Here Now, There Then

Cameras don't show you what you see - they show you what's actually there. The amount of light, the sense of space, the colours. Everything is interpreted by your brain like a Rorschach inkblot - it sees what it wants to see. That's why practically no one likes to see themselves in photos. Pictures hold the truth, and the truth is we're all uglier, fatter and more drunk than we believe ourselves to be.

I looked at the photos I sent out only to realise that I don't actually identify with that place at all. That isn't where I live. That place looks bleak and barren. Remote and inescapable. Dirty and boring. Ok, it is a little dirty, but no dirtier than your average Japanese school-girl. And, yes, it can be boring, but no more boring than your garden-variety stripper. "I must say, racy they may be, those gnomes really brighten up the yard - all the time raising the value of our property!"

I wake up to the kiss of a slow orange sunrise. The air is still cool and wet from the star smattered night. Red, green, blue - the colours of the dirt, trees and sky are painted on deep and thick in the long light of morning. And every single day as I climb aboard that crusty 4WD, or feel the first film of sand between my toes as I drag my dawdling thongs to work, a smile breaks involuntarily across my face. Broad and bemused. "Faaark. I'm really living here!"

There's barely a spot in Maningrida where you can’t see the ocean if you stick your head around the nearest house. It's a brilliant and tantilising turquoise. Distant shores whisper words of untouched beaches and tropical plantlife through a shimmering chiffon of rising heat. So flat and vast an horizon it seems you can see the curve of the earth itself. The beach planes away so subtly you could walk out in to the sea for miles before getting your shorts wet. The cruel irony being you'd much sooner lose your bird-burley to a crocodile than to shrink-dink. (You heard it here first folks - bird-burley! Orderly line, ladies. Orderly line.)

The sky. Oh, sweet fuck, the sky. Blue. Blue. A blue that goes on forever in every direction. The sun smiles out of it and warms your face in that way that makes you softly shut your eyes and tilt your head gently to it. You can feel your body rouse as it sinks into your skin, then is feathered away by cool ocean breezes. Hot sun, soft wind. The tease and the torture.

Photographs, to their lament, have borders. A shot is framed - four walls to each window. Maningrida doesn't have that. I don't walk to work through a viewfinder. This town, this land, this life is all around me. Infinite space in all directions, and with it opportunity, adventure and freedom. I hear they're also building an Ikea here next Autumn... so that should be good too... if you like, um... if you like Ikeas...

In a big city you can get ahead of yourself. With walls and blocks and barriers you can very rarely see where you need to be. Oft times in your mind, you'll already be at the meeting you're running late for, making over-rehearsed excuses and apologies. With space comes perspective. Of all the many places you can see, by miles or meters, you are only in one place. Here. Right here. Even if you can see where you need to be - it's over there. You're here. Leave there 'til then. There's here now. Only here now... so when will then be now?

Soon...