Reflection #1

I don't know why I went to East Timor. It was more than a whim or a reckless pursuit, but at the same time it was not particularly well thought out. I don't really know what I hoped to achieve by going there or what I was seriously hoping to get out of it. 

I think in a way I was just bullshitting myself and probably just bullshitting others. It was all bullshit. And when you realise that everything is bullshit and once you accept that everything is bullshit - and I mean honestly, uncompromisingly, accept it to your very core - then something fundamental about yourself starts to change. 


I had bit of a meltdown. Nothing serious, but it was intense and heavy in that way that truly experiencing your own fragility and vulnerability becomes such an overwhelming weight until you can't bear it anymore and then you just let go. It leaves you feeling gutted, hollowed out, trampled, but that passes. And then there is a lightness that is giddy and sad but also kind of ok.   

a crumbling ruin stands next to a building

After I returned home and was going through my travel photographs I decided to title the one above 'A crumbling ruin stands next to a building'. I thought that was witty and held a wry nod to some of the things I was going through personally at the time.

The two pictures featured in this post were taken at Manatuto in 2002. 

East Timor had been trashed by the departing Indonesian armed forces. It was more than just a petulant display of vandalism, but a calculated violence designed to deprive the East Timorese of infrastructure and to have them cower.

The East Timorese will know much, much, more than I ever will about what it means to suffer. 

Some experiences take a life time to process. You'll return to certain things and find yourself deriving some new meaning from a particular moment from long ago. Past and present interwoven and all grappling to give some meaning to this fleeting life.

I have had experiences such as a car accident, other travels abroad, and aspects of my family history, that I am often discovering contain new meanings for me. It is like I have to reach a particular point in life - a particular stage - for me to be allowed clarity around some things. Sometimes it is like a jigsaw puzzle and a piece will just effortlessly, naturally, fit.