Some people travel to find themselves, some to lose themselves. I travel to discover that which brings me to life through confronting death and adaptability. Travel wakes me up from the narcolepsy—and also the more generalised sleep—it informs me; wisens me. It opens the portal to the writer in me so that I can write out into the world that which I most need to learn … so that what needs to live through me can fill my vessel and reweave my narrative.

It’s the movement of travel that I most adore. The momentum, the dynamism … the swings and spirals to find that sweet spot of equilibrium and poise. Balance is an unnatural state—a new age erroneous desire—it alludes to a state of stagnation. Sitting at a desk in front of a window to write, the curtains are drawn on my mind. But put me next to the window on the backseat of a taxi on a bumpy, windy road under construction with an uncomfortably full bladder and an ache of hunger from a 7-day fruit fast, and I am instantly inspired.

Triggers confront me—consume me—as I am forced to work cell-by-cell on past traumas to remind myself that I am truly free and that I can finally write without fear of recrimination. I lean in deep enough to touch into the fears, the anxieties, the debilitating threats I faced of getting thrown out of home or losing custody of my child if I spoke my truth … if I shared my reality. Courage walks hand in hand with fear. I am known to overshare if given the chance.

The barrier on a bridge has been opened like a gate. A rusted reminder of mortality lies in the riverbed beneath. Giant stairways and planted beans stretch to the giant in the sky. Departing souls have easy access to high places. Also a reminder that first one must fall to rise. Death feels easy here. Heaven and hell are only as far apart as earth and sky. There is no separation, only perceived segregation. There is no ‘other’. The inner child takes the crone by the hand. They jump and skip. Heads thrown back, they laugh at the sky. The sky knows change. It is unmoved.

Houses retreat into rubble and dust, making way for a new highway. Memories of a Yangtze River trip invade my mind as people are displaced to higher ground. The road becomes like a river washing away houses … an unnatural disaster; a crime against humanity. It looks like a war zone; it’s difficult to breathe. My eyes seek attainment and attachment to the next dopamine hit. A bus with DELUXE emblazoned across its front is being worked on by two bare-chested men exposing cages of ribs. Deluxe is just another word—a branding that has no intrinsic meaning value.

I am reminded by rivers of rubbish down hillsides and in forests that there is no such thing as away. Like the tongue that keeps seeking the broken tooth, the psyche will consistently and obsessively keep seeking the wounded parts again and again. We think we can throw certain things away whilst accumulating other things when in reality everything always exists and it is simply we who are shifting in and out of the objective reality of those very things we believe we are either discarding or holding onto. So I discard words and, in deleting sentences and paragraphs, I detach also from the meaning they hold.

The silences between musical notes are what frame, contain and make the songs possible. The weft and weave of story is the same. It’s the spaces that allow the piece to breathe, that give it both life and death in non-dualistic harmony. Words are plucked and rewoven, always leaving a knot untied or that one loose thread as a reminder that nothing is ever complete or perfect.

As I learn to write again with honesty and authenticity from that fierce place in my core, I write away all the shields. And as I learn to cease the word vomit that perpetuates my narrative, I learn to re-create spaces between the words so I can steep myself in the breath of the present. I pour words on my skin like nectar until they wash away—slowly, slowly—the outer layers … until my armour can rust and fall away.

The aim is not enlightenment; the aim is truth. My voice and my silence is my message.