DFT Diary – Sunday 10th July

Day 15 - Homeward Bound

Ryder is sleeping in the seat next to me. His new career as a student at Abmusic will begin in the next few days. Ewan is stretched out in the back cuddling my dog. We are about 600 km south of Newman, it is about 11:30 pm. The night is dark, cold with a steady drizzle falling since we left Port Hedland, almost as if the Pilbara weeps at our departure.

This night fell on us while we were passing through the astounding Legoland mountains of the Munjina Ranges. The sections of the hills looked like they had been pulled apart by a baby God who put them back together in the wrong order. A line of giant ridges stacked incorrectly like an ill-fitting lego set. Sections of the ridges seemed to hang out over lower parts, other sections look like they were from a different ridge. In places the open cliff faces looks like bricks without mortar, stacked precariously high, as if the whole range might just collapse any second. The landscape here is almost alien; powerful and vast. It is a forgotten part of the world on a forgotten road with Red rocks and immeasurable green plains hidden behind ranges, spotted with caves and valleys. The beauty is mesmerising.

Reflection is my only companion now as I try to understand what has happened, what really transpired. How has my life come to look like this: driving a dirty, red-mud caked truck down an endless open road, ambitiously determined for a result I cannot even visualise. All I know is it is not a material result.

The white line of the highway is flashing below me like a story-less movie screen, my headlights show the road and its verge which form a tunnel in the night, describing the extent of my visual world. The darkness ahead is a void, drawing me in like a black hole. The purring diesel motor of the vibrating steel chariot has put me into a trance leading me to a moment of clarity. It’s not what I thought it was going to be, the Desert Feet Tour. It has turned a corner and, from this day, it will never look the same again. The real outcome was so near I had missed seeing it. It was not the music or the recordings, or the concerts, or even the workshops. It has not been the lessons or the experience. Most importantly, it was the friendships.

Now I realise I have started something I could never walk away from. I have started friendships that are mine for life, if I choose to grow them.

I guess I have fallen in love with this land and with the salt of its earth, its people. I have fallen because that is my purpose, the purpose of my life. I used to believe life was for living, to live life to the max! Now I doubt that.

Living is the state that occurs, like a present. Life is for loving. Love is our choice; to give it or not to give, to know it or not to allow it, to own it or fear it. To be without love is worse than to be without life, for life will end but love never will.

The measure of your life will be the quantity of your gift.