17. Summer Denmark
14th October 2023
I stand alone, the sky bursting all dim and bright, the Southern Cross on the horizon and a shooting star overhead. Out past the shrub are the earliest living organisms of Earth. In the remote toilet, my period arrives. It’s new moon. Meaning it’s exactly one month since I left Kene Nete. Elliot and I are on the road by sunrise, driving into our third day of extreme heat and whirly winds. We’ll make it to Perth today if we’re meant to.
15th October 2023
Grey nomads with red faces and stomachs as big as their caravans buy meat pies in roadhouses. Driving through Perth’s urban playground, the sun sears my right arm and Radio National crackles. It’s the referendum for the indigenous voice to parliament. It’s the first time I’ve listened to news in a long time, and it makes me feel strange.
Words words words.
I arrive to 7 Hope Street at 3:33pm. I eat dinner with Elsa & her Dad, a climate physicist who describes major climate events of coming decades to include mega deaths. But while he reckons change is only possible at government level, I reckon there’s a generational difference in approach.
16th October 2023
Australia votes NO to the voice, and my intuition burns. I will not be deterred by such ignorance. In fact, I will be inspired.
Withstanding the concrete’s heat, I yearn for a family amongst trees all the more.
Kath messages with auspicious timing; these eclipses are bringing up old themes 2014 and 2016.
When Bo died
And I experienced post-traumatic stress and living with an attached spirit
And I unintentionally wrote the first draft of my first book
And I moved to Broome
And I realised I loved writing and that I want to study writing
And I returned to Melbourne to settle, find a partner, and study writing
And I missed Broome.
23rd October 2023
These early Denmark days featuring rain, icy feet and hands, and light sharp through eucalypts. I waver and I trust and I confuse—held by community while mourning something not yet loss. Because an impending heartache seems inevitable. And I feel sorry for myself. Only desperation doesn’t get me what I want, does it? And begging Mother Nature creates jaded energy. Still, I want to win the computer game. I want to share my vision of a world born from love. Then Bruce calls. He tells me he wants to live and be with me. I’m angry, repeating the nature of our friendship. When he calls back, I don’t answer. He leaves a message telling me that he wants a photo of me. I’m consumed by irritation and compassion.
27th October 2023
By day, I write and make jewellery, and by night, I share dinner in Kamali’s wizen house. Late morning, I glide across properties. There’s a dull light and Kamali sitting naked on the couch next to an Argentinean guy, who’s freshly arrived with zest for the gardens, and whose innocent and eager expression has me beaming.
Getting into my car there are two sets of double digits on the dash. Turning on the street towards the beach, a ute with 444 drives in front and I tear to the thought of it really being signs from the universe.
At Lights, the waves are aggressive and white-tailed black cockatoos shout. I remember to trust. To let these days past. To know I’m here with reason, my unprocessed pain simmering to the surface, begging for a release that allows myself to arrive whole for the universe.
But still there’s energy to shift.
Still my spirit wanes.
Is it the weather? This space in the donger? A voice whispers not to become too complacent in Denmark as I send my second draft to a few people. The time is now. I want to get this published. Because if there is good and evil of the world, as Otto describes, and the book I’m reading outlines, then the feminine is important. My role is important.
Although timing is bigger than I can fathom.
28th October 2023
Between solar eclipses, I talk through my wavering emotions with sister Jacinta and feed my loneliness with brother Kamali.
Waking with five blankets over me, I turn on the heater and see kangaroos through the window. Outside, the kangaroo has a joey in its pouch. I send a video to Ines (the cook at Kene Nete) in Peru.
In Jacinta’s bus, I make a decaf. Through the window another kangaroo with a joey in its pouch stares at me and my itchy feet. I want to move. My body needs to be moved. I’ve made so many necklaces. I need to send emails. It’s important to be active. It’s time to find my own space and start earning money.
29th October 2023
On this rainy Sunday morning alone in Marc’s donger, there’s a nervousness and a sore stomach. I keep thinking about food. I’ve only been here one and a half weeks. One and a half weeks of Jacinta and I pulling cards from my Sacred Rebel deck. For me, the same card has been pulled out or fallen out each time.
Come to Life: You are the most sacred of all sacred artworks. You are brining yourself to life now and this is how it must be…Beneath habitual thoughts there is a deep sensual, creative and energetic awakening happening to you. It is so far beyond what the mind is capable of controlling…Coming to life means feeling…The journey underneath the mind and into a sensual emotional connection with your feelings, emotions and body is for a sacred purpose. It is a part of your path. You are one of the sacred but powerful minority that have chosen to come into a body and life consciously within it…The message of this oracle is, “Be alive!” Don’t imagine you can go back to sleep. You are too wake for that now. There is no falling back into old ways…There is another adventure awaiting you now. You need a deeper connection to your own instincts, body, feelings and intuitions so that you can receive this new calling. You can trust in it, too. Embrace it and it will embrace you.
30th October 2023
It’s the full moon eclipse and there’s a crew of us eating lentils and stew around the fire at Kamali’s. Kamali keeps humming and singing African tunes that take me back to the shamans of the Amazon. I leave the drumming to pass out by 8:30pm and wake early for a twenty-kilometre walk.
“…We’re not destroying the world because we’re clumsy. We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.
Just think. In a billion years, whatever is around then, whoever is around then, says, ‘Man? Oh yes, man! What a wonderful creative he was! It was within his grasp to destroy the entire world and to trample all our futures into the dust—but he saw the light before it was too late and pulled back. He pulled back and gave the rest of us our chances. He showed us all how it had to be done if the world was to go on being a garden forever. Man was the role model for all of us!”
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
31st October 2023
I heart these days of non-writing, all happy because I’m at Kamali’s and we’re sharing lunch and we’re having a stone wire-wrapping workshop and I’m eating mulberries from the tree.
Down the beach, the waves are wild and the sand treacherous. I stumble upon Agustin the Argentinian lying on a rock and I lie with him. We talk about our time and our place and what we need in our lives. A conscious home and a family, I tell him. I’ve thought a lot about bringing my children into this world, I tell him. Something I will do not for mainstream expectations, but because life can be such a beautiful thing.
1st November 2023
Intestine flare up. Bloated for days. Same story. Unconscious stress. Mentally preparing for hurt. A big black snake crossing my path driving. I slow to watch it. At the donger, I pull the same card as yesterday: rest and replenishment. Time to get into my body, to break from my thinking routine, to step into something new. Tomorrow is Margaret River, and what I hope to be clarity.
2nd November 2023
Driving through the tall trees into sunshine feels right although my stomach remains tight. In the middle of last night, I was awake for hours clutching it. Then this morning, under a clouded Denmark sky, Jacinta described her download that it’s tied with my emotions in anticipation of Margaret River. Food and emotions have long held a strong bond for me. A pain that started when I was eighteen, in 2007. And now here, in 2023, I know it’s not just the food that heals me, but the love I need to give to young Sarah. Because young Sarah is all shame and disappointment, feeling like if someone got close to her they’d know she’s unlovable.
4th November 2023
In the caravan there’s the sound of wind through the trees, only I can’t decipher what I’m being told. A memory returns: everything you need is inside of you, Sarah. All of it. Good, evil, love, hate, death, beauty, ugliness, light and dark.
5th November 2023
Too frightened to check my dwindling account, I wave my bank card around and eat a whole block of Whittakers Coconut Chocolate. Pains on my lower right-side return with isolation and sadness stinging my eyes. Last night, I had awkwardly disappeared to bask in the familiar feelings of being lost, adrift and burdensome—my teenage-self certain that my presence is nothing more than an annoyance, even when I tip toe around, speak quietly, and keep a distance. Only being all shy and reserved is tiring. It’s the same narrative of habitual punishment. If death was an easy option, one we could achieve at any moment, how many people would choose this option? I know of at least one woman who would. Still, there’s the Sarah I dug out from the dark hole in the Amazon. The one woman fixated on healing her trauma to break through to the life she dreams.
6th November 2023
If oracle cards are anything to go by, then they’re showing me the power of my energy as I continue to pull the same cards. Heaven Sent and Rest and Restoration. Then this morning, tethered to the caravan with a crippling shyness, I notice Power of Attraction when shuffling the deck. When a card stops me, I hover on it until I turn it over. Power of Attraction. An answer to my uncertainty of today: go back to Denmark or stay?
I arrive to the house prepared to talk, only there’s no chance to talk before they leave in a plume of smoke and I’m left with the memory of sparkling eyes recounting first words whispered on waking, ‘I hope that Sarah stays longer. She’s my friend.’
7th November 2023
It’s a time when if the opportunity came for me to disappear, I would do it in a heartbeat. Yesterday afternoon, I had been certain on my decision that I would live here in this caravan. But night brought grave doubts. Now this morning, a mood persists. I want to go to death. I want to marry my art. I want to break free of my lifelong broken heart.
Think my body already knew the answer before I arrived.
8th November 2023
There are gumtrees and bubbles with sharp reflections of a home until they’re shot by a water pistol and everything changes again. The dog gives me a generous hug goodbye, and I go. On the road. Eloise in my car making my responses all articulate and cheeky. ‘Jazzy sazzy,’ Eloise describes, and it feels good to be with someone who actually wants to talk to me.
“The problem with fiction is that it must seem credible, while reality seldom is.”
Isobel Allende, Paula
9th November 2023
Lying in the bus bed staring at the gumtrees, I hold my stomach. I don’t know what the future holds but I know I want to live in a house with a big creative space in Margaret River, where the days are sunnier and the beaches are easier. But for now, Denmark holds me. And I need to be held.
He messaged this morning. The confusion was all on my end, apparently. Like he’s so perfect and I’m so disorientated. His words were laced with shallow assumptions, none of which reflect my truth, and yet I accept the narrative despite my emotional intelligence knowing that part of the equation was my reaction to energies that weren’t my own. Only he’s in too deep to see just how complex the reality of the darkness that surrounds him. But words don’t come immediately, nor will they ever arrive for the size of a text message.
And so I give up on love; heart beating and eyes tearing as I write that. Yes. I give up. Because I’d prefer no life on Earth at all. Yet seeing I have to endure this life, at least for now, I will turn my New Moon intentions to creative dreams (publishing books, writing film scripts, selling jewellery, creating photo journals).
I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU THINK; I WANT TO MAKE YOU FEEL
11th November 2023
Up close to the mirror, my bottom teeth are chipped and they’re no longer as straight as they were a few months ago. I know I should turn back inward to heal my bumpy face, swollen belly and turbulent emotions, but instead I decide it’s officially one year until my death.
Such relief!
There’s a conscious dance thing—pioneered by the Israeli man and his partner who live across the road from Kamali—in the community today. There, dancing and cooking and laughing, I feel nuzzled. And it’s simple. I’m seen and I’m heard, and it’s all I want and all I need.
In the afternoon, sitting in the sunshine with Kamali under his umbrella and his Kamali house behind him, we speak of relationships and love. He describes how you can share love with someone for one night and understand this is all that it represents.
My stomach beats. Doof music morphs. People are beautiful. And so is food.
My period arrives.
12th November 2023
Clear dreams in the night now forgotten. A gloomy morning with period pains and Kamali’s sarcastic mood annoying me. I leave him behind to return to the bus. I just want to create. I just want my space to create. I just want to share a love that brings more love into this world. I officially plan my death. In my final year, I want to impact other’s lives. I want to move them.
13th November 2023, New Moon
My stomach is rounded from the heavy intake of food these past days. From the bus, I watch rain pour and light seep into morning. I feel sluggish and hopeful. In my dream, I was in a man’s apartment in Germany. We were giggling and I wasn’t afraid for intimacy. When another woman arrived, the man got rid of her.
14th November 2023
In the afternoon, cleaning Terra Rosa with Jess, I’m heavily bleeding. In the night, eating lamb curry and carrot cake at Kamali’s, I’m cosy.
It’s 1am when my body wakes me to go outside and pee out blood, as it always does in the first few days of my period. When the storm hits two hours later with rain pounding, thunder cracking, and lightning that makes my eyelids glow, I understand why I was woken earlier than normal.
Back in sleep, I’m in love with my body’s power of knowing the storm was coming. But then, but then there’s my punishment. Like my pants already being tighter after a week of reckless eating. Like there being no excitement for the future. Like the way I fucking hate myself so much.
Sitting in the rainy bus, water leaking in different areas, I draw ideas in my mind. Having a home in Margs, a space to work, land with people of all ages and all places. People with common spirit.
Instead, with $600 in my account, I’m invited to leave in Soren’s annex.
15th November 2023
The day is grey, rain dancing down the windows, stuff everywhere, a voice message from Roser, and a YouTube video talking about conversations with the universe reminding me of the non-linear process of real-life. Lying in the bus eating chocolate and listening to the Manifest book, I embody the future sensation I desire. When old lady Sarah’s dancing she’s magic made real.
16th November 2023
Last night there were thirteen incredible people for dinner and I ate more than I needed, leaving me clutching my stomach and speaking about my stomach, while Kamali spoke about fasting, and Jacinta spoke about inter-dimensional travel. I knew what she was talking about. How our understanding of time is superfluous. Jacinta also spoke about not being an intellectual. It’s me who’s more of that world, and I’m here to translate the wisdom of someone like Jacinta into a form that reaches a wider audience.
In the bus, I dream some more. Mia and Lucy were in it. There was a paddock, a blue skied day, a job, a note.
Now it’s morning and my jeans are even tighter. Jacinta notes that my stomach is like a distraction. A familiar distraction where if I were to free myself of such distractions, then new possibilities will be infinite.
But I’m not there yet.
I’m caught in an unhealthy cycle. I’m looking into the mirror where there’s a swollen belly and no beauty. I’m taking the chocolate Wil hands me. I’m bemoaning another day of grey clouds and cold. I’m not drinking as much water because it’s harder to go out and pee around the bus.
17th November 2023
A vivid dream of Greg. Going to sit next to him and giving him a hug, arranging to come for dinner because I still need to talk to him.
The troop prepare for Circle of Trees. I already know what the falling card is before it lands on the floor. Spirals of Manifestation. The fourth day in a row I’ve pulled this card.
Two steps forward, one step back.
18th November 2023
Smoke turns the day golden and the mass of flies around camp disperses. The people who hold weight eat more consistently. I want to be someone who doesn’t stress about money and who shares her delicious food.
19th November 2023
Asleep on my back in Soren’s hiking tent on Soren’s hiking mattress, dreaming of loving my body after these weeks of punishment and bloating returning me to my teenage trauma, the word synergy comes to me.
Synergy.
When the sum is greater than its parts. Like the power of two people combined being stronger than their lone strength.
Back in Denmark, I hide chocolate to devour and punish.
21st November 2023
Final morning of dream-filled-bus sleeps. Jacinta stands on the steps and we exchange feelings. She asks about the books, and I tell of my serious doubts. That I don’t think I can do this. That I feel physically sick. Jacinta likens it to giving birth, and in those later stages the woman feels she can’t do it. Jacinta reminds me she’ll be my doula through this.
For my first day at Soren’s there’s no motivation, with everything dirty and an emptiness within. When I clean, I fixate on how tired I am of cleaning temporary spaces, and my mind begs for food.
Selfishness to selflessness.
22nd November 2023
Setting up space at Soren’s. A resurgence of hope. A self-healing journey not yet over. Reaching deep within, one more time. Vulnerability. Courage. An exposed heart. My own space. Stretching and dancing and jewellery everywhere.
23rd November 2023
“A stagnant or sluggish bowel can lead to a build-up of faeces and mucous plaque, which is an ideal environment for parasites to thrive. A slow bowel can also lead to overgrowths of pathogenic bacteria, moulds and funguses. All of this can contribute to leaky gut, diverticulitis and auto-immune conditions.”
24th November 2023
It was in a moment floating in the clear water of Elephant Cove, the sunlight through my eyelids the colour of light I had once travelled, that returned me to conversations with creation. Which means conversations with myself, because I am creation. My whole life is art, and it is there I will focus.
1st December 2023
The days pass easily. Reading writing, sketching iPad, breathing hydrogen, people visiting. The people sit and suck hydrogen, and I sit across from them. We talk about life. About ourselves in this life. Daily, I walk in the forest. Today, at 28 degrees, I drive the 22 kilometres to the ocean to swim. All in all, I’m happy because my days are filled with creativity and love.
5th December 2023
Time moves and I remain, mostly, in optimism. Deep believing changing biology. With time.
6th December 2023
Greg calls me back ten minutes after my attempt. He is usual in his calm silence, and I am usual with speaking into the silence. I thank him. I want to know his feelings around passing into a place beyond this time. He feels the beauty of it. But there’s pain too. And he knew we’d chat. That I’d come to Margaret River to see him. I don’t have money for a return trip of petrol right now ($53.55), but still there’s optimism, knowing Greg’s played an important role in my life and he holds a piece of my puzzle (well, maybe, I’m patiently waiting for such concrete evidence to put forward).
9th December 2023
My period comes at the beach with Barb. She’s running in naked and I’m holding back from the crashing waves, my tummy tight.
There’s familiarity through the road home. It’s the way the sunshine through the karri trees tells me tales of magic. It’s in the way I’ve run to the end of my money—watching my fuel gauge, no longer buying chocolate—and Soren’s neighbour gives me a big tin full of jewellery from an old project of hers.
Going to the market tomorrow means facing my anxieties. It means not giving up. It means not reading my horoscope forecast of more formative challenges and having such trepidation dampen my present world.
10th December 2023
On the morning of my first market the sun is shining and there are double digits on my winding drive down that pretty road from home (the one that feels like the road I was dreaming when I was woken to Beth screaming in Broomerang. Fast cars, sirens, the sound of screeching tyres, crashing, it’s all so vivid).
The man at the coffee stall reminds me that the main thing with the markets is to believe in yourself. So thankful, I turn back to my stall to chat to a lady who offers to give me her shed full of gemstones. She wants no money, just the right person. Then there’s the sale of three necklaces and three books, and Soren giving me old plastic bags and containers. I’m so appreciative for what is coming. So so appreciative.
31st December 2023
There have been many vivid dreams, with one that woke me in the middle of the night, maybe on Christmas, maybe the day after, when the moon was full through the window. I was with Bruce, at a lagoon, or was it a swamp, with the world in kaleidoscopic colours. Through our combined powers, we can move through dimensions, I understood.
These weeks have been full. The Walpole & Denmark markets, selling my necklaces + books, friends (Roser, Aimee, Beth) visiting, more friends coming, and nights with elaborate simple dinners with community. All the while, I’m making necklaces like a madwoman. I can’t stop making necklaces. I love making necklaces. I want to make money making necklaces. Because these books and their swirling, forming thoughts, are resting, waiting for the right time.
Believe, that’s my world for this year.
To believe in it all.
Only time will tell the truth of the power in belief as my light grows only brighter.
7th January 2023
The year begun asleep. I’d drunk red wine, ate some of Byron’s nice cheese, had a few chocolate biscuits from Soren’s pantry, and went to my calling.
On New Year’s Day, cousin Louise sent me a video about big energy incoming, and my period surprised me for another day of solid clouds after a week straight of solid clouds—the dark and the grey reflected in my mood. Although I sound crisper than I feel, with exuberant dinner parties scattered through the clouds. Some to note was one at Maura’s and Kris’s, with me all loud, dictating conversation around our guiding words for this year, and another on New Year’s night, with Jacinta and I bouncing and laughing, drinking red wine across from Kamali and Soren and Easa and Dave Gillett.
Since, I’ve been meaning to write to you, dear Sarah, but days have become one. There have been friends sleeping in swags, vans, buses, utes, and all-wheel drives, with Aimee sleeping on the couch by night and spinning on her pottery wheel on my verandah by day. All the while, I obsessively make necklaces amongst fold out tables full of beads until I’m walking through the forest with Soren and sunlight’s poking through tall trees and I’m an old lady heading into nature, into her death, her life forgotten and her time irrelevant.
It's been happening, these visions.
On Friday, driving the winding road through tall trees en route to pick up Elsa from the Walory, a song with Ram Dass penetrated Elliot’s simple speakers. I was so tired, wishing I could cancel all this life out to be left alone to create. Only I’m not creating, I’m driving, I’m remembering. That’s right, I’m being told I’m entering a time of remembering.
This morning, I wake pre-market without hope. I’m tired of all the people, I’m tired of all the social gatherings, I’m tired of the way tears caress my eyes.
I want purpose, not frivolous.
8th January 2024
It’s morning, my sacred time, and I sit on the hydrogen machine before I go into necklace world. Apparently there’s been covid going around and if this is covid, then it just feels like the passing flu.
10th January 2023
I break from making necklaces only because my throbbing body begs me. With no shortage of inspiration for new patterns, future collections and a whole business, I look forward to a home in Margaret River. Nonetheless, I appreciate the small moments of Denmark. Back driving Scotsdale and turning onto McLeod, where I had that sensation of remembering, I think of life, creation, and the feminine. I’m crying again. I’m driving through time again.
At Kris’s, it’s a day that’s hot then cold. We sit amongst the glare on the lawn looking out to tall trees and talk about inspiration. So much inspiration. When Kris sings me songs with her ukelele, her voice is sweet and I close my eyes, watching this memory from the future, when Kris and I are collaborating. But here in this moment, we are two women ready to step into their power, singing of love. Love, the effervescent notion beckoning us forward. A dream I relate. Someone. He’s just around the corner. He has strong energy and deep eyes.
14th January 2023
In Margaret River I feel home because it’s hot and I can sleep naked on white sheets, with the bush through the curved window and my belly heavy from Tamari prawns and red wine with Kamali and Marc. It’s a process to feel beautiful with the extra weight I gained in that shitty November time. The day is hot and overcast, with ideas pouring through and no clue where to start. Sitting at the long table, I doodle on my iPad until I’m staring out to a giant kidney pool surrounded by bush and fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Shifting my focus inward to the wooden kitchen and trinkets and photos of family and friend, I know what I want. I want this. Another version of this. God I miss living in beautiful space.
15th January 2023
Late afternoon brings wind and a cooler evening—my nipples hard in a t-shirt and sarong (it doesn’t take much for my nipples to become hard). The day passed with a familiar pain. Tears are back hugging my eyes, but there’s no kissing. Just failed wannabe romances and desperation. But doesn’t life always have a way of working out?
16th January 2023
Last night, I went to sleep full on wine, pizza and raw cake, the ends of my hair hard from swimming in the pool, river and ocean, repeating mantras of my place and time: I am ready for greatness, I attract love and intimacy, I am excited for new experiences. Only I wake this morning with the sun hanging low, cutting through the trees to where I lie in the tube, tears burning, misery seeping, and dread rising. I know hindsight will bring the reason I’m enduring such familiar pain, but still I would leave this Earth if I had the choice (goddamn why does death feel so hard to attain).
By the time I pull myself from bed to water the plants before the heat of day, my power returns and diving into the pool brings only joy.
In the beautiful house, I marry my art, reading my ayahuasca diary and noting just how much I write when alone. I consider manifestations, what I want to attract this winter: another beautiful space to write my books.
20th January 2023
At the circus, I’m uninspired. It isn’t the market or the work I want to be doing, but it’s part of my path. I wake early enough for mist, vacant toilets and no line for the chai van. The morning’s already hot when I consider a large part of my new business is selling myself.
23rd January 2023
There is stillness to these days in a Margaret River a sharehouse. I can’t stop reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, and swimming in the ocean, and sleeping naked through the nights. Balmy evenings return my excitement for the future. My home. The people. Shared food. My art.
“It’s a funny thing about capitalism: money you lose by slowing down is always more important than money you’ve already made.
The past always comes clearer, in the future.
But, of course, it’s not the world that needs saving. Only the thing that people call by the same name.”
The Overstory, Richard Powers
26th January 2023
Perth. Late afternoon at Colleen’s, an older lady who gave me her details at the Walpole Market, and whose style, house and dogs radiate elegance. Colleen shows me the costume jewellery, which is mostly her late sister’s, and tells me about her life as a travel agent. She’s happy to pass something forward to me, who takes all but one of the African beads with a reverence to Colleen that it’ll be well-utilised.
Euphoric by my visit to Collen, by the time I get to Elsa’s I’m exhausted and the engine light for my car is on. Only it feels like the engine light for my body. I can’t be bothered with Elsa’s latest boo, who’s reminiscent to David, and I can’t be bothered being 35 years old and still single, broke and childless. I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to be anywhere.
The next morning—a public holiday for what the government continue to call ‘Australia Day,’ although ‘Australia Day’ is bullshit—there’re blue skies, sunshine and an engine light still on.
Tina’s house is 40 minutes from Elsa’s house. Although she’s been short in message, in person Tina’s wonderfully open. She shows me the box of gemstones and like Colleen, tells me I can take what I want, with her happy to be gifting them to be, passing them forward after all these years sitting in the shed. There are more near-tears, this time with gratitude. Gratitude not just for our exchange of gemstones, but the connections we share on our confusion of Earth. We both understand the yearning to disappear. Only with Tina’s older wisdom, she reminds me that Earth is much more worth it when you help other people. But for this, she also reminds me, you must not give a shit what people think.
Driving back to Margaret River the engine light glares at me and I’m determined to pass forward such deeds as Tina’s until I enter death on November eleven—a feeling that Tina understands.
27th January 2023
RAC declare my engine light as needing to go straight to a mechanics. Although eager to set up my space and get creating, it leaves me in Margaret River longer than anticipated. I’m curious to why.
Communication not assumption, Sarah. To communicate what I want. To trust in what enfolds being the best for me.
We put all this emphasis on how we look while forgetting how we feel.
28th January 2023
The Sunday morning I was to drive to Denmark, I chill in Margs, waking early to sit and restring a necklace at the foldout table scrawled with black texts of my thoughts. Clarity for Gemstones arrives. Gemstones. They’re everywhere in my life.
29th January 2023
My nose is still running and the cough hits hardest when I laugh. It’s another clear summer day and while Elliot’s being scanned at the mechanics (fate pending) I walk into a Busselton fast-fashion shop and look at identical necklaces.
31st January 2024
In the wait for the hose for Elliot, I sort Tina’s gemstones on the front outdoor table at Beth & Nick’s. It feels surreal to see the colours coordinated like that. There’s so many of them. I’m in love with my friends who offer me loans with my situation. But I want to continue on the edge, riding wildly with just enough to create from a sincere place.
2nd February 2024
The ceiling fan, the exposed nights, the watermelon, the surf, the bush, the joy of the housemates, such love for Margs summer, such nostalgia all around. Maya buys one of my books and two days later she’s lying on the beach reading the last few pages as I arrive. It’s hot and I swim in the cold ocean, returning to sit in the sun, scarf draped around my neck. Maya sits up and shares her joy in reading my book. We discuss how it can be improved and it’s perfect.
3rd February 2024
The drive back to Denmark brings deep love for all the opportunities and the giant trees and the rolling roads. I’m excited to set up my space and sink back into necklaces, and I’m excited for the proper studio space that will come with a trust of time.
Time.
Time morphing.
Back at Soren’s there are three vans parked up. And one is Roser’s.
Before I left for Margs, we were keeping polite distance, having found myself mindful not to go into deep conversations with her.
But I can’t explain why.
Am I afraid of her reaction to me? Her opinion?
And so, just like that, I’m no longer excited to be back in Denmark. I can’t be bothered. The space isn’t big enough. Not beautiful enough. And when I go to pay for a market stall, my card fails. I check my account. I need $35.35 but with my roadside assist being taken out, I have only $34.
The next day, today, I hunch over my desk, lost in flow, ruminating on the relief of stepping into my purpose to live and breathe my art, and preparing grace to ask Mum for a loan (something I’d told myself I’d never do again). But I have to. Because I want to get out of here.
Now it’s 8:21pm on Saturday night I’m reading Demon Copperhead before watching the documentary on the History of the World. It’s a school night, as Wil would say, meaning tomorrow’s market day.
I feel close to nobody and more myself than ever.
8th February 2024
Here in these hot days of barefeet and cold smoothies and afternoons reading a book flopped on my bed, I’m all dirty hair and sandy feet driving through the tall trees from Greens Pool. At home, I can’t stop making necklaces and Soren can’t stop talking to me about hydrogen. While I give responses, I don’t care. In fact, I don’t care about much right now.
Roser and I remain in different mindsets with little to say to each other. No doubt Roser’s naturally opinionated in what I’ve done and how I should’ve acted, like I should be reading her mind, or acted as her, which she does to people, but I have nothing bad to say beyond the challenge of having her constantly in my space. A space she came to because I was here. Only now I want her to leave that space. To take her darkness and sharp replies and get lost in the world, leaving my shadows alone. Because, Roser, I know I have shadows. And while this is one of many things we could discuss, I don’t have the energy. You don’t listen. You hear me, sure, but being vanquished by so-called spiritual concepts, you read only words to which you give unsolicited opinions (a projector not waiting for the invitation acting all startled when the manifester retaliates to being told what to do). So perhaps first, dear friend, you will be shattered, shaking, so lost and unsure as you take back all your pointed fingers to navigate the dark, unknown waters of healing.
The place we will meet.
At Kris’s, I frame photos for Coexistall, and she gives me a divination by pulling multiple cards from multiple decks, throwing stones and small pieces of wood, and guiding me into a meditation where I’m staring back into this moment as the true Sarah who’s worked through her trauma and old programming, free to swim freely into the future dimensions she knows in her heart is true.
Kris’s eyes shine wisdom talking me through the placement of the stones and small pieces of wood, and what she witnessed in our meditation. She tells of the healing of my heart not being outward and loud, but gentle and creative, slowly gaining traction. She tells that there’s a man who plays a part in healing my heart, and who has a strong connection to water. She tells me that an older forest woman appeared beside me, and she wants me to know of her presence, and that she is there to guide me, only I must trust her, and I must speak with her.
The older forest woman makes me dream of sparkling streams and sleeping in the hollow of trees, dancing with leaves, laughing with wind, driving a long winding road.
10th February 2024
It’s a scorching Saturday near midday and I remain in the annex with a spray of necklaces to be strung. I manage to pull myself away to use ripe bananas bought discounted from IGA with money from the Sunday market to make banana bread for Coexistall, where I’ll head when the heat wanes, giving myself a few days break besides the workshop I said I’d lead. Although I haven’t planned anything because I’ve been all scattered and insecure, too sensitive to energies.
12th February 2024
Coexistall delivers a reminder to listen to my body, to love my body, and to feel my body. My body that holds so much potential with its ability to tune into self, into my guides, and into where my book lies. Only for this I need belief, I need trust, I need space, and I need to fully open to the idea that such possibility exists. That I really am at home in the body of Sarah.
The Sunday was hot and colourful. The people such an odd bunch, all wild beauty and talent, with jams and poetry and readings and rolling naked in paint and late afternoon swims in the Frankland River, washing the ochre from my body into the silky black water, so in love with the moment and the connection it sparks with a dream I had in the Amazon.
This morning, the kitchen is silent save the buzz of flies drawn to dishes and pots from the late-night feed. The trance music went to 2am, when I was already lain under the blank sky, kicking off blankets to turn over in the breeze.
It’s the buzzing flies that send me back to Soren’s, ready to claim my share of money. Hey, that’s something I’ve noticed: amongst free spirits, more and more are talking about wanting financial stability and a permanent home base. Only financial stability is never straightforward for artists. I know this well.
13th February 2024
Time’s so slow and so fast, weaving itself through the paradox of our very existence. Waking at 4am, I take my iPad and bring up Hello I am Lonely. Soon enough, it’s a day where I feel flat and uninspired and heartbroken, with my boobs tender, my hands clumsy, and my mood jumbled like my period is coming. Only my period isn’t due for another ten days. And while last week there had been butterflies and possibilities through my days jewellery making, the excitement’s dissipated and I hold no drive for my necklaces—each one I’ve strung met by problems. All the while, I’m in my head. So desperate for change. Losing all my ideas. Trying to work everything out.
But what is everything.
Why am I here.
Back to that place where life is a blank canvas.
Only without money I can’t drive far to run free or buy food to punish myself.
So where to now?
To move into a space where I can finally set up my beautiful home with my writing and jewellery and photos all around.
But I must be patient.
14th February 2024
There was talk about something going on in the sky on February 14th. Only with my eternal preoccupation with the bigger picture, I can’t remember what’s going on in the sky on February 14th. I suck hydrogen, take acid, realise I’ve been dating the whole year as 2023. I go back and correct it. Necklaces come together, moods forgot, the acid takes hold. My boobs have never felt so full!
15th February 2024
With Soren at Coexistall, I took the acid at midday. Surrounded by gemstones and scarves and life trinkets, I lay on the couch of the annex and melted into the afternoon heat as currents flew through my body.
Wait, how can I explain this?
Especially when I’m hindered by my own words. Forever trying to intellectualise the entire creative process.
No wait, I’ll ramble.
It was my body. My body was rising. Morphing with other energies. The energies of past friends and their higher selves. Only I no longer need validation. I no longer crave a man to witness my beauty. I’m connected with so many, the space of my womb so full. A child asking not for the perfect family, but the perfect time.
Late afternoon along the creek the towering eucalypts are whole cities. I morph, returning to the creek in full bloom, all green fauna and sparkling water; a sensation far removed from its present-day illness.
Sucked into burnt out trees, I’m led into spiralling branches, life fast becoming a game of mirrors. They’re everywhere. All around me. I see it in reality, I feel it in by body. The artist mother, lost in a forgotten creek system, a kaleidoscope of tree branches.
I’m in the house. Soren’s talking about hydrogen, reminding me that the world is fucked, and Roser’s cooking dinner, her demeanour and greeting sharp. I try to act normal, but it’s boring. I know my time here is done. I know I must leave. I know I have no strength, no money, no projection, having thought I wanted a jewellery business only to realise I don’t want to make a business at all. It’s the creative act itself I crave. It’s a new space I crave.
16th February 2024
Returning to Earth, I come in for landing by taking up the offer to move into Maura’s. But reality grounds me through more problems with Elliot, with infuriation transforming to appreciation when the chick mechanic spares me the immediate cost of the scan, which means I can pay for Sunday’s market stall. But still there’s questioning. There’s guilt. Why do I float around like this? Struggling to accept so much. Telling myself I’m following my heart despite being burdened by my mind’s obsessive questioning.
Roser, if you ever read this, I love you, but we are on different paths, different journeys, different timelines, and here marks the mutual parting of our friendship. Yes, I’ve been passive aggressive. But so have you. There is no right person here. Because I too have had moments where you’ve also been so rude and assuming, making me want to cry. So please, never again put expectations of how I or anyone should be. Never again give me your sharp opinion when I have not asked for it. Never again give me the offhand comments or the assumptions or the fear or tell me what to do when I’m in my own flow. So please, turn that finger back around into your own heart. As for my heart, that’s my work. Not yours. Because I know I’m not perfect. And I will never say what you want me to say. I will never be you.
Stop playing the innocent victim and get lost.
17th February 2024
I think I need to move sooner than expected. I’m putting weight back on, with Soren’s and my diet misaligned, and I’m plagued by Roser’s abruptness, feeling to be pulled down just so she can squish me. I don’t know why she’s here! It’s all so strange!
“The traumas of persecution left deep traces within your soul’s memory. This may presently manifest as a fear to be fully grounded. For example, a fear to be fully present because you remember being brutally attacked for who you were.”
19th February 2024
Coming home to my body is about the journey. Knowing the importance of my inner world as I dance with an outer world obsessed by appearance.
It’s my last night at Soren’s and still there’s a painful distance with Roser, who’s had a persistent ear infection for weeks. Jacinta notes that she’s not listening to something, but Roser isn’t listening to Jacinta’s intention because Roser doesn’t believe in such things, even when the antibiotics aren’t working, and the ear infection persists. Meanwhile, I experience guilt for my desperation in escaping this confusing energy. Then there’s my confusion around the cyclone of questioning my never-ending cycle of beginnings and endings.
At least there are my dreams and desires, with the secret to manifesting my dreams lying in vibrational frequency.
20th February 2024
At Maura’s, my latest home, setting up another new space leaves me exasperated by stuff. I expertly move through it, thinking about releasing all this unwanted energy by a day in meditation, although this remains only thoughts. The thought to return to my body. The thought to enter a place of no return. A thought to be surrounded by people who complement my purpose. The time at Soren’s has left me on the brink of self-hatred. But I’ve come to far. I’ve done too much work to go backward. And I know my truth, my inner reality. I know I will rise once again to fall in love and pursue my art.
“...the female, the unseen aspects of nature...”
21st February 2024
I’m back. Free to float through days of life’s contemplations. Questions to our existence. My purpose. My future space opening up, encouraging me to return to my book. A book about being a starseed, a light worker, of keeping hope and standing by Mother Nature as we’re sent into turmoil. For good reason.
There’s misty rain on the winding road strewn with branches. Back at Soren’s, I borrow his callipers.
My new space is clean and full of natural light. I listen to a book on human’s relationship with the stars and ruminate about being back in control of my energy and space.
Before scientists were labelled scientists, they were philosophers. Astronomy was the original science.
Imagine the end desire and feel its reality.
22nd February 2024
Listening to audio books while stringing jewellery I’m reminded of the importance of total belief. To embody and feel like you’ve already achieved your dreams and pray your appreciation for this. Faith. Faith. Faith.
23rd February 2024
Back in my own energy at my new place, there are solar flares and portals into our darkness, which Maura refers to as the ego, and there are thoughts of Roser, whose energy I mentally return, already at capacity healing myself. My veins are popping and my legs are sore from extended periods sitting making necklaces. I read books that deepen my understanding of the subconscious and excite me to return to days of writing. Imagine it, me seated at a desk all screens and papers. I repeat positive mantras.
“…they knew that these ET civilisations utilise communication technologies that interface with thought, telepathy and consciousness...If people understood the power of consciousness and of mass consciousness, they would be able to completely change the direction of the planet.”
(From a video Joyce, who I met in San Miguel de Allende, sent me through telegram)
24th February 2024
My period comes with a vengeance the morning of the full moon. I’m already awake when in the garden outside my window, John, the father, who was a harp maker and now has dementia, is having, what we could call, an episode. He’s muttering and chasing after the son saying he’ll kill him, that son of the bitch. Maura brings Cara to me and tells me the police and ambulance are on the way. Knowing that dementia is unprocessed emotions, I make tea, curl up in bed, hug my womb, and cry. So ready for change, so appreciative of my body’s connection to the moon, so determined to continue releasing all energies not aligned with my higher self.
“…that anyone would be arrogant enough to think they know what’s best for someone else…”
Rick Rubin
26th February 2024
Back sleeping on my camper mattress with a full moon, my dreams are vivid. Two or three nights ago I was in a car with people driving down a road by water when I saw a phone on the verge. I sharply pulled around and went back. The screen was a little broke, but it was otherwise good. In the phone, I searched the contacts to find its owner. The most recent person they had called was familiar. Out of all people! But I didn’t want to call him because it wasn’t my plan, I was leaving him behind. When the people I was with wondered my hesitation, I said I wasn’t convinced it was worth calling the person because it wasn’t like it was a great phone. While I knew the right thing to do was overcome my ego and call him, in my dreamlike state I chuckled to how absurd it was to have him come back to me again.
But I don’t dwell on it.
I repeat manifestations and concentrate on vibrations until I’m dancing with friends and getting drunk on red wine and eating peanut butter cookies, falling into a deep sleep where my period wakes me through the night. During my early morning slumber, I’m back in Mildura. Only this time I’m at Senior College, and I’m older, making my own decisions, confidently walking through the grounds despite not knowing many people but knowing I would make friends. The dream’s like a technological blip, with Senior College the right decision for my true spirit. But I’m still in another dimension, and now there’s Sophie Barker, and there’s him. I keep running into him. We sit on a bench and trace each other’s hands as we speak. Then he stands up and cuddles into Sophie like a friend. At a resort with white napkins and waiters, we kiss, and it feels like we’ve kissed before. I wake to a perfect drop of blood coming from me, basking in the sensation of openly sharing my heart with another.
With internal focus—a stronger sense of who you are and why you’re here—we move through the world in a way that is clear, and the world responds magnetically.
29th February 2024
Four years ago, I was at Nannup with Kamali, Mia and Lilith for my first market selling my own creations. Covid was just beginning. Today, I combat fatigue and an unexplained headache, mindful of my words and thoughts as I pack everything for my own stall at Nannup.
I don’t know what the other side holds.
Already unexcited to return to Denmark and Maura’s, I know I need a break from making necklaces. I know I will write my books, having been offered a housesit at John and Bev’s in Margs from May to September (Bev called me this afternoon and we spoke merrily until our connection went dead). I know that there’s still two months until May and really, in essence, I can do whatever I want—a thought that excites me.
On my daily walk into the forest, which was replanted by the owners of the property forty years ago, I whisper positive notions. The thoughts that have me floating away are the ones that excite me, existing in the pure elatedness of my creativity. I cross the stream and climb the embankment, strolling under the cool of trees until I hit the property boundary, staring out to dry, yellow paddocks and the southern ocean behind. I squint. Why am I looking to cows and not more forest?
5th March 2024
Extracts from Jung & the Story of Our Time by Laurens van der Post…
...afflicted with the sickness of an entire age and culture...
…...urgent task to reveal the vast potential of beauty suppressed and hidden underneath...
…Any person who laid hands, however well intentioned, to grasp the dreams of another was violating the first principle of healing.…
…...the world is still full of parents who attempt to live their own lives through their children...
…that mental disturbances and even the most profound derangement of the human personality were not mere diseases of the mind…what was needed was yet more doses of prescriptions of normality, the very approach which had failed the sufferers and had played no small part in the shattering of their personalities…
…...It is precisely because the spirit of the English-speaking world remains so unconsciously “female-dominated” that man has not yet been able to be his full self...
…...Leonardo da Vinci,
so obsessed himself by the importance of the feminine in man...
…Time is relative in more dimensions than those of the continuum wherein Einstein’s formidable equation places it. It has a knock of putting the truly great, as it were, well ahead of us, rather than in the past darkening so fast behind. As a result, most of those regarded as great in their own lifetime diminish once dead, and only the truly great increase in stature…
…...The ghost in life is not an image of life after death but of spirit before birth.”
(So are we dead before we’re born?)
6th March 2024
In Margaret River, I visit John and Bev’s, which will be my winter home, sort necklaces for a shop in Nannup, sit at the library, eat too much of the cake Bev gave me, and respond to messages from Joyce in Mexico. She’s talking about her mission on Earth. She tells me I’m not from Earth either. That I’ve come here for a mission. That I can discover my mission. And maybe she’s right, maybe I need to better define this.
In reality, I’m excited by little and close to few. Sensations from last night’s dreaming are strong. Roser sends me a message detailing everything I’ve done wrong. It reads like it’s come from her therapist.
Back on the road driving through the tall trees, I’m thinking about time and how trees communicate and how they survive and how we operate on instant gratification. I’m going beyond, breaking down this absurd world to expose the possibilities silently waiting.
Editing Notes From Earth, I witness my deep repetition as I formulate new pathways. I am regurgitating, recycling, recalibrating years of circular time. I’m all alone and I’m from out of space, with excitement again returning with thoughts of returning to Gemstones.
7th March 2024
Feeling my best with hot days swimming in freshwater with trees, blue skies, and wholesome conversations with powerful ladies (Janice in Nannup and Cerrie in Pemberton), back in Denmark I foresee 21 days of reset to lose my fear and raise my vibration so that when it comes, I’m prepared to meet it.
8th March 2024
Instead of focusing on what I can’t have, I focus on what I can have. I reset space, again. I ready for three weeks of solitude and self. And when my thoughts wander, I bring them back to the appreciation to all that is. To the embodiment of what I came here to be.
10th March 2024
This morning, Jung & The Story of Our Time covers shadow work and the feminine. “…I remember him saying clearly that the individual who withdraws his shadow from his neighbour and finds it in himself and is reconciled to it as an estranged brother, is doing a task of great universal importance. He added that the future of mankind depended on the speed and extent to which individual men learnt to withdraw their shadows from others and re-integrate them honourably within themselves.”
18th March 2024
Time moves. Halfway through The Poisonwood Bible. Bloated after five hours sleep. Tired for no reason—falling into bed by 7:30pm and waking like I’m hungover, only I haven’t been drinking. Deep deep dreams. Ringing ears, which were listed as a symptom of the ascension process that Joyce in Mexico sent me. And curiosity to what ascension means.
It’s coming.
I believe in it all.
The acceptance to be here in this position to help care for Sommer, who fell from the roof of her troopy, and her five-year-old daughter Mahina. Having a full home, I take an early morning drive to the Walpole market. The morning’s spectacularly still, the accentuating light making me loudly rejoice.
I sit at my stall and sell little. Strangers give me cake, other stallholders give me hugs, and a girl who bought my book at the Denmark Market tells me she loved loved loved it.
Then I’m moving back home and I’m moving to my own beat, making vegetable dishes and running through the forest searching for fairies with Mahina until we’re swimming in Elephant Cove and we’re singing Doe-Ray-Me over and over.
Lengthening necklaces, I stay present in this moment, waiting for the right time to step forward and sing.
20th March 2024
Despite the joy of jewellery having gone walkabout, I listen to another book on the subconscious mind and drift to sleep with significant thoughts.
In the morning kitchen, Maura tells me Tohu died. Its shock takes me to the image of him the other week at Soren’s. He was sitting all alone with his good heart at the end of the table when I emerged from the annex to pee. He looked sad, but I didn’t feel like chatting. I wanted to return to my necklaces to cancel out the world.
For the equinox there’s sunshine and gorgeous moments with gorgeous Mahina who, despite being five and three quarters, and me being thirty-five and three quarters, will be a lifelong friend. She plays beside me as I finish a necklace for Soren and attempt one for Beth.
Mahina and I are at the park when my period arrives. I’m appreciative to its equinox timing and the way Mahina understands feelings that come with such bleeding.
21st March 2024
Acceptance of an idea of grandeur.
Clear and direct communication rather than multiple channels.
‘When dogs get sick, they fast, and we should too,’ Berta, the homeopath who owns the property, mentions to me.
I’m finding it harder to offer much in conversation. I care less for gossip.
23rd March 2024
There’s a gathering at Kamalis and I leave early because I’m bored and I want to buy a block of coconut chocolate. Through the night I sleep on my back and listen to my body calling me home. Walking through morning light through the forest’s trees, the connection between foods and emotions is obvious—I’m constipated because I used food to target emotions. In my mind I’m a famous writer. I’m readying for my own space but with the combination of an Indian summer and my friend Mahina, first I’ll embrace nature and movement.
24th March 2024
It’s another full moon and another warm and clear Autumn day. Even at 26 degrees, the markets are quiet, with enjoyable conversations and an $80 profit that has me fixated on having my jewellery in shops and galleries. For then, not using my energy on markets, I’ll be alive in writing my book.
Later on the Sunday afternoon I’ve got my boots and backpack strapped and I’m marching down the walking track at Light’s Beach. Entering the undergrowth is cooling, and there’s no one else at the lake. Under a tree by white sand, I recline against a stump and read my book.
I drive out of town and park at Madfish Bay lookout. Across the road, I follow my boot prints back through the overgrown path. Soon, my tracks turn around, and I carry on, stomping through sand, tripping on sticks, climbing over branches and bushes.
I feel my heart beating as I scramble over the large rocks. Glancing out to the ocean, I see no other meetings of rocks like these ones that fell together here. Slowing down, there’s a lightness through my body and I place one hand on a giant boulder to ask, ‘Where did you come from?’ Memories race to the family I will one day return. Back in the present there’s isolation and there’s realisations.
Teleportation.
Something people have mentioned to me before, only I could never grasp their meaning. But now, now something clicks and something stirs. All we need to do is close our eyes and believe we can teleport to other worlds. And technology plays its part. Because the stones connecting with my body play a part. And Sarah plays her part. Travelling far beyond only to return to mesh such experiences with the knowledge her Earth-bound body has attained.
I will tell stories.
27th March 2024
Mahina joins me in bed to read. Later, at the playground, we’re a hit. Back at home there are tantrums and conversations that leave me breathing and smiling. Fate has it that I’m to drive Sommer and Mahina to Perth. I don’t know why. Will there be a crash? Will I get stuck in Perth? Is it the money she’ll pay me? Whatever the reason, I accept this karma and will get to the other side.
31st March 2024
Energy doesn’t disappear; it transforms.
I’m part of showing (and therefore growing) the new, beautiful world that’s possible.
1st April 2024
It was a Thursday when I drove Sommer, Mahina, the two dogs and a full troopy to Perth. The bus back to Albany was pulled over by the police, who took one of the chicks who was fighting with another chick, away. I had been sitting right in the middle of it, unperturbed by the profundity and threats slurring from their mouths. When the fat white guy sitting behind me jumped up to scream for everyone to shut up, it was hard to suppress my laughter, with even the slurring chicks in shock.
Sommer’s friend Steven then drove me back to Denmark. The midnight mist was dense and so was conversation. He spoke about consciousness, finance and the fifth dimension, while I listened, prompting him with questions. I enjoy viewing myself less verbally reactive, despite my mind screaming for people to know I don’t need to be explained this. Yes, ego remains. My dear ego, which has returned with a vengeance the past few days.
I’ve been mentally replying to Roser’s essay about all I did wrong.
I so want to meet her at her level, bicker back about the moments when she was unknowingly crude, but I won’t. I can’t. She’s not ready to listen to what I have to say. Put simply, I don’t want her energy in my life right now. I want to part ways. To unshackle myself from the unwarranted opinions she enforces on me. Thankfully, she’s leaving the country in a few days, and I can turn my frustrations to art.
Yesterday was the last market for my season, the Easter Market, where I sold the last copy of my book. With this morning’s grey, I lie in bed reading a book based in Tibet before I rise and enter a fluid Monday completing Jazz’s commission necklace, meandering to town, walking in the forest, sorting my market stuff, eating sourdough and veg, and sitting with Maura to sort out what necklaces she wants. Because I’m leaving soon. I don’t know when, or where, but I’m leaving.
6th April 2024
At least there’s my dreams to enter in the nights. Dreams where I’m standing taller in my power so full of calm and love.
7th April 2024
The days are still warm, with people hurting themselves or dying or going wild. Meanwhile, I’m indifferent, empty, euphoric, readying to set sail once again by packing Elliot to the rafters. In the nights my confidence has been growing through glowing dreams. They make me move with gratitude, appreciative to the community and the dinner parties that have held me this past summer. When I book a flight to Broome, habitual money anxiety claws at me, and I’m reminded to trust. Trust that if I’m meant to write this book, the support will be there, and I will do this with or without a partner (unfortunately I’m resigned to the fact I’ll be alone forever). And so I trust, and I jump.
9th April 2024, New Moon, Eclipse
‘Maybe my emptiness is because I have no partner, no children, no money. I have nothing and so I have nothing to lose,’ I consider, following Jacinta over the rocks within the community.
Jacinta crouches her raven hair and bright eyes. We’re setting intentions for the eclipse. A powerful time, it’s said. A time of transformation. Of ascension. Of fully stepping into your destiny.
‘And for the first time in my life, I’m okay with all of this,’ I continue. ‘Because even if I don’t have the intimacy I crave, I’m going to write these books. I’m going to publish them. The most important support is my own support. Plus, I just read this book on George Orwell’s wife and it made me think of all the forgotten women of history. How so few had a choice to their destinies and power. What if I had been born in this time? And I had these urges to speak out and be a voice for others, yet I gave it up because I wanted the marriage that was expected of me, fearing what other people thought. I wouldn’t have been proud of that. I would have preferred to take that great risk in standing alone and sharing my heart, because such sacrifice would’ve contributed to a more positive future. Far more than following the norm.’
Jacinta’s intuition glows through her bright eyes. She reminds me I have a skill that’s to be used. This writing. This platform.
With Jacinta cautious not to stay at the rocks too long, with it being a powerful place, we stand and I follow, still swapping intentions. Mine is for total belief. I am a best-selling author. I am a best-selling author. I am a best-selling author.
The next day, I tell everyone I will see them soon and leave Denmark at noon. My car is full of all my belongings and the sun is shining by the time I get to Margaret River. When I check my bank account, I repeat the same mantras around financial independence.
I’m changing paradigms.
I’m searching for my story.
I’m going home.
10th April 2024
Point Walter, Bicton: ‘Watch out for all the idiots on the road. Just treat everyone as a dickhead.’
11th April 2024
Early morning Perth airport is plagued by the quiet hum of order. People in high vis fill the terminals, drinking coffees in take away cups and eating plastic food for breakfast. They need their receipts. I drink a shitty $7.20 coffee and glance to the morning show playing on the supersize TV.
12th April 2024
The plane hit the familiar tarmac at the moment it hit me: I’m back. How did that happen?
It’s hot.
I flop at Rachel’s.
Near dusk I walk Rachel’s flat-tyred bike proudly through the Bronx, the streets glittering with glass, dragonflies filling the sky, and people drunkenly stumbling.
At the Boulevard petrol station, a man waits for me to work out the air hose. He is polite and timid in offering to help.
Riding off, two young children throw stones at a sick cockatoo.
At Byron’s jam night, the crowd is small. There’s Byron, Elsa and that Chilean guy who was at Kamali’s soon after his three-day old baby died, and who I gifted my book, and who loved my book. There’s also a bunch of backpackers, and a Wiggan. He drinks bourbon and talks passionately about culture and societal understanding. The backpackers bask in it while I banter with it. Because what he talks of, I’ve come looking for.
And I need to talk with him again.
Without a crowd of fresh backpackers.
22nd April
It’s in my dreams I find most solace
The ease of the read with a lonely girl novel, only the character isn’t in crisis but questioning mode.
23rd April
The nausea. The emptiness. The pain. The want to write and the forgetting how. Long nights dreaming new experiences where I’m all power, light and water, my whole body locking itself into such knowing.
Yesterday was madness, being fed information that confirmed I’ve spent months trapped by my feminine imagination. That all this time I was nobody but somebody with an overactive mind. The news had me mourn for my perpetual rejection and streams of lost dreams. Lying on my old bed listening to music and staring into space, I was so tired of this same narrative of healing and heartache. Then five different friends shared their love for me.
24th April
When I first woke from another dream, my whole body remained in another time, another existence, where my soul was complete and everything was sense, the seemingly trivial nature of time forgotten. But then I’m awake. And there’s a mind clawing at me. A mind reminding me to obsess on profound hurt and the startling truth I’ll never be normal.
I ride my bike to Cable Beach and walk the sandy track with a fully full moon. Going beyond myself to at least one person I could maybe possibly positively impact, I feel good. Thinking of what it takes to be a leader. Thinking of the feminine. Thinking of total acceptance of my potential.
At the supermarket scouting the shelves for items on special, I experience another out of body sensation where I’m watching myself standing there so numb and so sure.
29th April 2024
I’m back supported; I’m back from Ardningoon. We spent a whole day on the boat, racing across swirling vortexes and smooth surfaces, with a waning moon, rainforests, oysters, fresh water, high tide swims, and islands encircled by shades of blue. Then there was Terry, who offered to talk with us like he was reading my mind. It’s from him that I learn that Dreamtime stories stretching to the East Coast of Australia have creation coming onto land at Cable Beach. Miles away from last week’s heartache, I’m all elation and joy, treasuring these moments before I land in Margaret River for dedication and hard work.
2nd May
Gene Keys by Richard Rudd:
‘Society as a whole hasn’t realised it survives on finite resources.
An unselfish attitude is knowing the connectedness of all life.
Locate the vibration of my higher purpose inside of me.
Through our altruism, we must create a different world for our children to come into, and one day, we will see the madness of the selfish approach.
We need a new monetary system based on philanthropy rather than profit.
We need a new education system based on the whole child instead of being mind centric.
We need new systems of governance that are based on virtue rather than accomplishment.
We need to put our energy into creating a new technology that can help us create a far more sustainable culture with clean energy that doesn’t desecrate our planet.
Help as many people as we can for them to find their higher purpose in life because that will finally make the difference.
A selfless human being is a cosmic human being. They have access to dimensions that we have little or no awareness of. The very existence of the universe itself is proof of the existence of infinity, which means that anything is possible.’
4th May
It’s neap tides and the sun is rising and I’m floating in the ocean. Albert postpones our chat, later he postpones again, and I’m not surprised—the differing concept of time something I’d wanted to ask. No longer sure our conversation is meant to be, I declare myself bored.
On the phone I talk with Elsa, then Byron, then Rachel, then Pippa, then I’m riding through dusk back to Cable Beach, waving at Wil, then Vadem, then Pippa. ‘Sarahhh hey,’ Elsa’s tinder date calls out as I ride through the middle of him and his friends standing on the footpath on Gubinge Road.
Pippa and I look at the final colours before dark. Somehow, we’re talking about guys. We often end up talking about guys. ‘I’ve given up, truly,’ I tell Pippa. ‘And I’m not just using these words to hide another reality within,’ I assure Pippa. ‘I am so done with it. Even if my heart breaks to the thought, I have to accept that no one is interested in me.’ But it feels such a cruel fate to have such pain and boredom acting like a blatant fuck you from the universe. It feels so false to pretend like I’m okay in surviving this world alone. It feels turbulent experiencing this all over again after a week of sunshine and dancing and swimming and riding my bike singing.
The old croc park is messy and dirty. We sit around the table outback of the kiosk, the chickens to our left and Happy to our right. There are rich, eccentric and intense characters, with too many conversations and observations to note here.
By the time I’m riding home through cold pockets of night, my head and heart are pumping, back chewing on the feminine. Feeling conviction to standing up to the men who tell me how this world is. Remembering not just to stand for myself, but for all of the feminine who know in their hearts that there’s a better way. We can’t accept this world because this is not our world. This patriarchy, capitalism, the wars, this is not our world.
No wonder so many of us women feel like we’re from somewhere else.
8th of May, a Taurus New Moon
Tired and ungrounded in Margaret River, it takes time to land despite the journey being so seamless that I was driving out of the airport at the time I predicted to step off the plane. Desperate to escape the intensity of the city, I drove until I was at Bev and John’s, my new home, with it’s sweet little space for writing on winter mornings.
And here I am.
My new life.
Only there’s a part of me left in Broome, with a cord of light stretching thousands of kilometres north to the intensity, passion and shimmering eyes of someone with the ability to light up the world.
On the cusp of dark the coastline colours were vivid and birds flew overhead. A man danced around the pindan, his explanations of the heart and feminine all long and intricate. Was he reading my mind? Or is he reading from an invidible script where we’re both the main characters. A story that spans lifetimes and dimensions and possibilities of a time and place we’re yet to reach.
A startling reflection of self came with three hours of banter. Then he was dropping me home, he was hugging me goodbye, and we’re saying we’ll see each other again soon.
But will we?
Or is this the same story on repeat?
Whichever way it goes, I’m still holding my own destiny to shake this world and make a difference, which I will do it with or without him.
Because now I’m here.
With $300, maybe less, to my name, and with costs equating to much more, it’s time to step backward, to melt into the shadows, and disappear into the light. Because I’m not here to be normal. I’m here to tell stories. And to do this I will swim in the ocean, I will walk amongst the trees, and I will be in conversation with all. I don’t have to force anything. I just have to trust.
And listen to my liyan.
