long enough with hope and we will soon find each other by sounds of our longing, our yearning for affection and dignity.
A zeal common to us all, for things born again after fire and dreams of childhood.
Karen Lethlean is a retired English teacher. With previous fiction in the Barbaric Yawp, Ken*Again, Pendulum Papers and has won a few awards through Australian and UK competitions. Land Lore is published in Bangalore Review, and recently Bleached Bones won Wild Words Solstice Short Story writing competition. Karen is currently working on a memoir titled Army Girl about military service 1972-76. In her other life Karen is a triathlete who has done Hawaii Ironman championships twice.