In A Train Carriage, Going Nowhere

"A person ought to count themselves as rich if they live among insects."

In this train carriage in the bush, I am often visited by insects - flies, wasps, beetles, butterflies and bugs. Buzz along with me as I think more about the little six-legged critters with whom I share a habitat.

"Maybe all birds are mythical birds. They at least have the vibe of creatures that are make-believe: you can imagine a child sketching out a ragged outline and blurting the monosyllable, bird. That could be their creation myth."

I have been seeking out birds of all shapes and colours, breeding habits and habitats. Some of them are clad in invented feathers and fly through the air of the imagination. You are invited to the train carriage, to twitch for mythical birds.

"The place was alive with birdsong. Insects crawled on the ground or flew through the air in iridescent colours. And there were more wildflowers than you have ever seen in your life..."

The forest slowly transitions into spring. Day by day, I see the flowers open up and say hello. Join me (with boisterous wind and cranky birds) as I contemplate the petals of so many bush blossoms.

"I take a deep breath. The air is still moist; it has the freshness of moss. I have been away and I have missed the forest here, but maybe the forest hasn’t been so bothered by my absence."

Sit with me as I return to my shack in the bush after a time away, wondering what my absence means in a place like this.

"I remembered that something like this happened once to the poet Edward Thomas. He was in the hills of Gloucestershire in 1914. June 24: the express train drew up there unwontedly, as the poet later wrote; the platform of the village station was empty, the heat was intense, and it was so quiet that the sound of a man clearing his throat on board the train was remarkable."

I have been coming and going from this train carriage, which, even though it never moves, seems to serve as a base for travel. Like a station, I reckon. Join me on another set of journeys to and fro my home in the bush.

"The whole purpose of my journey across the world had been in pursuit of this sensation...the same thrill that I’d felt in my patch of bush as a kid. It was a life-long search, a search that would never end."

Recording in the train carriage from which I think about the nature of movement, here are a series of stories about the motives and meaning of adventures.

"Poets and storytellers like to look at things from side-on. We like to combine images, make weird comparisons. Might I suggest that sometimes, at least some of us we must come at life from a tangent?"

Sometimes I like to look at things from a different angle - so I take this train carriage on a series of detours through stories that may never truly be. Join for all sorts of twists and turns on the road to nowhere.

"But it is true that if you wait for perfection, you may walk away emptyhanded. The best-laid plans can fall in a heap, and I can’t promise that the stores I’ve cached in the ground won’t be squandered. The fruit may rot, the flowers may wilt."

The sun has spun. A new yarn begins. With it comes a new set of days. We may plot our route way across them or just plunge in. Wander with me as I ponder the making of plans from the vantage point of my train carriage in the woods.

"The sunflowers turned towards the light and filled with a ferocious yellow. The sorrow still overwhelmed you. The end was near. But you made good work before then. What a story you could tell."

I have had cause to contemplate sorrow over the past year - from the small internal sorrows of solitude to the large-scale suffering of the world. Here's a set of stories wound around the idea of sorrow.

"Seeing can be a perfect pastime, a form of meditation. At the heart of my identity, seeing is the central mechanism for wonder."

Vision is a magical, mysterious phenomenon. Around the train carriage, I watch - and write what I see.