Πάρος, 2023
My grandpa took my grandma on a trip around Europe in the 1960s because she was desperately sad and he still talks about the Mediterranean and the way fish would jump right out of the water and land in his boat, the buckets of whitebait being emptied onto white sheets and so many octopus drying out in the Aegean sun. Symbols of ocean life that I don’t think he realises now only exist in the past; in a place between myth and memory that vendors still carefully lay out for tourists but are secretly imported and thawed out somewhere out of sight.
It makes me sad to think about, that the world he was born into a century ago and believes he still lives in today are two different worlds. It makes me sad to think about how even the world that I was born into is no longer here anymore. I think about the secret places I went to as a child, the fern gullies filled with fairy houses and witches in Dharawal and Booderi country that were burnt away in the fires and have grown back as a ghostly monoculture of white gum. I think about the Bellinger River and the swimming holes we used to share with river snakes and brown turtles that would swim in slow sun-lighted circles. Since our last visit the forest on the other side of the river has been cut down for developments and the brown turtles stopped visiting years ago. The world is changing so quickly and the weight to bear witness feels so heavy sometimes.
That Nowhere Feeling 