Tuesday seemed a blur. The news was sudden. We all hopped in the troupee and went to aged care. That old lady’s sick. She couldn’t dialyse. Wednesday came. We all sat bedside, her son encouraging us to speak to her, “she’s listening.” I told her how wonderful she was. She lay there, gently breathing.

I told her how much she had changed this place, that it was a privilege to work with her, how she’s gonna be remembered forever. I would say this all again only a few hours later. That old lady’s gone now, a goodbye no one was ready for.

I still hear her voice asking “kapati please,” and shooing the dogs out of the art centre. I think of all the times I hopped out of the bus to grab her walker. Her bright, “Morning!” or “Goodnight!” Then I’d say, “Wow, I love your dress!” or “I’ll see you after dialysis tomorrow!” I think of her shy smile in reply when I complimented her work or the time I picked her up in my ute and she exclaimed, “mutuka-ku rikina!” I laughed and said, “It’s good it’s nice and low, easy for you to get in.”

I won’t forget the stillness—the softness of her face, her hair, so incredibly still. I expected to see a steady breath erupt. Yet stillness pervaded. Facing this stillness some words made their way out, much the same as before. Words would not contain the feeling that poured out of me in between staggered breaths.

We returned home to find her pup, Lassie, hanging out at our house.

                                                                             • 

I had my first sighting of ngintaka during this trip to the Lands. From one to many, I saw them everywhere. I managed to dodge one after another in the troupee with Imiyari and Imuna as we drove to Yulara. I saw one dead by a waterhole, its body appearing just as I thought of potential snakes on my path. I watched one move across Uluru’s edges catching the last of the glow - the sunset we missed. Their speckled scales, made up of circular patterns blanketing their backs, began to appear in the artworks pouring out of the studio. Patterns repeating, like time, everything’s always a circle.

Uluru, that big magnet, drew me in. I spent the week watching its colours shift following the path of the sun as the ladies shared with me moments from their childhood. One night, laid before it on the hood of the troupee beneath a million stars and a new moon, my world expanded out to the edges of the sky. Kungkarrangkalpa, the Seven Sisters, Pleiades: stories of such significance wrapped up in the stars, has become a cluster of light I always search for. The seventh star faded, perhaps one sister escaping pursuit. Freed from running across the sky.

A new warm wind blew my way that night. It began to fill my sails, pushing me forward. This year was punctured right in the centre and collapsed inward. I curled into it, into hibernation, and with gradual effort, have begun to unfurl. The warmth I received and radiating from the sand and the dirt relaxed muscles still tense and overworked. Heat became my salve.

                                                                             • 

In the studio again, I stepped through the door and back into myself. I missed the frenzy, the chaos, all the colour and noise. Yet, this time the pace was slow, quiet and peaceful. Moving through that space, chatting, hand-holding, laughing, Pitjantjatjara reintegrating into my speech, my muscles and mind were brought back to their centre again. Ernabella makes my heart open wider and wider, full to bursting. It surprises me every time.

The circle of time spins round again. It’s never goodbye, always see you soon. It’s the same as my first return to the coast a couple of years ago: as I touch down, my tears pour into the sea, and I realise that the desert’s got a piece of me.

Never thought I would return to Pukatja this way, in a tiny plane. The cabin, smaller than the mini bus, follows the path of a bird. A compass points south and west.
We fly over Amata and briefly stop there to drop off the mail. Me and my silent pilot, all alone in the sky. A journey routine for him and singular for me.

It’s cold up here. I feel the warmth retreat closer to my belly.

                                                                             • 

Under the hum of the propellers, under the bass that beats in my eardrums, the reverberations of the crash pulse through me. The soft sound of a death rattle that almost played: the quiet hiss of air leaving tires. I will reckon with this for a while.

                                                                             • 

Windows portal out to an empty expanse of the future and the wait to get over it.
The landscape shifts moment to moment; rumblings of hills emerge and flatten into wide plains that kiss the horizon. I imagine the pressure beneath the crust that once pushed these upwards. How tall were they before the wind and rain?

I see the memory of creeks fracture mountains and their bases. I think of the root systems belonging to the ghostly eucalypts that delve deep to drink while the surface remains dry for many weeks at a time.

                                                                             • 

A radical thought passes through me: “You could choose to be okay and move on. You only stop yourself. It is all perspective and phantom fear. You’ll never know the future. You can’t live in fear in the present.”

And then I feel the twists and the turns, my windscreen fracturing, turning silver and dusted with red dirt. A full 360° rotation. Instinct took over; unbuckling my seatbelt, taking the key out of the ignition and placing myself on the ground. Nothing made sense but to focus on breath. How quickly it happened.

My friends were behind me and saw it all. They described the silence as they watched me and my car veer to the left and roll on the sandbank. 

We kept moving north. The journey punctuated by short sobs and attempts at distraction.

                                                                             • 

Pantu, the name for salt lake in Pitjantjatjara, makes its way closer to my pilot and I.
From above, its shape forms into birds, people, fingers and fish. Then nothing. Its formlessness and I return to my quiet empty daze, unseeing of what things could be.

Pantu tjuṯa, way up here I see their drip lines; sediment made up of pale pinks, whites and greys. Janice wanted those colours for her next pour.

I watch the pilot examine one of his many manuals. I wonder if it contains the coordinates of our journey or instructions on plane operation. There are many dials and pulleys, each one’s function he must’ve memorised.

                                                                             • 

-25.9217500, 132.6279444 are the coordinates to one of the scariest moments of my life. It’s also the first text from my friend who helped me, held me, told me everything is going to be okay, made me laugh and brought me back to Earth. 

It’s so strange to think that I could have died, that I witnessed one version of my death. 
“I didn’t die so it’s okay”, I think. Everything is alright, I repeat. I am so lucky. It’s the only thing to explain it. Luck. Maybe a guardian angel? Chance? Maybe my odds were good? I’m left picking glass from my right hand and doing the thousand yard stare trying to make sense of it. Writing helps, oftentimes it does. This story may stay hidden in my phone for a while or forever. 

I thought I would get that quintessential moment where your life flashes before your eyes. I thought a film was supposed to play of my life in rewind. Instead, I thought of all the things I had written in this digital archive but had never sent. 

If someone accessed this collection hidden in my phone of my mind, my past, my longings, frustrations, confusions, adorations and lists, would any of it make sense?
Would the anonymous subjects ever get identified? Will I end up forgetting in years time why I wrote what I did?

                                                                             • 

It’s been five days and I feel small pangs and prickles on my left side. After the accident, I had a CT scan. My neck and head got the all clear. Whiplash came on Sunday and backache on Monday.

My skin is marked by a few bruises going from purple to green, all in odd places: my right shoulder, my left hip, my left shin, and my left elbow ditch where my veins were “too small, too hard to find” for the nurse who took my bloods. She gave me a vial of it wrapped in a bandage. A small gift from the hospital in case I were to be taken to court. The police took the other two, mine to keep in case theirs were tampered with. I’m not sure what to do with it. I joked with my friends after we left Alice Springs hospital that they can each have a smaller vial decanted, a pendant, a Christmas gift so they’ll always have a part of me. How morbid. How very like me to tell an off-colour joke.

Sweet, gentle pup.

We met not long ago.

I wondered if you carried the spirit of someone I knew within you.

You were a stranger to us, although we seemed so familiar - you had this knowing look about you.

The Art Centre quickly became your home.

My home became your home.

T didn’t like you at first.

Had to soothe her to warm her to you,

Kib’s new companion.

Eagerly you joined the pack;

You wormed your way under my arm,

Your head nestled easily in my lap while I spoke to a friend on the phone,

You always found your way into the studio, [papa wiya]

You watched us work, splattered in paint too.

You may have witnessed the approach of my ghost, but you disappeared.

I don’t blame you, you are only a dog.

I think you went to find help.

Or do I choose to believe that?

Maybe you did not want to bear witness to what happened in those frantic fifteen minutes.

I had planned on making a tile of your face that evening, or sometime that weekend.

I wanted to immortalise the camp dogs that made Pukatja feel like home.

The chaotic creatures who ran like wild beasts,

But by nightfall, would happily announce it was time for dinner and cuddles on the sofa.

During those last few weeks, I was slowly falling for clay again.

Clay friends, clay faces.

You and T and Destiny and Scally.

Your faces above my stove.

The stove inscribed with one of my names: Emilia.

That won’t happen now.

Maybe later.

Maybe never.

I had a long list of wants that slip through my fingers.

Things I call dreams.

Now they feel like ghosts, they phase through me.

Memories of who I thought I was to be before.

I am told I can reclaim them, but fatigue keeps them just out of reach.

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