The places I go are never there.

I consume so much information that sometimes I don't know if I've written an entire blog of other people's ideas. Occasionally, it makes me want to switch off the podcasts and youtube videos and only listen to ambient soundscapes so that I'm not taking in any new concepts for a week, although that honestly sounds horrible to me. Today I'm going to try my best to write about ideas in my way, but I'm sure a salt sprinkling of some brilliant humans rumination's will be scattered in. (I'm imagining that meme with the guy holding his arm up doing the salt pinch) I'm on day 42 of my 84 day writing project, exactly half way. Each day is a choice to open the book because in the midst of a life you don't always believe you have the time to sit for an hour and reflect on whatever the prompt is for the day. I say believe because I absolutely do have time, it's time that I would have undoubtedly spent scrolling on my phone before. I've enjoyed it, it's pushed me to write in a kind of messy, unstructured way about the weird red dot that has taken up residence on my eyelid or the thoughts I have on linear time. I'm sure if someone read it, the way it bounces around, they would surely send me for a series of psychological evaluations to ensure that I was in fact, okay, whatever that means. But my head is like a podcast, all day every day so it feels constructive to get some of that out on the page so I can have room to think about...(I should be saying 'think about nothing' here but I actually get to think more about which gelato flavour I'm going to try next). What am I here to deliver today? Some thoughts on experience vs reflection.

Next week I turn 29 which some days makes me feel like a new born Bambi stumbling down the path. Other days it feels like I'm heading at warp speed to a retirement home with a puréed food diet. 29 feels like an important age, but don't they all. My mum called me and asked me what I was going to do for my birthday, which was a bit of a confronting question that I had been dodging. If I was in Melbourne my friend A&D would be whipping me into a fabulous outfit, throwing me in an Uber and taking me to get espresso martinis and potato in all its forms. I know it sounds like they don't go together but they do, trust me. I'm here in Perth without my tribe which was a choice that I made, so I'm going to have to choose something darn exciting to do that day. Mum said, 'Gosh, you're going to look back at this birthday in 10 years and think about your 29th, living on the other side of Australia, just spending all your time writing, cooking, working from home, taking long walks- what a special experience.' But it doesn't feel particularly life altering and special at the moment, which, I suppose nothing does. And then we got talking about why... I'll give you an example. Last year mum and I went to a rainforest on the South Coast. The rainforest is thousands of years old, with ancient 'old growth' that provided the Yuin people the resources for tool and weapon crafting. The trees are as tall as you see in paintings from early colonisation where tiny men in cowboy hats and boots can hardly be seen in depictions of the landscape.

Mount Kosciusko, seen from the Victorian border (Mount Hope Ranges) 1866 Eugene von GUÉRARD

So we're in the rainforest, and it felt like being in this painting. This painting, if you ever get the privilege to see in person is so expansive, you can almost hear the calm quiet of the twilight that Guérard captured. A tear came to my eyes when I stood in front of it, because it felt like a vision of what we could have had, and perhaps (I hope) a vision of what we could have in the future. Gosh tangent much, okay we're IN the rainforest. Mum is limping because she's hurt her ankle, I'm self conscious about my stomach in the tights I'm wearing. My step dad is looking for a good 'hiking stick' and the sun is high and bright in our sunglass-less eyes. I was trying to take it all in, breathe in the fresh air. I took photos that of course couldn't capture the grandeur and tried my best to listen to all the sounds in the symphony. But I'll be honest, it didn't feel magic. I hate my stomach in exercise tights, I don't like the way my right foot turns out when I walk and I find it hard to stop talking in my head. I think this absolute bullshit inner narrative is because according to social media when you're on a rainforest walk your purpose is to be photogenic with a kind of pensive enigmatic look on your face as though you've been there before in a past life. I wanted it to feel magic despite the body image crisis I was having in the middle of no where with two people who love me more than anything, but it never does until you're reflecting back on it. When I look at the photos of the infinite green I can't believe I was under the canopy of those tree tops, walking tracks that our First Nations people would have walked, smelling fresh water and damp leaves that haven't ever been contaminated with exhaust fumes or plastic. The rainforest certainly didn't care about the acne on my chin. So how do we conceptualise this strange 'in the moment' vs 'next day reflection' conflict. ''The places I go are never there.'' - Sam Phillips. That's how it feels, being alive. The places we go are never there. I think we want to acknowledge the alchemy or power during the experience, we want to be able to say, when we're standing at the precipice of whatever event, monument, commitment, journey, relationship, hill that we are in the moment. Because being in the moment is the ultimate goal that we're fed. But honestly I just don't think we're capable of both experiencing and reflecting simultaneously in real time. And I don't want to. How incredible that we get to live the good stuff again, and that sometimes, the second time (the reflection) it's even better. I didn't get to hike to the top of Chester Lake (image at the bottom of the blog) and watch the sun pass over the Rocky Mountains once, I got to be there immersed in it, and I get to reflect on how valuable that moment was hundreds of times over. If we want to be less meta, in the moment of wrapping mugs in newspaper on the floor of our house at age 8 I didn't think it would be a defining memory of my childhood, symbolising how close Mum and I were, but now I get to re-live that whenever I want. I don't mind not realising the momentous importance of something when I'm in the moment, because it means for better or worse I get to access a memory and dive into it later, choosing whether I want it to come along with me for the rest of my days. Or if it's a memory that brings pain or anger, I can hopefully convince it to plant some roots and stay in the forgotten memories pool. I have to note here, that some experiences are so painful that I have absolutely no interest in this brilliant happy-go-lucky spirit of 'yay I get to vividly remember that really disturbing event'. I'm not dismissing that. In the same way that it can be positive, not realising the impact of a challenging moment can be an invaluable mechanism for you to survive it. Mum has said to me, in the lead up to every important event in my life 'joy lies in the anticipation not the event'. But just this moment she has text me and said 'I'm now thinking that joy lies not only in the anticipation... but also in reflection'. Perfect timing Mamma. So this week after your word bath here in the circle, perhaps you can reflect on one of your most visceral moments. One that fills up your sinuses with the scent of birthday cake or of rain. One where you can see the smile lines and pores on the skin of the person who was standing next to you. One where you rubbed your leg against your lovers under the table at a dinner party, a silent act of love. One where you picked up your new family pet for the first time and they jumped all over your new jumper. Or one where you smelled the neck of your new born. The places you go are never there, they're in you. M.

Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.