The plane hits the familiar tarmac at the time it hits me: I’m back. How did that happen? Walking Rachel’s flat-tyred bike proudly through the Bronx, the streets are glittering with glass, dragonflies are filling the dusk sky, and people drunkenly stumble.
At the Boulevard two young children throw stones at a sick cockatoo…

My body zaps. Love. Everything’s love. Before returning to Earth, my family remind me: time doesn’t matter, Sarah, remember, time doesn’t matter. Because no matter how long I’m gone, my family and our magical world will still be there.
     But I’m unsure. I want to know more. Like what’s going on? Is this another dimension? How does the universe work?

From vaccines, we go into the dark forces, with her referring to ‘satanists’ and ‘them,’ telling me we can’t trust the higher powers of this Earth. She’s from somewhere else, she reckons. There are a lot of people on Earth at the moment from somewhere else, she reckons.
    I’ve heard it all before…

‘Did we just go through time?’ I question.
‘I think we might of,’ the scientist agrees.
Pippa and I look back to the giant swirls and I shake my head because it still feels like we’re not physically moving away across the water but we’re moving sideways or upwards or all ways because the air is altered and we’re bigger than this world…

I tested positive ten minutes after Mum, Andy and the ute arrived. There’s too much going through my head, including covid, which penetrates deep into my chest like I’ve smoked a million cigarettes (maybe it’s from the million cigarettes). But there’s a bigger C than covid at play. It ties in with community and creativity.
It’s climate…

The shock sent all my hair on end, gave me goosebumps the size of termite mounds, and made me gasp as I clutched my heart pounding through my chest. My breaths were so deep, like with the DMT and the loss of my car. As the light went, I had seen Pippa curl up into a ball and whispering, ‘Oh my god…’

When I was cleaning the walls of the room Rob is to stay in, the walls were trying to tell me stories. Because there’s a story in this house and I won’t move on until it’s written…

What am I doing with my life?

I should get a normal job and make enough money to have a new car that doesn’t make me nervous and cost me so much maintenance.

I feel sad, without excitement, because I see no future…

The light is purple, spotty, yellow. Like the fuzzy yellow amongst the orange. Meaningless, I say. Everything we know as truth, this is all so meaningless. And here I am, back again. I look around the riverbed, to the eucalypts, to the ancient culture, the connection to land. I see something more…

It was winter; I wore woollen jumpers, I sat inside with the canvas up and cleaned everything out, unscrewed all the doors, scraped back the crappy wall coverings, wore a dust mask. I listened to two autobiographies: Archie Roach and Clare Bowditch…

In the time Mum messages the agents and waits to here back, I paint a whole new world, a world of a home and people around me, a world I realise I want now.

But the house is sold…

Now, the coronavirus. The madness of the world. It’s all through the media. Back in this world it’s hard to escape the media. The media need to be quarantined…

This young girl tribe learning from older men. In the old men, it feels, to me, that they have conviction; they have an idea and go for it. We can learn from this, yes we can…

They look like they are living the dream, their army green bus in the carpark, their blonde kids running around the crystal water shallows. I bet their photos tell a thousand false words…

Woke at 4:30. The full moon is still in the sky. I walk to the shack via the social. Mud Crab tries to talk to me, but I haven’t had a coffee yet. The sun edges closer. The water is a rich blue. Yellow and pinks appear on the horizon. There is nobody. There has been no service since yesterday morning…

My host, the man, refers to “arty farty” people as much as he refers to “blackfellas.” He tells me about a travelling film festival and explains it “that poor bugger old me story blackfellas love.” He says people in the south also love that story…

YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT. The driver is slow. The voice is mine. I mutter, swear. It’s not uncommon.

Maybe it’s time to go. To take a chance. Because I can’t think of any other way…