Going Up The Country
Holly Blackmore (Lazuli)
We left Wollongong early on a Sunday morning. Dawn was a pastel smudge on the east-side, above the beach which I had called home for eighteen months. The first home that I had chosen for myself, a thousand kilometres away from my everything I’d known before the age of eighteen.
I’d only known this driver for three weeks, but we were moving our lives north together. There were nine hours of highway ahead of us, and two empty rental rooms behind us.
Heading North
The drive took us almost all day. And the last few miles were the best, once we had drifted off the central highway, onto country roads. The surfaces out there in the back-side of Byron are some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Perpetually swerving to avoid cracks and pot-holes. The sun was setting and the fields were immeasurable and our windows were down. We had my old Lonerism CD in the player, freedom at its finest.
We pulled into the driveway under an Aquarius full moon. The clock read 5:55. Groceries tumbled to the dirt as we opened our doors, displaced by so many miles. The living area of the house was crowded, everyone perched on wicker chairs and couch arms. Even Kika the cat was waiting for our return. And we all embraced, one by one.
Mist settles in the valley as my hips sink toward the mat. It is easier to wake up this week. She owns the same lapis lazuli necklace; he presses his face into the corner of my neck, skin lost in the cascade of curls which escapes his ears. The moon is nothing but a strip of paint. The sun is seen through eyelids and internal gaze. My thumbs trace the front of my throat before my palms stop, resting on my heart.
Life On The Land
Standing on the side of the road, across from Lismore Base Hospital, waiting for the lady who owned the permaculture farm. She swung past in a tiny sedan, almost comical in its size, with an older Italian man who kissed me affectionately on both cheeks. Folding the passenger seat forward so that I could clamber into the back. Staring out the window on our thirty-minute drive back to the property, watching the greenness whip past in tumbles and arcs.
Our nights included meditation in a special building we called The Temple. Little did I realise that before we sat in silence, we would dance together in near-darkness. Arms flailing, feet stomping to unfamiliar rhythms. Staring at the faces of my new comrades under the light of one candle, trying to discern their features.
Cue the best twenty or so days of my life. Working in the mornings — hands in the dirt for once in my life. Weeding, mulching, digging, clearing. Taking my turn to prepare lunch, with most of the ingredients coming directly out of our own soil. (There’s so much life in this sort of food). And afternoons spent reading, strumming guitars, hiking and swimming in the creek.
I sit in the art-room and listen to the sound of his drumbeat. The occasional vocal note to snap me inside of myself, eyes shut to just listen-listen-listen.
The birds hum and cry in the morning. Calling out to one another, and to us — the day is here! Let’s greet it! My skin feels smoother, less angry, than it has all week. A release has occurred; a weight has been cleared. My lips sink-swim down to the bottom of the ocean floor. Salt in every crevice. The dawn light calls me out for a run.
An idyllic period of my life, to say the least. And the reason why myself & a new friend decided to relocate our whole lives to this agricultural haven.
Post Honeymoon
But no oasis is without its challenges. In my time here — three weeks as a traveller, almost three months as a permanent resident — I have encountered all sorts of difficulties. Logistically, living thirty minutes away from the nearest grocery score. Financially, having to negotiate rent and money and everything in between. Socially, existing so close to the same people, day in, day out. And spiritually, with time away from the distractions of the city to just be.
May we welcome the fire of our own intentional transformation. Delayed elation — pulling my laces taught against leather. Pull too quickly, too tightly, and there might be lumps and mishaps in the fold of the socks. Take it slow, set it up properly.
Everyday is a battle to be met, entwined with and meditated upon. You can’t think too far forward, or you will set yourself out of the arena before it has even begun. The three hours work is hard, but countered by the expanding space of afternoon.
I’d be the first to say that the people I’ve met in the past few months are some of the fiercest friendships I’ve ever found. It’s fortunate that most of us decided to stick around for a while. We’re a little family now. Perhaps the best example of this was my twenty-first birthday — we all drove out to a waterfall in the national park, sharing food and laughter and skinny-dips under the September sun. Having a spontaneous boogie in the car-park while we waited for jumper leads from a nearby property. I’d never felt at ease with a group of people that large before. The love being showered on me was pure and unprecedented.
The world exists entirely in my mind — and the bliss of my experience is linked. Perhaps it is not enough to be passively joyful, perhaps I have to take active steps everyday to sustain my joy, to keep the murky thoughts away.
Breaking Away
And now? Now that most of us have moved onwards again? Away from the people we’d come to love and the property that showed us what a devoted, conscious life could look like.
Now we know what love is — showering in the creek at dusk, cooking meals together on the fire, pushing each other into waves at Brunswick Heads, sharing stories in the sauna every Friday. We know what it feels like to be held, to be seen, and we carry this forward into the wider world.
As always, today will be the most beautiful day of my life. I open myself up to it.