A few weeks ago, I got to do one of my most favourite things: drive away from the city
It was the 10th of July and the sky was bright. The Earth was awash with crisp sunlight and a salutary warmth permeated the air. It was calmly unfurling into a beautiful Saturday morning and there I was; witness to the splendour. It was gorgeous. It was real. It was quite unusual for the bone-cold nadir of a South Australian winter, but it was welcome
I left the city of Adelaide mid-morning and had passed Roseworthy by 10 o'clock. I was travelling North. As the city skyline receded, converged and then faded completely into the vanishing point of my rear-view mirror, a serene tranquillity arose within me. The feeling radiated outward, and I relaxed. The decompression had begun. A heavy, distant pendulum, perhaps located in a metaverse somewhere, begun it's slow tilt away from tension and toward release. Relief was the personality of the moment
A nearby stand of trees sighed in my direction; "are we trying too hard to project literary pretensions?"
"No" I thought back, assertively. "You are the trees. Overthink not. Write whatever the hell you want. You judge yourself harshly because you fear the judgements of others and wish to beat them to it"
I shrugged. It seemed a tepid insight, if accurate
I turned my vehicle off the main highway and trembled down a meagre dirt track planted between two paddocks. Turning the car around to face the way I came, I stopped. Stepping out and closing the door behind me, I hear it crunch softly into place. I begin wandering. The subjective pace of time winding down as my eyes drifted across the surrounding vista. The serenity of this landscape, mostly free of the jagged teeth of human urbanity, cleansed my aching retinas and restored my spirit
I suddenly remembered that I was alive
My ultimate destination was a specific patch of dirt
This patch of dirt:
And the reason for my journey was to meet up with family and friends, to see a race
This race:
Breathing deep, renewed, I gave the expansive landscape one final survey and returned to my car. This precious gift; this "empty" space, in the sunlight. This gestalt, had been mine for a small eternity. Yet rendered this way, as possession, misses the point entirely. It fails to do justice. To the experience and to the reality. More truthfully, it was I and I was it. More truthfully still, the distinction — a mirage, a mere pretence — had melted away. A pure moment had been free to experience, itself as a result. And this moment was at once infinitesimally small and tremendously large. It was a moment scarcely conveyable to another, with these blunt, savage instruments. These pattern-systems we call words. It was a moment of such immanent character that both the Planck time and the gigaparsec found expression within, in unison
It was a moment much like our human lives
I carried on driving
Thou art that
As I left the meagre dirt track planted between two paddocks, resuming my journey North along the highway, I decided to make a detour before my final destination to capture some sky footage. That patch of dirt just off Swamp Road, 14 kilometres away from Eudunda, would just have to wait
I had a camera, a dilapidated roof I was free to climb, and of course, there was the sky
All that was left to do was bring the three together
In a future post I'll share my footage from the race and a bit about the event's history
