Naretha

Prelude

Australian morning, swirling avenues of cloud. Upon the western horizon, a soft trace of colour converges with an arc of dense, impending sky. Fifteen kilometres towards a sunset still hours away. Grey winter mythologies rise from a land transformed and denigrated by two hundred years of western civilization. By the river, the invader's wood and brick houses are plunged into a symmetrical enigma of impressionistic light and cloud. Horizons become inseparable from what appears as a single, unified creation. Colour merges, fuses, with light and land. Reflections remain as counterfeit duplications as the river's edge and the sky's immensity at first concur then shatter. Reflections remain reflections! The river flows south towards the lakes and the Southern Ocean. There is an absence of contrast, of definitive converging lines and angles. Colour merges, fuses, to form a single, unified creation. The name of this creation is the Dreaming. The name of the brothers and sisters who weave this marvellous web of knowledge is Ngarrindjeri.

As night descends upon the city, a savage, orange mist surrounds the darkness. From a second-storey balcony above a deserted street, I watch shadows and orange reflections disintegrate as a vehicle passes by. Hundreds of points of light run down the window and look like damaged stars. I accentuate the effect of the darkness with a candle and the entire night becomes both black and yellow. As cars drive by, the sound of their passing is elongated, stretched, by the rain. A gutter is leaking to my left: I hear the continuous tap tap tap of raindrops as they fall on the window ledge. Between the sounds of the raindrops and that of the traffic, I almost detect silence. The stillness is then broken as the night remains in equilibrium. Beyond the swirling darkness lies Ngarrindjeri Creation: the giant, swollen river flows south through the night. Creation is also the darkness, the raindrops, and the twisted orange reflections. Creation is the totality of consciousness: so that even my thoughts which thread through the night become an embodied element of the dream.

Silence in my atmosphere. Still night unwinds towards the depths of a precipice. I walked by the river, an ancient, sacred river, presently known as the Murray. Small birds built their nests in the reedbeds and the river - a quiet, slowly meandering bedrock of knowledge, flowed south towards the Southern Ocean. I can call the river Ngurunderi Dreaming - the name of an ancient knowledge surrounded by golden leaves and gathering spirals of cloud. Small birds built their nests in the reedbeds and the river - a ceaseless riot of movement and reflection, flowed towards the Southern Ocean through the dying afternoon light. Ngurunderi Dreaming became the spinning fragments of white sunsets. Colours plunged into evening's abyss and later - as I walked into a purple and grey sky as the arc of a bridge spanned the horizon, I was led along the river's edge towards darkness, forbidding and relentless darkness. The reflected images of trees and cloud barred my passage as the night's power over human consciousness became absolute, beyond even the possibility of dreams.

An old Aboriginal man sitting on a park-bench. I ask what he sees and complain about the river. It is dirty and the reedbeds are polluted. A futuristic structure made of white cement reaches into an oblivion of chaotic neon reflections. "What's going on over there?" he asks with a smile. Another fragment, angle of reflection. Towards the Southern Ocean beside ramshackle farmhouses and barbed-wire sunsets. He picks up discarded cigarette butts and slowly becomes an extension of the river, a reflection perhaps amid the white rebellion of advancing night. As I leave, I touch his shoulder. There is an arc of a bridge spanning the evening sky. The old man receeds in accordance with the law of diminishing horizons. He is now beyond infinity, beyond presence and beyond the point where we can even speak. I leave him on a park-bench and his long white beard becomes a reedbed, a white reflected image upon the river's surface. There is silence in my atmosphere. I walk along the riverbank aside an ancient, sacred river. Small birds built their nests in the reedbeds. Then the river revealed an ancient knowledge beneath towering eucalyptus trees and gathering spirals of cloud.

10.15pm. 4/1/92.

These blank pages fell from a flaming chasm of sky beyond the rainbow, from a region to the east of the great Rainbow Serpent Dream. They fell from the sky one morning and I collected them in fields watered by the polluted river. I collected them in cities where men with distorted faces paused by abandoned buildings as the heavy, driving rain purged the liquid fragments of collective reality. I stood aside and pursued a long, cool dawn. In this way, I found the incredible river, flowing towards the ocean, and I followed. I found an old woman on the beach at midnight. She was a twenty first century saint or an icon to be revealed within an unconstructed future. I kissed her eyelids and found an unexplored solar-system, a crescent moon and a bright star. She carried a lantern the light of which cast long, penetrating beams into the transcendental universe. Her footsteps created impressions upon the sand which could at any one moment be seen as a doorway or a dark prison wall.

The children always follow her, at least in dreams.

I see reflections in the darkened water lying quietly like a sleeping man. As the paddle-steamer passes, he rises to desperately pursue his unified reality. I must join him but I must wait.

10.30pm.

Angels and sailors, the park by the river. There are two angels, Kiraman Katibin, attached to every human being. One is to record a person's good deeds and the other records their bad deeds. BMX is walking in the park with a cigarette. He cannot hate his enemies because God will send him to hell. BMX loves Jesus and says only He can forgive. The devil's name is Damien and he has already come to the Earth. "This is my place, this is my river," BMX says. "There is only one God," I tell him. "There are four Gods," he replies. We stand face to face as I explain the existance of Kiraman Katibin. His eyes flutter as he reaches a state of ecstasy. Then he returns to the river. Angels are created from light and are invisible. BMX is Aboriginal, he inhales aerosols, and sees angels. When he reaches the end of his life, two angels, Munkar and Nakir, will be sent to his grave to question him. Then he will go to Paradise or Heaven or to Karta, the Land of the Dead.

Dream of crystal blue skies caught in a web beyond which a full-moon is sleeping. Memory burns, explodes across beds of fire, until the night is extinguished. A soft, cool dawn approaches across a dead expanse of time. The darkness begins to evaporate.

In the city, a vehicle's headlights pierce the void as bloodied lances. Transfixed against a cinema's grey, decaying wall, an old man stands by a phone-box. I can watch him for minutes or for countless days. He walks towards the morning shouting, cursing his existance. His unkempt appearance is like a birth-mark he will carry to his grave. If he cleaned himself up and bought some new clothes, his thin, gaunt face and his wild stare would remain. I watch him walk towards the morning as the city's mirrored sky-scrapers are set ablaze by flaming tongues of neon. Another long night without Naretha! I watch the man enter a basement beside a carpark. He sleeps there, dreams there. Then as a savage alchemy of dread and horror rise within me, I turn to walk in the opposite direction, free at this instant from all the past. The future is an unfolding flower upon the edge of time.

White Flowers On The Red Earth.

Perry Sandhills. Six Kilometres From Wentworth, New South Wales, Australia. 30/1/92.

There is a vast, flat plain reaching into the distance beyond the camp we made last night. The Milky Way rose in the sky above my single-man tent and the car I obtained on credit from a friend. The second hand of the clock in the dashboard advances slowly and sandflies bash into my face. As the wind blows across the plain, the eucalyptus trees surrounding the sandhills swirl and dance. There is a slow rhythm throughout these flatlands. It is the rhythm of life beyond the Dreamtime. I wondered so many times about this country. Now that I have seen it, I am unsure whether to stay or leave. Perhaps I shall stay and let the land provide the answers. We are sitting in a Datsun on the other side of Creation. We drove from Adelaide to the other side of the cosmos. What's more, we did it with seven dollars between us.

Perry sandhills reach into the wilderness of the south for five kilometres. They rise above the flat plain in stark contrast to the arid dirt flat. Last night we watched the trucks on the highway penetrate the night with piercing headlamps. I have now retired to the tent as the three-o-clock sun bleaches the world white. As the wind blows across our camp, grains of sand are swept forward as the sandhills slowly advance. One day they will move ten centimetres; the next day, they will not move at all. In a hundred years time, the plain will be totally unrecognizable as its only permanent feature is its emptiness.

The Silver City Highway penetrates the void to the north. There is a desert in the north and the highway advances through emptiness. If you ask the truck-drivers where they are going, they will tell you through cracked, bruised lips, about the void. They never reach their final destination, instead they keep travelling, with no hope for the future. A man may temporarily conquer the desert. His machines may carve huge tracts of earth across the body of our world. He will eventually find a roadhouse or a graveyard, an oasis of soft neon or a twentieth century resting place. The road keeps moving. The broken white lines reach into the infinity of night. A dollar for an espresso coffee or a thousand for a dignified funeral. Then the road vanishes and the silence returns. There is a small town named Pooncarie on the road to Menindee. It is in the middle of nowhere and will always remain that way.

A motor-cyclist and a thousand mosquitos. Tail-lights vanish into the darkness of the void. A rabbit shooter's spotlight cuts a white scythe of light through the indefinite shadow. The moon is suspended above a eucalyptus tree and animals rustle in the bushes. South of the confluence of two mighty rivers, Ngurunderi's Dreaming assumes an all-encompassing dimension across the land. It seems we have entered a dark void, an illusion upon the outskirts of reality. The Darling River joins with the Murray at Wentworth, New South Wales. Then the incredible river flows south towards the lakes and the Southern Ocean. The creation of the river has as its genesis the passage of Ngurunderi, a fearsome spirit traveller whose journey began at the beginning of time yet continues beyond the most distant future. From a dustbowl at the edge of the desert, infinity seems such a long way off!

There is a highway and an all-pervading darkness. As trucks pull their golden chariots across the horizon, I imagine the drivers, their faces; I see roadhouses and Shellstops. The car seems one thousand kilometres away and I am left with the silhouette of a small bush the circumference of which I attempt to measure. The sand is soft, deep red and brown. The earth yields under the weight of my body as I lie down. I write these words close to the earth as the torchlight is absorbed into a spiralling, diamond encrusted canopy of stars. The Southern Cross, a still night. Poetry from the brown sand for the earth goddess, our wounded mother. Mosquitos track like satellites across a cosmos which becomes an ocean of flame, love and passion.

In the stillness of love's naked flame this earth I sink into assumes a soft luxury, a sustenance for the interwoven tapestries of consciousness where at once the Dreaming creates avenues into the multi-dimensional cosmos, a universe sustained by transcendental love, a field of fire and an arc of dreams. The rolling sandhills a hundred metres to the south form a barrier beyond which it is impossible to see beyond. The clouds roll over the horizon and appear as shrouds as they encase the soft brown earth; they appear as visions clinging to the edge of night's perfect symmetry! A huge tree hangs above the earth like a mushroom cloud above a city. Beyond the tree is the Milky Way: a broad band of circling, swirling stars which as the shadows fall and satellites track across the sky, unlock my soul. As the torchlight begins to fade, I am left with an intermittent darkness the true origins of which stem from deep within the cosmos or love's sacred heart.

A softer blue light transcends the eastern horizon. Within this newer, more sacred light, my thoughts dwell and sleep, until they are rested.

As day breaks, I see land again; spirals of heat and a bright flame sun. The sandhills rise up as shimmering balls of bright yellow flame and we are at once dwarfed by the immensity of a landscape where the ancient languages of gracious, ennobled beings resonate within the stillness to create an essential rhythm which most closely resembles the passage of time across the plain. Within this passage, we catch glimpses of avenues, meandering pathways to the castle walls of luxury. The guardians of the temple to which we advance are keepers of the sacred knowledge which proclaims the age of new nirvanas, the death of cosmic duality and the birth of a golden age!

I came to this land bathed in primordial darkness with a travelling companion - a man who brokers knowledge from an alternative dimension. I met him in an avenue, part of another life. After two and a half years, we decided to travel together. There were no other avenues open to us so we drove out of the city in a Datsun 200B. The road led through all the bitterness of the city; police-cars prowled through the disfigured mesh of the suburbs. On the freeway, heading north, we passed a Volkswagon on fire. Then we saw a figure emerge from the smoke: a woman waving her arm, trying to flag down traffic. I stopped the car to comfort her. Then we left her waiting for the fire-brigade with a hundred other well-wishers. As I drove through the burning suburbs, I sensed I had escaped crucifixion and if I pursued the freeway, I would find a pathway to deliverance. I was a free man in some way breaking the limits of my own freedoms. The night yielded and a dark passage emerged beyond the fire.

At Perry Sandhills, an arc of shadow attaches itself to a limitless sky. The sand is soft and perfect to slide in. As we slide down, worlds collapse; long avalanches of sand carve new vistas into the burnt orange sky-line. As the illusion disperses, the dark void encloses our lengthening shadows and slowly subdues our thoughts. We are left in the endless sweet darkness finally with thoughts of dreams and fire and nothing else.

There is a continuous white line and a dying afternoon sun. Vineyards reach into the horizon; the vines are bathed in spiralling orange sunshine. We follow the sun through valleys and gorges to a flat plain covered with salt-bush. There is a bridge over Tucker's Creek to the right and long rows of eucalyptus trees in the west. Rainwater tanks, vines, sunlight, and then houses. A brief glimpse of the river beyond an orange grove. White lines, salt-bush; the sudden swish of oncoming traffic. The fierce sun blazes; the road to Wentworth passes over the river. The country is awash with yellow and gold. A one-lane bridge and an embryonic sunset. The vines pass into the distance as we pass the blue rhythm of the river. A dried-up creekbed. Slow down. Grid.

Roughly one hundred years ago in an Islamic kingdom, there lived a prince who deplored the use of violence and who devoted himself to the pursuit of knowledge. Beyond the magnificent palace where the prince lived, fields of cotton extended to the farthest horizon - white flowers on the red earth. The prince was a highly gifted boy whose natural intelligence and inquisitive character knew no bounds. He delighted his teachers from an early age with his enthusiasm for learning diplomacy, religion and mathematics. As he studied alone in the library overlooking his father's vast estates, the seasons passed slowly within the bright flame of his consciousness. The cotton fields swayed in the warm breeze, the crop was harvested, and then the cold earth slept. Within this inner unity of reality, the prince's devotion to God grew stronger as he struggled to understand Islamic knowledge in its purest form. It was towards taqdir, or the realization of God's Destiny, that the prince moved as his advancing years led him into the twentieth century. Then World War One erupted and imperialism ignited the fires of nationalism. The modern nation state began to emerge as the old order crumbled. In the subsequent political reallignment, conflict arose between the old and the new. After centuries of stability, the timeless continuity of the kingdom was disrupted as the winds of change and conflict blew across the land.

The prince faced a clear choice: he could stay to defend the legitimacy of his ascension to the throne through violence or peacefully leave to study Islam. He chose non-violence and walked one day past the cotton fields to begin a new life. He travelled first on horseback, then by train and cart, to a land far to the south of his father's kingdom. When he came upon a small village far removed from the turmoil and conflict, he decided to make his new home there and raise a family.

The prince's decision to start anew was vindicated within a short period of time. He acquired some land and prepared to settle permanently in the region. He began to trade; he sold cottons and silks to travelling merchants. He shot snakes and sold the skins. He built a mosque that is still standing today. One year after he took a devout local woman to be his bride, the first of his children was born.

The prince constructed a new, extended field of Islamic reality far away from the cotton fields of his father's kingdom. Upon a large block of land bordering the village, he built houses and leased them to local people. He constructed a road and built shops which, when leased, would provide a good income for himself and his family. His moderate investment survived the Second World War and military occupation. His small dominion became self-sustaining by the nineteen fifties. The prince then found time to fund an Islamic school and looked forward to a life of serenity and continued study. He regularly visited the king and as a man of respected position, he attended the king's wedding.

The prince fathered many children and they lived together on his land. On the verandah of their large house, the youngest daughter, Naretha, awoke from the soft luxury of childhood under her father's watchful eye. She loved to sit on his knee and eat biscuits as she listened to stories from old leather bound books her father read in Arabic. Naretha learned to cook and wrote short, sad poems in her recipe book. She dreamed of the palace, the cotton fields, and the steep, rugged slopes of her father's former home. She crossed the burning desert a hundred times with her mind. Her father proclaimed her a princess.

Last night we drove into a sunset and followed a dirt road from Wentworth to Renmark. As the sun sank into the vast horizon, we pursued it as a lost dream, the blood-red sky and blowing dust, until we uncovered the night. Our car sped like an arrow from the north. At Lake Victoria, we found the river: a huge, flooded plain with diamond slithers of light reflected upon the margins. Lake Victoria is a man-made lake and a system of sleuce gates control the flow of the river. From a walkway above the gates, we watched as a roaring wall of white water crashed into the darkness. There was a single light shining from a farmhouse and a dirt road led into the infinity of night. Upon the lake itself, the twisted silhouettes of old eucalyptus trees cut ghostly shapes into the fading red light of the west.

We drove through the town of Renmark sometime after midnight. The streets were plunged into darkness and deserted. I was reminded of an English seaside resort in the middle of a northern winter. The pizza shops and cafes closed down for the night. A sleeping paddle-steamer on the river, a row of houses, then the road to the country. We tried to find a camp at Paringa only to find ourselves in a suburban street. I took over driving and found a back-road to a forest. When we arrived at the boat-landing at Murtho Park just before one-o-clock, we quickly erected the tent and my companion went to sleep.

I slept in the front seat of the car and dreamed of a faraway kingdom. Beyond the periphery of night and the twisted, swirling branches of trees, I briefly entered the realm of the Prince and Naretha. As the dark waters of the river flowed silently through creation, I found an avenue and the Universal Rhythm as I was led into the Dream.

Imagine an island surrounded by a timeless sea. It is dawn and the first soft rays of golden sunshine bathe the tree-tops and the rock-faces as the land awakes. A light breeze blows through the valley before dying away. From a sacred grove in the luxurious forest, you can sit and watch the river flow past, as the morning awakens the animals, and the forest is brought to life.

The skies are so vast. You can wander onto a salt-pan to find a crescent moon surrounded by flaming crystals or you can close your eyes again and find green and red clouds at the bottom of the river. The morning has quietened. As you are drawn into it, a long pathway running through the forest, glistens as if it is covered with jewels.

Ngurunderi's two wives ran away into the wilderness. You can imagine an island at the river's edge surrounded by a timeless sea. An old man dressed in animal skins appears upon a pathway and you follow him to search for ochre near the shores of an ancient lake. As the sun rises, a huge eagle soars into the blue infinity. You walk to the river and find a bark canoe secured by a reedy bank.

Then later in your dream, you trace reflections in the water with your mind. Close your eyes and a diamond rain will fall on you, as you gather nuts and berries, by the side of a free-flowing dream. The birds and animals are restless. The currents in the water circle and spin and newly formed images disintegrate. The reeds sway gently at the river's edge and are tipped with golden sunshine. A goanna perched on top of a rock overlooking the river, raises its head and blinks its eye.

The eagle rises high over the forest. Close your eyes and you will find a galaxy or a sacred cosmic ritual, a passageway into infinity and a closed door at the end of time. Then turn to the river. Ponde, the giant Murray Cod, quickly swam past the reedbed. He circled, then darted across to the opposite bank, before he swam upstream.

Ngurunderi strode from the forest to retrieve his bark canoe. As huge waves crashed into the riverbank, they were transformed into sandstone cliffs!

A soft rhythm breaks free to extend through the universe. Songsticks and didgeridoos announce the bond of unity in ritual and the people begin to dance. Close your eyes then and join them. You are pure and free in your dream. Time stood still as Ngurunderi paused in the blue wilderness. He pushed his bark canoe into the river and drew his spear above his shoulder. He steadied himself as Ponde swam past and the swirling green water broke once more. Ngurunderi achieved a state of perfect balance. As Ponde slowly circled by his bark canoe, he hurled his spear into infinity and the glorious creation began!

A mighty wall of water crashed into the riverbank and was instantly transformed into a rock-face as Ponde swam uninjured downstream. Ponde crashed through the reedbeds into the Murray River which was then just a small stream - and the giant, swollen river was created in his wake. As Ponde swam south, he created valleys and cliff-faces with each swipe of his huge tail. Ngurunderi furiously pursued Ponde to the south in his bark canoe.

As the Prince grew older, he found it hard to maintain his property. His boys were not old enough to work and by the end of the nineteen sixties, repairs to the houses were needed continuously. The timbers used in construction were prone to termite attack and rot. The houses and shops would last another hundred years if looked after. Two years of neglect would see them in ruin.

Naretha created her reality as a princess within a field of damaged consciousness. She became known at school for her wild outbursts, her uncontrollable behaviour and her rebellious attitude towards Islamic dress codes. Unable to understand her behaviour, her father sent her away to a boarding school at the age of fifteen. She returned home two and a half years later and found she couldn't control her violent mood swings. She was locked in a psychiatric ward in the most deplorable conditions for six months and was released in a drug induced stupor. Her illusion smashed, the Princess collapsed into oceans of poverty. She ran away from home and begged to survive for a few dollars income per month.

After she was raped by local boys and fell pregnant, her condition rapidly deteriorated. Her doctors diagnosed her as schitzophrenic and continuously drugged her in an attempt to subdue her. She was drawn into a reality where the shadows of night sustained a deep blue dream; her father's voice became a soft luxury within her exiled state of consciousness. Did those shadows upon the verandah of her father's house in some way become marble columns as the moon rose in the sky? Did the villagers drawing water from the well appear as messengers from afar to the splendid palace? When morning proclaimed new vistas of reality and as the bright, burning sunlight fell through the branches of cypress trees, Naretha turned to find her ageing father in an old armchair, with a shotgun in his lap. It was to him she turned consciously as she sought justification for the death of her vision. When the winter rains drove into the village and a crescent moon and a bright star burned in an ocean of flame, reality and illusion forged together and became forever bonded. By embracing the shadows in the way she did, Naretha became a princess of the darkness and at the same time lit the fuse for her own destruction.

She found work as a checkout operator and survived in a room with a leaking roof. Her state of mind stabilized; she held a job for more than a year. One day she received a letter informing her of her father's death. By the time she returned home, he had already been buried.

She missed the funeral. The Prince and the Princess parted. She hadn't said goodbye to him. Naretha drowned in an ocean of tears.

There is a rotting old car in a dried-up creek-bed. The body is rusted through and there is only a twisted shell left. The car looks like an old Ford. Old tree-trunks and the exposed root system of a eucalyptus tree reach out from the creek-bed. A hundred other twisted shapes are corroded, rotten, brown. A twisted grill and a fender - with a headlight still attached - pokes through the mud.

Bright green lorikeets feed beneath a gum tree. Ten pellicans fly in formation. They circle the hillside as I write then fly towards the river in the south. The river flows across the windscreen. It is a hundred metres wide, perfect and sublime. The day awakes gradually and the sun rises. I return to the hillside and to the dried-up creek-bed as our world is lifted from a suffuse burnt-orange half-light by cosmic forces older than life itself. I watch the sun rise up into the blue tranquility as a rabbit runs across the ridge and crows languidly call out to one another. By nine thirty, groups of campers arrive. Houseboats cruise across the windscreen into the diamond light, into the south.

Murray Mallee

We set out yesterday morning through the crowded avenues of the rhythm on a journey to Murray Bridge at the other end of night. The incredible river ran through sandstone gorges serenely, like a luminous green serpent. The colours in the rock-face caught in the sunshine; our faces lit up with splashes of colour, soft golden brown. Pellicans glided graciously above the forest then soared into a blue infinity, until they eventually vanished, as a single body of life.

We drove through the morning past orange groves and vineyards. The recently harvested wheat fields shone with a burning yellow light. The Loxton Historical Village, a reconstructed avenue, is situated by the river. There is an old butcher shop, a grocery store, and some rusted pieces of machinery. The river flows south through a separate reality - a spiritual soft dream which defines the true pattern of life. As the wind blows across the water and sends ripples into a sandbank, an old tree-trunk and a dense green patch of reeds, define the propensity of the marvellous. There is a road from Waikeree to the prison. We drove through the bright afternoon sunshine into a horizon of salt-bush, luxury and fire. I drove the car at ninety as the river cut through spectacular sandstone gorges, which were reflected with the blue skies across the rhythm of the river, a white cloud over the red earth, a flower or a mirror of life.

Naretha married a tradesman. They had a child but the marriage broke down. After the birth of her son, she was locked away in an assylum once again. The doctors said she was incurable and that her life was doomed to failure. Another six months in a cell taught her the reality of the world as a prison. With her father dead and her vision broken, she moved into a haunted half-world, a dark sphere at the other side of existance. This world provided the shadow and the darkness from which her dreams could re-emerge. She lived as a princess in the half-light. The steel bars and razor-wire enclosed a golden throne in the splendid palace! As another patient was constrained and forcibly tranquillized, Naretha's consciousness sought refuge within the gathering shadows. She flew into rages, became violent, and destroyed her cell. Her beautiful deep brown eyes threw arrows of defiance through the assylum's darkness, into the darkness which became the light. When she reached the point she could endure no longer, she quietened down and was eventually released. Three months later, she would return, a wild young woman dressed in torn denim, shouting at the night the totality of Islam, proclaiming her reality at the cutting edge of her being.

At the age of nineteen, she was caught in possession of heroin and jailed for two years.

We drove from Waikeree to Morgan. The river dropped away into a sandstone valley then rose again, a bejeweled green ribbon, as the afternoon light began to fade. Across the sloping sandstone ridges, the twisted shapes of mallee trees stood like sentries along a wartime avenue. As light faded, they stretched out as fantastic silhouettes, each reaching into the infinity of night with swaying, twisted branches. The colours within the shadow grew darker and faded. Until there was only darkness left and a blood-red flaming sky.

We drove into the red sky on a back-road to illusion. The cliffs surrounding the river emitted a dying yellow glow. We dropped to the river at Morgan. The invaders erected no-entry or trespassers prosecuted notices along the avenues of the dream. They dragged barbed-wire fences across the sacred places to proclaim an age of freedom. My companion and I passed forest glades fortified against intruders. After genocide, came possession! At one point we were invited to pay a fee of five dollars to camp by a particularly beautiful stretch of river. Two women pulled up alongside our car then drove through the gate without paying. They were well-dressed with expensive hair-dos. They owned the place, they didn't have to pay.

Every way we turned, no-entry signs barred our passage. We eventually found a dirt road into the darkness. Our passage, it seems, was free.

The valley became wider and steeper. Our full-beam headlights penetrated the dense scrub for only a short distance. As we drove south, we caught glimpses beyond the shadow. Sandstone ridges to the east or the horizon beyond the mallee. We searched for direction at Blanchetown only to find the road once more, a long grey avenue under a streetlight, row after row of houses, a community hall and the night.

Access to the river was restricted and we paid the price in distances. We crossed the darkened waters of the river at Swan Reach by ferry. A line of streetlights and a brightly lit hotel cut scythes of white light into the indefinite shadow. We drove past quietly as if we were in possession of a key to an ancient gallery. As night unfolded, the shadows of trees and hillsides threw a soft veil across our consciousness. The river reassured me; slowly, in all its magnificence, it wove through the dense tapestry of darkness, a golden thread of light to the ocean. I followed a point in the road to a junction. The Milky Way rose in the sky and guided my thoughts to Naretha. I could see her sleeping. By morning, she had gone.

Lenteilin, Spear Of Destiny

Reflections in the deep, swirling water; the orange streetlight haze of the city suspended over the darkness like a bird of prey. At Mannum, we watched a family of hawks through binoculars. They circled in the sunlight then soared away into the blue infinity. The boat moorings and the pleasure cruisers cut small squares of light into the slow moving rhythm. We stood on a look-out overlooking the township. The green lawns fronting the houses extended to a junction of a dirt road. Beyond that was yellow flame.

I sit by the river and watch white and orange slices of light crucified upon a neon sky. As a freight train moves into the darkness, a cosmic vibration, like thunder or the ocean, drags itself into the night. The spotlight of a leisure cruiser reaches into the avenue; the boat then sails north leaving darkness and a rising swell. Reflections in the spiralling currents. A reef, a star and the moon.

Lenteilin (Long Island) is barely visible through the shadows of the river. If I shine my powerful torchlight across the water, the light is absorbed by the colour black. The highway to the south penetrates the darkness. There is a truck-stop on an avenue and a pathway to a golden dawn. Ngurunderi pursued Ponde in his bark canoe through newly formed valleys and past grassy, sloping plains. Reflections in the water shattered as he paddled south in search of the giant fish. Time is an island. Ponde swam downstream then slowly turned and swam to the surface. The swirling green water reflected a soft, golden light which spread into the future as a luxurious warm wave. Ngurunderi reached into the future and detached the Spear of Destiny from a torn fragment of cloud as his bark canoe glided across the incredible river. Ngurunderi then hurled the Spear of Destiny into the river where it was instantly transformed into Lenteilin - and a thousand fragments of liquid sunshine were thrown into the sky!

Naretha didn't emerge from her darkness. The prison walls enclosing her grew more oppressive as she searched for the hand of the dead Prince only to find bread and water. Within her broken reality, only dreams mattered - dreams of golden palaces on the banks of an ancient river. The daily struggle to survive led her to fight in the only way she knew: to gather strength from the darkness and proclaim her vision to the universal night!

She was set free after two years. She had nowhere to go and only twenty five dollars a month income. She lived on the currency of the streets and got hooked on heroin again. Then she switched to tranquillizers in a bid to withdraw from her vision. When she chased the dragon with a friend, all visions could be realized. Naretha became part of the darkness, an extension of a dream where from curling whisps of acrid smoke, a golden palace formed in the half-light. A newer luxury was realized beyond the burning candle flame. From sickness and addiction, she erected her spirit on the scaffolding of rebellion. She trod well beyond the limits of permissable behaviour as far as the authorities were concerned. Although they knew she was sick, they arrested her again. She spent a further nine months in prison.

We sit and watch Lenteilin through the driving rain on the windscreen. From a vantage point high above the city, we see Lenteilin curve south with the river which vanishes under the freeway bridge. Highway one is an avenue through darkness. From a point beyond the horizon, the disfigured orange streetlights fade into the night. Above a truck-stop at Tailem Bend, the night lights up like a neon altar within the church of the highway to the east. The fragmented particles converge on the horizon. The city is sleeping and the city is safe.

A truck drives through the night on Highway One to Adelaide. Could Naretha and the truck-driver exchange ideas of freedom? Could the city lights become the veil she will take one day on the dream highway to oblivion? The ripped tapestry of night hangs above a valley and diamond points of light emerge below the arc of the horizon. The night begins to bleed again as a car drags its headlights across my rear vision mirror. My companion is asleep in a twelve dollar tent on a windswept hillside. We are surrounded by the night and burning pools of neon. I must call out to him to sleep in the car if the tent leaks. I remain silent at the altar of my own illusion with the smoking gun of reality aimed continuously at my brain!

The city is nestled by the river. The darkness becomes the river and the river becomes the night.

I met Naretha in a cheap slum bar upon the outskirts of reality. I fell in love with her too easily; her stunning beauty and her appalling physical condition cut through my consciousness like a knife. I travelled from the west with my best friend Evelyn. We moved into the night as columns of cloud rushed into the indefinite horizon. At the end of a long passage, I checked into a golden city. Naretha worked on the fifth floor; our lives would never be the same.

That night as she held me closely, I unlocked a gate to the future. The pathway leads south to the ocean - South Of The River, Mica Paris sings. A soft, slow dawn evaporates. I see the Spear Of Destiny in the distance and a city upon a hillside. Cows graze peacefully upon a flat alluvial plain; the hillside has been stripped bare and thunder clouds roll in from the west. A forest appears in the sideview mirror. As Naretha sang her tragic love songs, they drowned within the ocean, within the burning flame of night.

The police arrive to question us. Sunday morning above Murray Bridge and an avenue through the rhythm. Images of darkness begin to fade and rain clouds are swept to the east. Pictures of vast, sprawling cities and the infinite sweet joy of Naretha's eyes. Reflections in the unfolding distance; Naretha on the edge of oblivion. We create lost universes from duality, galaxies merge and our strength of purpose is born. Our Spear Of Destiny is cast into the river! We tread through the universe lightly. We came to this side of morning on a journey to the edge of the day.

I travelled south to an avenue, a point of return at an extended limit. The sun broke above the barren country to reveal ancient cities in the sandstone. Lost kingdoms rose up then sank once more into the sublime arena. The neon glare of bars and cafes in the city led inevitably to the heart of the darkness. Teenage boys lined the pavement selling gemstones, chilles and spice.

Old men rode on bicycles. They carried their wares to the citadel. They repeated omens and saw visions. They carried with them cobras, wooden flutes and lice.

I returned to the city after three weeks travelling after Evelyn caught a train to the mountains. I left her at a railway station surrounded by fields of despair and poverty. A vast plateau rose up from the valley; a white statue towered high above the forest. By returning to Naretha, I journeyed to a savage paradise. From the neon altars of the capital, a scented pathway led to a garden. I paused in bus shelters and blank hotel rooms. At the crossroads of impossible night, a train ran east through a subterranian forest. Huge clouds rose up over the country, flowers with lightening petals. I found Naretha in the bus station as our avenues connected. The night yielded and a new vision was born.

At river's end, we found a pathway to an open stretch of water. As I sat upon the darkening shoreline, I entered a cosmic unity and became at one with nature. The northern shore of Lake Alexandrina is surrounded by reedbeds and grassy, gentle slopes. The lake is a bright blue canopy surrounding our consciousness and dying conversation. As the flames engulf me, I sleep and dream these vast utopias. I am left with a single thought of our unity by morning. As it evaporates, I disappear.

Jockwar

There is a highway in the distance and the sound of the wind blowing through the reedbeds. There is a deepening blue sky with streaks of silver cloud and a soft river-bank to sit on. There is a potato-chip packet and golden reflections in the water. There is a log then a fence then the sky. The grasses to my left appear tipped with gold as the sun sinks into the reedbeds. There are two rubbish bins; a richer brown on golden green. To the left is a small grassy knoll from which ferns and grasses extend into the reedbank. Further still, the reedbeds thicken. The shoreline is twenty metres away although I cannot see it.

There is a freeway in the distance and an orange flame around the lake. As the sun sinks into the reedbed, I notice a log which extends from the bank. A dragon-fly hovers above the water; now it is stationary. It is joined by two others - they turn in sharp, tight formation annd fly in my direction. I retreat to the car then return once more. The sun is hidden.

I walked from the car to this spot half an hour ago. As I approached the bank, small black birds retreated to the reedbed. When I saw them fly away, I knew they were frightened people, hiding.

The sun returns briefly as I change my perspective. An insect crawls across my page until I return it to the universe of soft grasses surrounding my leg. A waterfowl calls gently from the reedbed then there is silence. A fly lands on my shirt and the dragon-fly returns.

The tips of the reeds are covered with gold. The sun is directly behind them; it is sinking fast into the flaming red west. A moorhen walks through the shaded reeds. Reflections in the water become darker and will soon be engulfed by shadow. My page darkens and the grass darkens. The animals in the reedbeds begin to whistle, hoot and scream.

My body is still although my head is throbbing. I follow the avenue to a point twenty metres away. There is darkness, shadow, and two waterfowl. My thought disintegrates and I lose myself for an instant. I return to the car to write a sunset.

I barely catch it. After I wrote the word sunset, I quickly stood up and turned to the west. A small arc of flame sinks into the horizon beyond the reeds. Within seconds, the sun goes down. Now that my perspective is changed, I catch sight of a crow on a tin shed roof and a crescent moon appears in the sky. The reedbeds of Lake Alexandrina glisten as the light fades. The colours in the water become steel-blue, yellow and peach.

The day is lost and night's advance assured. Beyond the darkening reeds, the steel-blue lake reaches for two kilometres to a featureless shadow in the west. The evening sky radiates a soft orange glow and a brighter blue canopy of sky embraces a distant hillside. The clouds to the east are darker. Lake Alexandrina becomes a sleeping dimension before the night. There is a dark bank of cloud to the south. The sky is an archway surrounded by a sunset. There is an avenue through the rhythm before an ever darkening sky. The lake in the south is still illuminated. Beyond the silhouette of a willow tree, I sense the dark, primordial rhythm connecting the huge tapestries of a dream.

There is a freeway in the distance and a crescent moon in the sky. At Tailem Bend, Ngurunderi threw his spear at Ponde and injured the fish. Ponde furiously swam south and created a long, straight stretch of river. There is a crescent moon in the deep blue sky and pinpricks of light upon the western shore of the lake. The reeds and trees are enclosed by darkness and a jagged edge of tree-tops separate blue from black. The moon is following the sun to the west. In an hour or so it will sink into the jet-black earth. Then will the rhythm re-emerge in total darkness? Will I be transported from these shores of illusion to the other side of night?

My dreams catch fire as a princess visits. I awake in the blue rhythm as the moon sinks into the west. A dying sphere of flame is suspended above the horizon before it is swallowed into the cool, blue earth. I return to this vision. The skies become darker and the depths of the night absorb all form within a sweeping embrace. Later still, I seek the dimension. The night is ablaze with transfigured starlight and an image of a saviour! The starlight and the shadows enclose my consciousness within a small pocket of darkness. When I realize escape is impossible, I sleep.

There is a freeway in the distance and the sound of the reeds being blown by a gentle breeze. I return to the water as the sun is rising. I make coffee, smoke and dream.

The heavy rains battered the city. Old men in taxi-cabs sat motionless through the deluge. Women and children lined the footpath under shop awnings. Few people ventured into the storm and those who did appeared helpless, incapable of making an impact upon the iron curtain of reality! A young well dressed man made a dash to his car; he held the morning newspaper over his head then ran through the torrential rain. By the time his effort eclipsed him, he was only fifty metres down the road with a hundred still to go. He was drenched and his appearance ruined. Nature, the supreme victor, takes all.

The people stood and watched him as well as others like him. They were snap-frozen under cafe archways, in bus shelters and under concrete doorways. There is a market near the railway station. The majority of traders are young men who sell jewellery, cheap clothing and drinks. At the first sign of rain they run around closing shutters and covering merchandise. They are closed for business within a matter of seconds. Then they watch the world go by with deep brown understanding eyes. The drivers who decide to keep moving crawl past slowly as the skies begin to haemorrhage. All movement appears useless. The gutters flood and the people move to higher ground.

We spent the morning in a cheap slum restaurant. Images of the storm lashed our dreams and bodies with a newer, vicious, ferocity. Naretha sang a fading melody as we sat in a shadowed corner and smoked compulsively - then searched for lost beauty at the bottom of our coffee cups. The morning fused, constantly regenerated with avenues of spectral thought which led at one stage to the street where, from trails of exhaust vapours, a soft, rhythmic ballad emerged. Naretha sat in the shadows and compulsively ran her fingers through her shoulder length black hair. "My father came from White Flowers On The Red Earth, " she explained anxiously. "He looked like you, he was white like you, yes white...There was nobody left to look after me when he died there, in that time. I want to go to White Flowers On The Red Earth because my father was a prince, Son of this king...Son of...I don't know, this is material. He came here because he didn't want to fight; he came south so he can understand Islam...Islam created my perfect father! So now I'm going to pass from this world, from this place, to this world of my father. I want to find work so I can go to White Flowers On The Red Earth this year...Now a man tells me I can work for him in a car-park so it's good. I want to work months...I can get there by the Grace of God."

I listened to her dreams unfold within the chaos of an exiled restaurant. Naretha paused and lit another cigarette. "Please tell me about White Flowers " she whispered as her eyes burned like a forest fire. "Have you seen the golden palaces where my father once lived?"

The city condensed. The walls and streets closed in on themselves as they guarded a revelatory secret. Perhaps the oriental flower of night receeded in harmony with the remnants of the future; or as the strange, evocative bloom, hopelessly crushed and wilted - grew up from between paving stones and plastic table tops - or from the overflowing ashtray which resembled a waterfall! I walked with Naretha to a garden and watched as she picked a handful of yellow flowers. "When I first saw you, I knew it was my destiny to be with you," Naretha said softly. A sudden gust of wind blew across our faces and a cloud opened as she spoke. We turned to run for shelter as a wall of blinding rain entombed me within a shroud of communion. "Father," Naretha called from a distance. "Over here!"

We found ourselves under a streetlamp, in a city carved out of forest, mud and slime. Although the storm's intensity diminished, the night retained its rich fragrances. It was as if the city was recovering, catching a breath before being pounded again. If the storm was a fighter, we were opponents in the ring. As the slow vapours of the city rose in the air, darkened, nameless faces, pushed into the night. Streetlights. Streetlights. Soft yellow neon in puddles. Reflection burst into the darkness from the pavement; neon candles lit up the sky. Naretha came closer and we carved an electric passion into soft, slow atmospheres. Language became an arc of blue static. If Naretha so much as looked at me, I burned.

We hitch-hiked from outside a mosque...into an abyss of evocative impressions. The landscape's impenetrable interior grew vast on moonless nights. We were without light, guidance, on roads best described as alien passages. An elderly Moslem driver picked us up and slowly crawled along the road. The conversation sped past me although I thought I detected meaning. Soft green neon particles of light from the dashboard lit up the driver's expressions and cast small, indistinguishable shadows. From darkness grew certainty. The road consumed us. To the left and the right of us, darkness surrendered as our headlights cut down the night. I turned to look at Naretha. She wore a beautiful smile. The driver relaxed, lost himself in thought. The mosques and temples were bright, illuminated, like medieval fortresses at the heart of the night.

We arrived at her home before midnight. A chain of light globes hung in the opaque darkness above shops selling a myriad of fruits. We walked through a maze of twisted passages until we arrived at an old house that had fallen into a state of disrepair. Piles of rubble and the silhouettes of cypress trees stretched into the night; rusted cans and lengths of termite ridden timber littered the ground. "This is my father's land," Naretha told me as she circled her hand in the air to suggest a boundary I was unable to identify. I stepped towards a doorway and pushed it open. The soft shadows disintegrated. "I used to live here with my father before he went to Paradise," Naretha said. "And my brother used to hide up this tree when the police were chasing him." We both laughed then turned to the darkness. "It shouldn't be too difficult to repair this house," I stated as I turned. The effort produced no results. I found twisted, darkened shapes I couldn't identify. The door swung closed and sealed the shapes within an arena to be awakened as the sun's first rays touch the broken shutters of morning. "Can we come back tomorrow and look again?"

"Why do you want to come back to this place?" she demanded. "My father was a prince; a man with higher knowledge. He passed from this world already...Nobody comes here any more. This place is only a dream now, nothing more than a memory. We don't touch memories in Islam...We let them fall down, we let them rot!"

We walked to a restaurant on the waterfront. "If I say my name, all this land will be mine," Naretha said pointing to the darkness. "If I say my name, all this land returns to me ...This direction, that direction. It will all be mine eventually!"

Ancient columns of smoke rise in the skies to the east. The lake's waves lap upon the lush green shoreline. The reedbeds are smaller, less than ten metres wide. The road from Wellington to Langhorn Creek follows the northern shore of Lake Alexandrina to the west and the sun will quickly follow. Creation resumed: the land and trees emanated a cosmic vibration; the transcendental spirit composed of magic, fire and smoke.

A farmer is burning off land to the east. I saw blackened fields and an arc of flame two kilometres away. I turned to project my thoughts into the avenue and the lake to the west turned grey in the daylight. The wind blew through the willow trees and made them dance, twist and turn. An old man in a service station served me milk and cigarettes. He smiled and said hello. I returned his greeting and payed him. The ferryman ate lunch as he crossed the river for the thousandth time. With his eyes set in the distance, he ploughed through the choppy water to a rising, new Jerusalem.

Ngurunderi rested near Wellington and sent smoke signals to Nepale, his brother in law. At the beginning of time, there was light, soft golden dawn. The characteristics of this light are earth, wind, fire and magic. Ngurunderi shaped reality and by controlling nature, created law. Life became a passage to Waieruwar where the spirits of the dead assemble until the end of time. Ngurunderi said to his people: "I am going first, you will come after me." He placed his hand into the future and embraced the dimension. He handed the power to kill Ponde to Nepale. Nepale pushed his bark canoe into the lake at the point where the fresh and saltwater meet.

Ancient columns of smoke rise in the skies to the east. The soft light is golden; the ripples on the lake's surface are driven to the shore by a gently blowing breeze. The reeds are still - soft yellow rays streaming through the high cloud resemble halos, warm silk tapestries, which spread over us as reflections from the water. As Nepale's spear pierced Ponde's side, the giant fish lunged forward then rolled on its side. Unable to swim further, its mighty tail crashed into the water and caused huge waves to smash into the lake's shore. Nepale gathered the light. He waded through the water and killed Ponde by running his spear through the fish's body. The light spread into the future like a warm and gentle breeze.

Nepale shared the light with Ngurunderi. Time is an island in a sea of samsara. Ngurunderi's hand was golden. He let the light drip between his fingers where it became a fire. Ngurunderi cut a slice from Ponde's body. He threw it back into the water and said: "Nan Tuckeri!" The flesh was instantly transformed into a silver bream. He reached into the future to gather more light. He cut a second slice from Ponde and said: "Nan Pilarki!" As the flesh entered the water, it was transformed into a callop. To the third piece of fish he said: "Nan Kamberi!" As he threw it into the water, it was transformed into a mullet. Ngurunderi and Nepale turned to the future and gathered more light. Ngurunderi threw another slice of fish into the water. It was transformed into a mulloway as the soft, golden light spread throughout the universe like the ocean waves upon the sand. To the final piece of fish he said: "Nan Ponde! You stay as a Murray Cod!"

Mount Misery

As I write these words under a half-moon, the wind blows through the twisted trees. From deep within the valley below me, a silver-grey reflection of a salt-pan emerges from the illuminated countryside. The road is a twisted blue thread upon which traffic emerges periodically. A full-beam headlight penetrates the void and surrounds the hillside with an arc of white spirit. The wind and the sound of a passing truck forge together in a crescendo of pure sound. The half-moon behind me resembles a spotlight.

At the peak of this ancient dreaming, I trace the sound of the wind to its transcendental origin. The night becomes the spirit and unleashes to the cosmic forces massing within the horizon, a savage bright blue flame. As the highway emerges, a nebulous energy released from spiralling galaxies spreads throughout the void and eclipses the edge of night. The spirit breaks free in the darkness and takes hold of these vast utopias. The grass' movement and the wind in the trees become a response to the spirit's passage. Upon twisted boughs and amid soft grasses surrounding the cathederal of the universe, the unleashed spirit transcends the extremity of night and invites unity.

I sink into this soft, sad earth until this self-realizing vision perpetuates into eternity the Oneness of being, the anatomy of truth. This vast arena invites infinity within a field of consciousness as our damaged vision returns to herald a newer, golden age. The spirit releases the light into the future where it continues to blossom, to shape our inspired blue dreams.

Then again after midnight, the void of spatial dreams emerges to dispel darkness and to proclaim a new age. Within the infinity of wisdom, we locate truth; within the totality of the spirit, we sense our coming freedom. We become our opposites. We recognize the totality of consciousness within the reposing Buddha. We become the spirit; we become One.

If we emerge from this night to proclaim our unity, we do so in the knowledge of cosmic forces greater than ourselves. Hindu Siva, Cosmic Dancer; Muslim Prophet, Guardian Of The Gateway To Paradise; Ngurunderi Dreaming, Spear Of Destiny! We open all visions to proclaim a new Eden! From the ruins of decayed empires, the blossoming human spirit will emerge to build huge monuments to announce our discovered truth!

Over the arc of this sleeping vision, the periphery of night's advance is eclipsed by the oncoming spirit. It is with us; it is our destiny! The hills in the distance advance to the edge of existance; the clouds obscure the stars and the moon wanes. Within this essential unity of being, our soul is set free to wander through the void of creation and to uplift itself on journeys through the savage paradise. The moon glides gently across our sky and guides our passage through the scented garden. It is on journeys such as these that we most closely resemble the spirit. Upon our shoulders, the moon rests gently. Within our consciousness, the Milky Way becomes a long, cool avenue protected from the wind by cypress trees and soft, warm luxury. Our vision proclaimed, we tread through the universe lightly. We become at one with the spirit. We become tender, warm and free.

Within this sad arc of a lantern, I pull poems from the broken spider's web beyond the night. Behold the age of Jah! The sleeping blue rhythm beyond the darkened sphere of night has emerged from a bright flame of consciousness. There are candles burning in the temple! The Balinese throw garlands of flowers into the ocean! Siva, Destroyer Of Omens, proclaims the totality of dance! After the universe has ended, an old woman, dressed in rags, will search the empty streets for items she can salvage. She can approach the garden where the spirits dwell although she cannot enter. By the cemetary gates in Utopia, she throws flaming red rose petals to the poor.

The sky is a vast platform under an archway of stars and will soon proclaim darkness and the ascendancy of the spirit. A dying yellow moon sinks into the cold, dark earth. The Milky Way has risen above this golden tongue of flame. Shadows reach into the darkness of the unknown as insects fly blindly into the beam of my torch.

Blue rhythm sleeping; the cold embryo of darkness has awoken a songbird. Blue rhythm sleeping, awaken the spirit in the cold earth resting.

I saw him coming out of the darkness. He dragged his body behind him like a cart! He lost both legs below the waist; he pulled his torso along the ground with his forearms onto which he strapped cut lengths of inner-tube. His eyes were like avenues surrounded by dying trees. His hair was black and matted, his clothes torn and dirty. He was a lost man in a bus station surrounded by tall, well-built people. He spoke English with a mechanical stammer. As I spoke with him I had to continuously remind myself he was human. A restaurant lit up the night with a white neon flame. People moved in and out of its doorway to buy cups of tea and coffee. As they returned to their suitcases, they stopped to gaze at the man on the pavement. They stood suspended in the universal darkness until their buses pulled away or their children began to cry.

As I spoke with him, his voice sunk into the ocean of reality like the voice of a drowning man. He lost both legs in a sawmill accident and didn't get compensation. The owner hadn't been negligent so he didn't have to pay. The man kept repeating it: "He wasn't negligent, I confirm...He wasn't negligent, I confirm." As the other passengers sat on long wooden benches, clouds of cigarette smoke hung in the thick, cool air. Our bus was parked in a side street. We watched it and the man, we waited for both to move. The man crawled along the pavement in front of the wooden benches. He lay in front of a passenger, righted himself, then touched his hands together. He knelt before the altar of charity then crawled along an avenue of broken dreams. "I'm going away on holiday," he stammered. The bus pulled out of the sidestreet, it parked in a bay close to the man. He crawled to the step and waited for the door to open. He pulled a ticket from his pocket and held it in his teeth. When the door opened he crawled up the steps as we watched him. His life was a journey through the avenue of night as was ours. Eventually, he made it. He found his seat then the other passengers boarded. He had a ticket in his pocket to an avenue. It was dark outside though a restaurant lit up the night with a white neon flame. We lost ourselves in the darkness as the bus departed. We became one again as the streets unfolded in our consciousness like dark passages to our own essential darkness.

Naretha sprawled out next to me. Neither of us knew what we would find in the avenue so we embraced the darkness. We moved into the abyss of night. I wrote poetry ten years previously about a friend who committed suicide. His name was Martin and he jumped under a train. I didn't express my grief properly until years later. I found an oil refinery in an avenue; test flames lit up the night like burning white candles. Naretha's body became a deep, blue luxury. I ran my fingers through her soft, black hair. The bus moved through the burning darkness along an avenue at the edge of the universe. The man with no legs sat in front of us. His memory, all memory, found expression in the shadow. We were together again. We were One.

A white carved temple cut into a hillside. I caught glimpses of pilgrims, beggars, old men on rickshaws hauling bags of flour. As the bus sped onward I caught glimpses of other people's lives, lives of sweat and labour, in fields that stretched into infinity, under hungry skies. Their poverty was hopeless. A dozen or so Swiss Franc traveller's cheques separated me from them. I caught buses while they watched the horizon. I searched for meaning in the world, they already found it.

The city wilted like a dying orange flower at the edge of morning. The rickshaw drivers swarmed around the buses shouting, waving. "You'll never find a hotel, they're all full," a young man called. Naretha approached him. "Jump in, I know a good place...I'll take you."

"We want to find a hotel not so far from here. We don't want to pay too much in this city, brother."

"Over there," he said as he smiled. Then he pointed to a street at the other side of a nearby junction. "Walk to the crossroads and you'll find one on the right."

The city resembled a giant spider's web or a broken watch mechanism. The rickshaw drivers scraped together a living with rides through medieval corridors, through streets draped with the torn bandages of poverty. The beggars lined up on the footpath. At night they simply lay down and slept. Children followed us along the broken avenue until their cries penetrated the fabric of consciousness to the point of surrender. "One dollar...One dollar," they cried. The flower of youth formed a garland around us and we moved as one body in search of doorways, along the broken avenue. When the wind blew and we handed over some money, they scattered like seeds into the passages of the city. The streets embraced the morning. A heavy, oppressive heat cut through consciousness like a knife.

"I have a friend here, somewhere in the city," Naretha informed me. "I wasn't poor then. You could never see me like this before. Every day I went running on the beach with my friend. I was so happy with my father when he saw us running. One, two ... Twenty kilometres, no problem. I was strong and happy with my girlfriend. I remember the street she lived on. What was the name? Green Lane! My friend knew my father and she can tell you about the cotton fields and how my father never ran away but came to study. He didn't want to fight to be king! He is Islam. And then this girl. What's her name? Julie! Julie French! We swam together on the beach throughout my childhood and she is strong. She was very good to my father. I was very beautiful when my father saw us running. Always running! Ha!"

We stopped by a telephone to search for a number. I looked for derivative spellings of Julie's name but found nothing. The beaches became fragments of consciousness beside a phone-box in an avenue. When we found a hotel room we moved into the darkness. The owner wore a white singlet. He led us through a maze of twisted passages to a room overlooking the busy street. The children on the pavement moved as one body into the morning. From behind a torn red curtain a wall of white light shone into the room obliquely, like a molotov cocktail hurled into the fractured darkness, where as burning pools of petrol, the sun's fierce rays pierced the shadow like a lance.

We moved beyond the precipice of sleep into a world filled with minarettes, temples. High above our room in the city, an international hotel dominated the horizon. What could we see if we sat within its unparalled luxury? The streets below would seem like the arteries of a dying animal! The animal was Earth, our mother! As the sun began to sink below the smouldering skyscrapers and the radiant city cheap slums, the city smog hung above us like a veil. We slept in the shadow. We colonized shadow with consciousness. I became alive, intoxicated with Naretha's touch. When she stirred I sent her back to sleep with my fingers. I loved her already, I became ready for her over the years. She was a mystery I was about to move into. Her deep brown eyes captivated me, held me prisoner within their sad gaze. She was a sleeping dark mystery at the edge of the city. She wore a grey zip-up jacket with GAME PLAN printed in yellow letters on the back. ONE TWO THREE FOUR on the front. The sleeves were detachable, she ripped them off when she was hot. She wore torn denim jeans and cheap plastic shoes. The frenetic city burst open like a jewelled lotus flower towards evening. The sun went down as Naretha slept in a nest of torn blankets. The colours grew softer as night fell. I slept on the edge of the avenue. Children, dreams of children, moved as one body towards the abyss of night. The diners on the top floor of the international hotel could look down on us. They could see outline, intersection, though they couldn't see the beggars. They couldn't see the children and they couldn't see the shadow. They couldn't see us sleeping in a slum hotel room and they couldn't see Naretha's eyes. The night was punctuated with a crescent moon and a million transfigured stars. I walked with Naretha to the waterfront. We sat on a park-bench in the diamond starlight, talking, reaching out into each other. Naretha's father was a prince from the darkness and he came in search of light. Jihad, Naretha explained, is a struggle for destiny, as Islam is like a tree, with many branches, each reaching into an infinite sky. As she spoke, I began to sense her balance, her immense, damaged wisdom at the centre of her being. She returned to one point repeatedly: that it is forbidden to kill. I previously understood jihad within the context of the Iranian Revolution and the fraticidal conflict with Iraq. In Naretha's view, all conflict became inner struggle, to be resolved by devotion, love and prayer. With this understanding, we moved to the city. By the waterfront, a chain of streetlights reached into the distance like a necklace adorning the body of a goddess. As our pace quickened on the pavement, we moved towards this goddess as a dream.

Naretha's father emerged continuously. She saw him in crowds of people scrambling onto buses. In the darkness and within my face.

"Do you know how to call the spirits?" she asked. I showed her how to make an ouija board but refused to try and use it. I felt I was being led onto a platform where I would be forced to rearrange my consciousness, until the night descended on me, when I could quickly grab back my world. Within this inner sanctum, we explored a secret cosmos. We made prayer-wheels, lanterns, we lit candles at the temple. At a mosque in the spiral of the city, we stood outside a heavy iron gate looking inwards. The columns cast long, penetrating shadows into the heart of the building. We approached the gate of night with a key to unlock its mysteries. Naretha led me along a path to an inner pool of water. I came to the sacred heart of Naretha's cosmos as the soft waves of shadow became avenues to her being.

She knelt down at the water's edge and began to perform ablutions. First her hands which she washed three times, then her mouth, nose and face. We immediately became conscious as a soft veil of ritual spread over us. She seemed to be trying to communicate something beyond herself, something within the realms of her Paradise. I became aware of it gradually though I was aware I stepped onto a pathway from which retreat was impossible. I noticed someone standing close by, an old man emerged from the shadow. Naretha quietly prepared herself for prayer without realizing we had been seen. The man stepped forward, I thought to extend his greetings. Upon seeing him, Naretha seized my arm and quickly led me away. We raced back along a pathway to an avenue of broken dreams. When we reached the street, we walked briskly through crowds of people. The beggars lined the footpath with their haunted stares. "One dollar, one dollar," the night implored. Children worked as vendors selling shoeshine, moonbeams. Restaurants overflowed onto the footpath, neon temples lit up the sky. We returned to the waterfront where the ocean waves broke through the saphire shadow. We returned to the foodstalls where, for fifty cents, we ate in the blue luxury of the avenue and reigned in the bloodied vehicle of consciousness.

Jihad, the struggle for destiny, formed within the starlight and within the ocean waves beyond the shore. We ate in the avenue and watched the waves crash into the breakwater. Beyond the avenue was an infinite unity, the embryo of destiny, a cold darkness at the heart of my materialist consciousness. Conversations with Naretha sped past beneath a million stars guided in their orbits by a Supreme Creator whose presence first manifested itself in my life. The knowledge of being unravelled within the essential. Then the endless waterfront: a neon necklace dripping with precious white and golden metals! The night was suffuse and dreamlike yet continuously confronted the extremes of reality. Reality itself became self-perpetuating and revolutionary. The night became a vessel: the stars burned, the moon waned. At an ancient gateway at the edge of the city, heroin dealers lined the footpath beside the rusting hulls of ships. The night was filled with disease and chaos and beyond the chaos, the dark ocean roared. "My father teaches Jihad then returns to the masjid!"

"The mosque, the universe! He passed away already but he is here now. You are my father! Why do you hide?"

I didn't understand and I said so. Reality was a platform at the burning heart of the city. The city was an illusion, an ancient myth descending through layers of consciousness as a tall ship through the ocean. Beyond the flaming cross of night, I walked through the broken avenues with Naretha and each journey assumed the proportions of an excursion to a new world. We stayed in a street surrounded by westerners. The bars and cafes filled up at night as the tourists sat and talked. Behind this single brightly lit strip, a thousand alleys led to the heart of the city. We came to a half-world of shadow and light as we walked through the twisted passages. Women cooked under streetlights; children passed in and out of run-down buildings. Old men sat in cafes talking; younger men on bicycles paused at intersections. We passed through their universe briskly: they barely had time to notice us before we went away. The city cut a gaping hole in our consciousness and we descended into the abyss as drowning sailors in towering ocean waves. As the day burned, we punched holes through the dense atmosphere into newer arenas; at night, we walked until we exhausted ourselves. We then returned to the hotel room. Within the fractured darkness the stillborn embryo of our love was delivered through the shadow. I rested but never slept. Naretha spoke at length of her childhood with the Prince upon his land. When we wearied, I turned to pause at the suggestion of an avenue. We could see the city - the night was an invitation to the vast, unfolding ceremony. I went to the street at three-o-clock in the morning to buy orange juice. When I returned, I saw Naretha's eyes piercing through the opaque darkness. I could find her by the window or squatting in the bathroom. She appeared as a twentieth century saint or a newer, rising Mecca. I was a pilgrim. As I approached her I was seized by the immensity of something I shall never completely understand.

Dawn was a soft blue flower awakening gradually. Its petals were like cities, journeys, avenues through the rhythm.

The city streets twisted. An ancient, frenetic current swept past packed rows of shops and houses in the direction of an intersection. We walked towards the river and found a beautiful Buddhist temple. Behind the towering walls, a garland of bright yellow flowers lay beside a statue of a meditating Buddha. Old men on bicycles paused upon the avenue; small birds flew around the roof's dark wooden rafters. The petals of white and yellow flowers were strewn in a shaded courtyard. As we walked through a large gateway to an inner sanctum, chickens squarked in the distance and young men sat at the edge of a blissful, golden eternity.

The atmosphere in the temple invoked a spirit, a passage in the pool of infinity. Upon an altar surrounded by peace and tranquility, the Buddha rose up within the perfumed darkness. He was surrounded by enlightenment. Tapestries of shadow peeled away to reveal a golden infinity at the heart of the darkness. The Buddha rested peacefully within a profound and ancient wisdom. Free from the pain of rebirth, he became an embodiment of the transcendental spirit at the heart of the Universal Soul.

The city picked us up and carried us. It transported us to an inner reality in which sleep played no role at all. Within the twisted, frantic streets, we paused under doorways as the skies began to haemorrhage. We sat beside the lengthening shadows of evening under colonial arcades and discovered each others lives. It seemed as if Naretha's search for her truth became the extremes of the city: its most deplorable poverty or its most beautiful, sacred aspect. We barely paused between extremes. The edge of the city became the cutting edge of consciousness. The beggars limped away into the distance and the shops closed down. We wandered at night-time through a twisted maze of dimly lit alleys to discover an old man at the end of his journey. He closed his eyes for the last time and the mortuary became his final resting place. Children dressed in torn rags followed us everywhere. We made friends with a boy named Ali, he lived on the streets since he was seven. He survived by following people like me. Ali closed his heart to people who refused to help him. He had a family to support; if only people could see. Ali thought that to extend love is to extend Allah's Sovereignty. He was only nine years old.

After our fourth sleepless night, Naretha and I both lived on our nerve-ends. She appeared, in fact, to live at an extreme point of reality from the moment I met her. As we uncovered the totality of existance, Naretha reached too deeply into the depths of her soul and in some way triggered an earthquake. We raced through the city in search of a lost paradise. Naretha's pace quickened as she cleared a path to her cosmic origin! Crowds of westerners began to congregrate and the street-vendors prepared their stalls. The night was unabated.

She began to teach me how to pray. Islam is a tree, she explained, with many branches reaching into an infinite sky. As she unlocked a doorway and thereby heightened my awareness of spiritual reality, her own sense of purpose heightened. The material and the spiritual merged at a point beyond which new levels of consciousness formed upon the city's rising horizon. The city embraced our consciousness and defined our collective reality. My senses flooded, my old perceptions were swept away. Though I returned to the room in an attempt to control the experience, reality wouldn't leave me. It returned through the cracks in the doorway, through the broken shutter, from the sounds of the street.

I watched her pray in the half light. Then turn to the cascading darkness. As her soft, quiet prayer flooded through the room, the extent of my perceptions receeded into infinity. Naretha seemed capable of explaining her ritual as well as performing it. After she read some verses from the Koran, she turned to me and said: "Would you like to know how I can see Paradise?"

She fell into a trance within an instant. I watched as she sat on the floor with her head raised slightly to the right. Her pupils rolled under her eyelids, only the whites of her eyes remained. I couldn't move, I sat rivetted to the bed. Naretha remained in this state for minutes. As she returned to the material world, she began to violently shake. I calmed her at this point after her vision returned. I was speechless. She shook my foundations to the core.

We returned to the streets, a paradise revisited. I hadn't seen Naretha's vision emerge although I believed in it entirely. The business community organised a street-parade. Naretha walked briskly through the assembling crowds. As we passed under the gateway to the old city, we saw the procession approaching. Children stood in wonder as the brightly lit floats were drawn past by teams of horses. The garishly painted fairy waved and a hundred small arms waved back in response. The dancers were dressed as showgirls, the magician was dressed in black. The crowds pressed forward: mothers had to make sure their children could see or a sudden wail would rise up from below. Then the monkey went past on a brightly lit platform and the children roared with laughter as he tried to stuff a banana into his ear! The princess was dressed in white. She held the arm of a prince dressed in a green tunic. They approached the throne together and as they did so, the king blessed them. The children pressed forward. An old man on a rickshaw strained his neck to catch a glimpse of the garishly painted frog who sat under a mushroom. As each platform passed, crowds of families applauded enthusiastically. I turned to Naretha; she seemed far away in a world I couldn't begin to comprehend. Then she turned to look beyond the crowd of smiling faces. Was she looking for her father in the crowds? Did she ever find him? The tourists aimed their cameras at the procession and the sky lit up with fireworks. A dark night sky, a blood-red background! At some point in the night, we lit the fuse that ignited and consumed us. The diamond train of wonder wove its way through the city. I turned to speak with Naretha and found a small pocket of darkness. I looked for her once more: did I see her pushing through the crowds as the diamond train left pools of darkness which were engulfed by the endless night?

"My father can be king again!" she wept as I caught her by the gateway. We pressed into the city - the colourful parade spread out into the heart of the darkness and left the disintegrating crowd in its wake. As the crowd dispersed, the city opened up its doorways and we left the bright lights behind. We walked past an open-air church service - the worshippeers rolled forward as a single body in a crescendo of hallelujas! A man turned and called: "Come! Come and join us!" He raised his arms into the darkness. "Praise the Lord!" a woman cried.

A preacher with a microphone took the stand. "Give me a J!" he exalted. The crowds swept upwards. They lifted their arms to the heavens. A single roll of sound spread through the congregation: "Jaaay!" "And an E!" "Eeeee!" "Give me an S, brothers and sisters!" "Ssss!" "Praise the Lord, Children of Jesus! Give me a U!" "Uuuu!" "Heavenly Father come unto us! Give me an S and pronounce His name!"

"JESUS!"

Naretha and I watched the crowds in the churchyard then pursued the streets to infinity - a long colonial strip of light led into the chaos of shattered reflections. The congregation sung hymns and swayed. With each rising incantation, they entered further into the abyss of night and pulled a vehicle for their expression from the sky. Their hymns followed us into the darkness where the streets became a maze of twisted alleys. As the saviour pursued us, our feet barely touched the ground! At the end of a long arcade, the hymns and sermons came to us in small, dark pockets. As we turned a corner and walked into a street with brightly lit cafes, the distant roar of the crowds failed to penetrate the night. Then, later, we detected their rolling choruses again. They came to us obliquely by cafes on the waterfront, between the roll of the ocean waves or the constant din of traffic. The sounds of the choruses became a footprint in the sands of night! We came as lost travellers into the city to seek a new point upon which our vision could focus. "Come! Where are you going?" the rickshaw drivers called. They parked their bicycles outside the international hotel and languidly embraced the darkness. At times, I smiled; sometimes we ignored them. We returned to the spiralling city in some way seeking Jesus. He could be a poor man or a rickshaw driver in a burning neon oasis. Naretha took my arm and led me: the city opened up as a wilted yellow flower at the edge of the avenue. Vendors lined the footpath and sold milkshakes; children squatted in the darkness and sold gold coins or shoe repairs. As we passed them, our consciousness collected them - our journey through the city absorbed the extremity of night. We found reflections in the ocean by the waterfront. The waves pounded into the breakwater and the faint choruses of the Christians penetrated the fabric of my mind. The preacher with the microphone commanded the waves to rise up and the people to gather in the darkness. He constructed waves of darkness from his platform upon this, my night of nights!

Naretha led me back to the heart of the city. Perhaps at the end of the night, a soft, creeping dawn would open a passageway to a garden of dreams where rivers of blue luxury could embrace our fatal, tragic shore. "Let's go back now, you must be feeling exhausted," I suggested. Within the sinking flame upon the horizon or upon a brightly lit corner at the frontier of Naretha's consciousness, perhaps she saw an old man who most closely resembled a dream of hers.

"I want to tell you about my father," she continued. "Please follow me and I can talk to you as we pass this way."

Soon there was silence. The streets became deserted. As the sun's fierce rays broke through a torn cloud, Naretha spoke with an old woman and asked to have her shoe repaired. The morning was a soft, white dream. The crowds who lined the street the previous evening vanished to their homes. A man with a bicycle purchased groceries as a few traders began to erect their stalls. The streets bleached white as the fierce sun broke through the clouds above the smouldering city.

We walked through the night to a point in the future. The memory of the choruses pursued us until dawn as a soft, yellow light spread evenly throughout the east. As the silhouettes of tall buildings lightened, I felt I emerged from a vortex at the edge of reality. At the intersection of the day, crowds gathered at the temple. Stray cats and dogs lingered on the pavement in the bright, burning sunlight. Children awoke from a cool garden of dreams.

The woman took the shoe from Naretha. She placed it on an anvil and began to glue the sole back on. Naretha seemed intent on repairing the shoe herself. She took the glue-stick from the woman and slowly repaired the sole. The woman took a hammer: Naretha's haste in taking it from her acquired a form of desperateness out of keeping with the circumstances. She took a nail, then another. The woman sat back and retired from the arena. Naretha placed the unfinished shoe on her foot. When the woman tried to intervene, a commotion occured. I payed the woman; Naretha ran through the morning. I followed her until I saw her run into a Sikh temple. I found her talking with an elderly man within the darkened recesses. She asked the man if he saw her father come to the temple. I retired to the shadows and watched them from a distance. The Sikh didn't understand.

"Let's go back now," I urged. The point where sleep could in some way help us had almost come and gone. "Your eyes are bloodshot, you're tired now." As if my words in some way made an impact, she took me in her arms. "Let's get a taxi, it's morning. Let's go back and sleep."

My words were useless. I pursued her through markets. The further she distanced herself from me, the more desperate I became. I almost lost sight of her upon a crowded avenue. The city yielded. I caught up with her by a bristling arcade lined with stalls of fruit. Naretha was gripped with fever. Her face perspired; her hair was dripping wet. She took me in her arms and kissed me. I embraced her stricken, tormented soul and gently soothed her as a crowd of shoppers pushed past. Then the horizon appeared beyond the city and she pursued her lost dream into the avenue. I followed her beyond the morning. A torrential afternoon storm was preceeded by a stifling humidity. As heaven's sleuce gates opened, we lay in a semicomotosed state in the torment of our sleeplessness. The endless driving rain beat down on the hotel's iron roof and threatened to flood the universe. Our conversation drowned, our lives were swamped as huge ocean waves picked us up and carried us to a junction within the impossible city. I was transported through seering, tormented visions to a swarming, embryonic sunset. It was there I stayed until I could find the strength to further discover Naretha. She returned to me quietly as the afternoon shadows lengthened and a creeping darkness stalked across the room. I found her within the halflight; she appeared as a flame-yellow sunbeam broke through the curtains to pursue the shadows within the gathering darkness. I found her shaking, haunted by night's vision, and I kissed her. The vortex of night reappeared and we entered. The city streets evaporated; the endless rain pursued lost rhytms to the site of a smouldering funeral pyre. Twisted neon shadows on the balcony led to an all-consuming darkness. The rickshaw drivers and the beggars lined the footpath. From a twilight zone at the outer reaches of the universe, we emerged to occupy the street again. At first, we trod lightly. Then, as our pace quickened and the crowds began to tentatively feel their way through the streets, a lighter zone of light appeared upon the horizon. As we walked, the embryonic flower of night opened before us. A pathway to a neon oasis defined the limits of an arena beyond which the kingdom of darkness reigned supreme. We gathered at the frontier gates. We stormed the castle walls within the city and emerged as huge green vistas - yellow and white flame slices of electric light and burning kerosene, carved from the nuclear darkness a sphere in which our dreams could enact their tragic holocaust. The flower of night became the vortex! The vortex became the flower! Our vision appeared as rolls of thunder pursued endlessly into the darkness the lost reverberations accompanying our passage. An old man on the footpath: within his greying, yellow hair, Naretha discovered the soft luxury of childhood. A rickshaw driver paused beneath the flaming arc of a streetlamp: "You want to buy heroin, hashish? I'll take you!"

Within the burning citadel, the flame-red pools of rainwater confined our vision within a small, brightly lit arena. We found a cinema upon the avenue. Crowds of people lingered upon a sinking strip of neon as heavy rain spilt tears of blood and memory into the fast-flowing river of our thoughts. Mel Brooks' Spaceballs was showing. Crowds of stranded pedestrians pushed through the cinema gates to find a seat in the dimly lit auditorium. As Mel's characters zapped back and forth, as the captain of the ship teleported himself - and came out back to front, I found within my exiled state of mental siege, a touch of the truely marvellous! Our laughter filled up vast hallways. We walked through a surreal passageway the walls of which threw reflected comic images into the undisclosed shadow. In this way, Naretha slowly extended a glimpse of her final vision. As the script unfolded, as each roar of heartfelt laughter produced at first chuckles then equivilant rolls of laughter from other members of the audience, Naretha threw a marvellous veil of soft warmth across the avenues of our life. I turned to her side and recognized them. I found within her frenetic origin a key to an undiscovered future. She came to me as a shipwreck upon the ancient shores of a lost continent. From the shadow, amid the misadventures of their Enterprise, I caught sight of this new utopia. Within the bright flame of the avenue, we paused at the crossroads before a soft, golden veil spread throughout the smoking darkness. This light shone obliquely upon Naretha and illuminated the passages within her consciousness that led directly to her sweet soul, to the celestial origin of her being. As the voyagers returned to the night, they most closely resembled angels, messangers, soft sad particles of light upon the dark screen. By reaching into them, our vision extended itself. At the end of the movie, we turned to the night.

Money changers lined the avenue; crowds of late-night strollers descended upon the chaotic heart of the city. It was there we could least be noticed as the city provided a stage upon which we performed our existances. The crowds surged forward: I held Naretha's arm as a drowning man reaches for a life-jacket. My vision always returned to her at the heart of the glistening darkness. She appeared distant, distracted, as if her prophecies could only be realized at some high point in the future. I ran my fingers through her matted black hair and touched her shoulders. She barely noticed me. I wrote poetry for her within a fragile zone of pure white light by the side of the city prison. As we walked, I pursued her with my poetry. I read my optimistic lines on the waterfront then threw the ragged scraps of paper into the ocean. I breathed what I could extend of my life into her lungs in the hope of extracting her from the vortex. Her darkness reappeared and the vision returned as the night became a gaping hole into which my best efforts were drawn. Sensing an impending loss, I tried to assume control and persuaded her to visit a doctor. We took a taxi to the general hospital where she was given sleeping pills and tranquillizers. A hard-pressed doctor made an appointment for her the following week.

A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. Beyond pools of darkness, pathways to the incandescent soul, an old coloured lantern swings in the wind. Crowds congregate at the edge of an abyss beyond the gently swaying curtain. An electric rainbow spans the horizon and a small spider spins its web.

The darkness appeared as many spinning fragments. Their orbits circumnavigated a silver sphere of light then reformed within the glowing arena. As light faded, they attacked the interior. They became the equivilant of flame daggers hurled into a cosmic vibration the origin of which most closely approximated a recurring nightmare at the edge of a burning city. Tongues of darkness led into the low-lying cloud and cut huge slices of white light from the sky. When crowds congregated at a burning intersection, they found themselves bathed within spiralling starlight. They turned to the skies and rendered service to their master! As they passed, Naretha and I were talking. We were absorbed within our darkness at the edge of a sleeping rhythm. The rhythm moved into the city through vast shopping arcades - to broken steps where old men begged for pennies. As the crowds passed, we in some way absorbed their revelation. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. An old coloured lantern is swinging in the wind. An electric rainbow spans the horizon and a small spider spins its web.

Is this a dream or an extension of the reality Naretha created? As she slept, a savage grace extended across her features and bathed her with the spectral attributes of her knowing, seeking revelation. Her arm bruised and pinpricked, she lay almost as I left her: her legs sprawled open across the bed; her grey zip-up jacket torn open. Beads of perspiration upon her forehead extended the expression of her torment: they formed within the half-light then ran across her neck. A dream reemerged. She paused upon the avenue as the crowds surged once more past her. Her eyes fluttered, for an instant perhaps she saw me. The darkness descended. The dream was lost as soft particles of vaporous cloud swept away into the distance the memory of her presence. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. An old coloured lantern is swinging in the wind.

The streets became a refuge, an arena in which the zenith of night could finally be reached. At the edge of a vandalized, ruined dawn, I came across the body of the ocean as the fishermen unravelled their nets and prepared to put out to sea. I walked onwards: the fresh morning light became an island, a cool, blue dream descended in the wake of a ferocious storm. The flame-red petals of morning collected beneath cool arbours and imbued the day with its magical quality. Visions of the darkness faded; avenues of morning opened in the city and danced as I collected and carried them. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. An old coloured lantern is swinging in the wind. An electric rainbow spans the horizon and a small spider spins its web.

I found her still sleeping in the room as I left her. Memories of our nights together sliced through layers of consciousness to uncover the smouldering debris at the periphery of revelation. Beyond the market: an old man with a white beard appeared as an icon to the absolute within the unprotected waters of our life. I found Naretha sleeping and I wanted to bless her. Within the fractured silence, a causeway full of tormented visions led into the drugged darkness where a soft white fragrance permeated the shadow - and a bright cool dawn spread across the black ridges of the night. Avenues of neon flame erupted; splendid palaces within the golden city created within the shadow the totality of this vision. I watched her body gently rise and fall then lay down next to her. I quietly rested my thoughts upon the sleeping folds of her skin. I became an extension of a soft rivulet of sweat that dripped from her forehead. As I lay down, I rested. Naretha barely stirred as a twisted saphire flame rose above the city and flooded the room with seering light. The lights of the international hotel blazed a trail through the universe. Their orbits through the burning solar-system above the city streets spun dark vistas of cloud into the warm, clear air. Upon the horizon, entire armies swore allegiance to the forces of darkness! Rolls of thunder pursued the innocents to the ramparts surrounding the palace gates. By nightfall, the city had fallen! The night-sky split assunder and the darkness began to weep again. Naretha and I slept quietly as the sounds of the world became twisted and dream-like. A cold, metallic rain.

When she awoke, I bathed her eyelids. I paused upon the sinking avenue as a sinner seeking redemption from a cruel and violent fate. I handed her my pocket knife and watched as she cut tiny, crumbling slices from the three tablets the doctor gave her. After scraping the fragments together in a small mound she replaced the unused portions in the packet. The tiny slices of white powder became extensions of her vision. She guarded them zealously; she stood close by them in silent vigil. As the flaming vortex appeared before her she reached out for them desperately. I sought more for her but was refused. The vision appeared as the white piles diminished. At the end of the night, she had none left.

We walked to a restaurant where westerners were eating. Naretha appeared deluded, shaking, at the edge of her final, damning vision. Another lost night in the city of lost souls! The sinking wreck of the night seemed poised beyond us within the infinity of darkness. In some sense we were conscious of the impending totality of oblivion. Then the vision exploded. "The world will end soon!" Naretha screamed. I reached out across the table and tried to salvage her. Our chairs crashed over; our plates and glasses shattered on the pavement as startled customers beat a hasty retreat. Seized by the immensity of her revelation, Naretha fled into the city and left me with the broken pieces. After a quiet word, a banknote changed hands. I pursued her into a frenzied oblivion of damaged starlight and found her on the pavement, weeping. I collected her gently and took her to a movie. Within an hour or so we were back on the streets as the crowds surged past us. "How are you? Have a good night," an old man called. "God bless you!" Naretha shouted in her shrill, hysterical voice.

Did I first see then the immensity of the universe? Did the rhythm to the south extend its sacred hand and gently welcome me? Back at our hotel Naretha crashed into doorways and windows as her spirit detached from the tormented vestiges of her body. She recoiled at the sight of a demon who pursued her. He awoke from within the smouldering crucible of the shadows and chased her relentlessly. Her eyes gripped with fear at the suggestion of his presence, she ran to the street to the eternal vision. An American party lit up the night. I watched from a distance as Naretha sang to their hesitant folksongs. She became a wild gypsy as the guitarist strummed his sad, lost melody. The street was a burning arc of neon. From a vantage point outside a laundry, I watched her until morning as she rose to embrace the absolute! The streets slowly deserted. Naretha and a small crowd of Americans pursued their vision until dawn. It was then I slept in a window with a flame tongue of sunlight. When I awoke, I lost her. The streets were bleached white, tormented. I searched for her in vain.

I found her by the ocean. She resembled a twisted sphere of darkness upon the flame white avenue that led to her father's palace. I picked her up and carried her to a taxi. She slumped in the back seat with a vacant, drained expression spread across her face. Did I first see then the immensity of the universe? Did the rhythm to the south extend its sacred hand into atmospheres of poison rain and gently welcome us? A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. When the doctors asked me who she was, I spelled her name, Naretha. She became hysterical as she was led into a ward. She screamed into the reverberating corridors the entirety of her vision. The police arrived and arrested us. Two young men picked us up and threw us into a massive, retreating oblivion. Naretha's place of exile became a psychiatric ward on the outskirts of the city. She kicked through layers of oppression and proclaimed from the caged darkness a vision of her father. After she was forcibly drugged and straight jacketed she became once more the princess of her dreams. At the end of the darkness, an old coloured lantern swings in the wind. Rebel Naretha was born into a holocaust of screaming police sirens. The small, squalid cages where other women sat semi-naked became newer spheres in which she could enact her quest for the absolute! I left her strapped in a pool of bleeding madness - the intense white light of the corridor obliterated the last vestiges of her resistance to her chains. She lay on a stretcher sweating and exhausted: all I could do was reach out to her as she was led to her cage. Then the chorus rose up: a woman sang in the shadow; a steel door slammed and people began to wail. Their wall of pure, penetrating sound flooded the avenue. It rose up and shook the passages of my mind. Between the patients' demands for their freedom, small static periods of stillness formed within my consciousness. I found Naretha dreaming. I found a key to a heavy iron gate and unlocked it to find the sad, bleeding arc of a sunset reaching across the sky from the west into the south. The lenghtening shadow pursued me. The gate closed behind me and I was left alone upon a dying, sinking avenue. Naretha, in the darkness. Proclaim to the totalitarian spotlight the luxurious wisdom accompanying your passage to Paradise! A soft embryonic moon emerged. South of the river, an incandescent city stood beside a wall of red sky and the shadow of a mountain. The river became an avenue. The city in the distance sunk into the darkness as the prisoners' piercing cries carved passages through my soul. Naretha, in the darkness. Shadow of a princess sleeping in a squalid cage at the end of night's vision. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. The river became a soft eternity - a thread of silver, lengthening reflections reaching into the city, into the light.

We created you in pairs and gave you rest in sleep. We made the night a mantle and ordained the day for work. We built above you seven mighty heavens and placed in them a shining lamp. We sent down abundant water from the clouds bringing forth grain and varied plants, and gardens thick with foliage. The Koran.

We drove through the avenue to a point beyond the horizon. The highway vanished into the sandhills of the south as the bright burning sunlight shone down on us as sheets of white flame. The road narrowed: a two-lane strip of receeding tarmac rolled beneath the car as we pursued the rhythm to the south. The widening shores of the lake to our right embraced a Universal Oneness; a cool strip of bright blue water surrounded by reeds and old stone farmhouses. The rolling plain to the lake's shore shimmered in the sunlight. Cows grazed upon a grassy embankment; men with tractors carved into the soft earth sleeping deep brown scars from which the rhythm emerged.

Ngurunderi Dreaming became a freeway in the distance. The empty rolling plain led to a range of distant sandhills. As we passed them, the land embraced our unity. Ancient columns of smoke rose up and became at one with the sky.

A soft blue sky emerged. The spirit embarked upon a passage to the east. At Raukin, the colonial farmhouses form a necklace around the lake shore. They stand beside the sleeping rhythm then glow as an oasis of electric light within the velvet darkness. As the spirit passes, they are absorbed within the essential unity of creation. The night descends as a warm, dark hand and extinguishes the enigma which is itself a dream.

Mount Misery passes. The highway extends into the distance through ridges of sand-dunes and dried out salt-pans. As a rising plateau emerges, our vision extends deeper into the heart of the Universal Rhythm. We enter the darkness of the avenue and become absorbed within the absolute! My clothes, eyes and hair are covered with a scented, diamond rain! At the end of the night, I climb a barbed-wire fence and follow a twisted pathway through towering shadows to the summit of Mount Misery. The highway extends to the south through an arc of impenetrable shadow. As headlights pierce the void, a wall of white light erupts and then gradually settles. Upon the summit, the spirit manifests within the bushes and the night sky. The wind blows through the sparse vegetation and the spirit breaks free.

Ngurunderi built two huts at Mount Misery. He went to the lake for food and found some people in the reeds. They were afraid of him and tried to hide, rustling the reeds as they moved. Ngurunderi called out: "Wathee Pouleree!" and the people became the small birds that live in the reeds.

Sivaya Perameswaraya Sasisekharaya Nama Om Gunasamghavaya Sivathandavaya Nama Om

O! Siva, Lord of All, whose hair is adorned with the moon, Embodiment of all good qualities, Performer of the Holy Dance.

The night is soft, warm and young. Images of the spirit manifest; the moon is accompanied upon its journey across the sky by a white halo and towering dark clouds. I sense movement in the distance. The wind in the trees moves through the body of the night as a cold, dark serpent. I take shelter within the shadow. The dark earth spreads beneath my feet and a small avalanche of sand filters across a dune. Trees in the distance form a darkened, jagged edge across a lighter blue horizon. As the wind blows, a cascading wall of sound breaks through a barrier. I turn to the alternative dimension. I am surrounded by emptiness, sound and wind.

High above the illuminated plain, the wind blows through the stunted bushes and penetrates memory. The highway to the south becomes an avenue for the Dream. Images of lost kingdoms rise and fall in the sad, sleeping universe. A face emerges from the darkness: could it be Naretha's or my own face? The wind creates within the swirling, diamond formation, an avenue for expression. The rhythm penetrates the avenue and lost choruses from the choir of the wind rise within the spiralling night sky. The arc of the moon passes over me. As the wind blows and the moon rises, I discover the totality of the spirit within dried leaves and dying grasses. Beyond the hillside, a soft pathway of stars reach into the infinity of being. The transcendental night becomes a cool luxury at the edge of all knowledge. An old woman at the end of time sweeps the streets clean in the wake of the holocaust. She can salvage transcontinental visions; she may extinguish the inferno with her gentleness, love and tranquility. At the gates of an ancient city, she is adored by millions who reach out to touch an item of her clothing. At the end of the galaxy, she becomes a star.

I watch her from Planet Earth: she rises in a pure, dark sky to proclaim the ascendancy of the spirit. A highway in the south: the moon illuminates a salt-pan upon the valley floor. At the top of a small dune to my right, a crown of grasses extend into the shadow and the broken skull of a small marsupial reaches from the sand. I return to the white infamy of my knowledge as a trail of bull-ants descend into a root system. The wind picks up: it reaches into a silver sphere surrounding my thoughts and transports them into starlight. I seek the spirit in faraway galaxies. A sacred hand extends to the night an invitation to the cosmic dance. The old woman passes: she was only a dream at the bottom of the rainbow. As she embraces the universal light surrounding the spirit, she becomes ageless in the sense that she can never be known. Time is an eagle: as the spirit passes I avert my eyes from the immensity of the vision. The spirit crosses the dimension, through time, space and dreams. Upon a raised platform at the frontier of utopia, the spirit can be seen instructing the people.

Fire. Rebirth. Alchemy.

Upon a sandbank in the transfigured starlight, I rise from the ground as the moon becomes a lantern to guide our sacred journey to a newer, rising sphere. Flame canopies of starlight erupt and pursue a scented pathway through avenues of consciousness. Ngurunderi came to the mountain and rested. As soft breezes from the west blew through the trees surrounding his campsite, he paused within the universal rhythm and cleared a pathway through the universe. One night he smelt boney bream cooking. Although this fish was forbidden to women, he knew it was being cooked by his two wives who ran away long ago. He became angry and prepared to leave camp to find them. His two huts became two hills. Turning to them, he placed his canoe into the dark night sky where it became the Milky Way.

There is a rising moon above a tree. The night-sky is clearing, galaxies are falling. Within the soft grasses surrounding my torchlight, small dark shapes move about yet remain undetected. A spider weaves its web within the velvet darkness: as I shine my torch upon the web, I pursue a rising universe through the emptiness of space. Two spiders hang side by side a metre in front of me. Their web has collapsed; now they move closer together. When they touch will darkness consume them? Will worlds collide and supernovas flare up? Will the shreiking animals of the night enter the fabulous pantheon to pause as the spirit passes and applaud his acts of creation? There's a commercial jet in the skies to the east. The night-sky is clearing, galaxies are rising! My torch-beam penetrates between two small shrubs for a distance of ten metres. At the end of the light I see a fencepost or the rhythm. The spirit wanders close by: I can almost detect his footsteps. Within the shreiking darkness, he is invited to perform.

The spirit embraces unity: the earth, the mind and body. Upon the bough of a tree, a cool, blue sky has risen. Within the branches of the tree-top and the fluid rustle of the leaves, small stars emerge and worlds collide. An old woman waits at the station gates. The last train from the end of the world is due to arrive very shortly. She has waited patiently for her son to return and now she rests what remains of her hopes on the last express which appears upon the horizon. A cold wind blows in utopia; the animals scream in the night. When the train pulls up she runs to the platform and her heart fills up. From within the sinking canopy of the night, a stranger emerges and he passes.

I paused in the Universal Oneness: a pattern underpinning life where not a single element remains in isolation. Discovering total beauty, I found myself in a dark car: an expression of the dimension on a journey through the rhythm. There is a highway in the distance. I approach it as a steel serpent raises its head beyond the sand-dunes to the south. As I walk, I am dwarfed by the immensity of a landscape I can never understand. The truck approaches: I see it hauling through the night its last cargo to the damaged gates at the end of time. A wall of pure white flame erupts at the edge of the sky's canopy. A roll of blue thunder shatters the sleeping silence where my dreams embed themselves. A road to the north, a farmhouse upon a hillside. The curtains are pulled to, the lights are closed down. I enter the long darkness as the serpents eyes draw closer. As it passes, I am annihilated! The avenue becomes an inferno and the farmhouse bursts into flame! The sky above me blossoms within the smoking corridor; Ngurunderi's bark canoe appears as an ocean, a tongue of pure flame passion within the cosmos of my heart.

I return to Nirvana. Tall reedbeds reach out from the lake's shore. Upon a small muddy bank under an old decaying tree, my eyes rest upon a patch of orange lichen attached to the peeling bark. Upon the gently lapping water at my feet, grey-blue reflections reach into a mass of tall stems to a point where they can no longer be seen. The rhythm becomes a glistening, diamond encrusted canopy reaching beyond the dimension. I attach a thought to a clump of grass by my left hand. By reaching out and gently squeezing my fingers together, I gather the sky-blue flowers spreading gently into the soft, golden light of the future as a pure and innocent dream.

At the beginning of time there was light, soft, golden light. Within the dark, swirling cosmos, an ancient lake is surrounded by tall reedbeds and grassy, sloping hills. The sky is a void; a steel-blue canopy of dreams is sliced in two by the tail of a comet. Meteorites invade the blue tranquility and pelt the detached body of the newly forming planet. As the soft, golden light spins slowly as a cloud of nebulous, firey gas, the lake's surface throws reflected images into the farthest reaches of creation. The morning is still. Bright blue flowers open their petals to reveal soft yellow stamens which, as the sun's rays are draped over them, turn violet and red. The ripples forming in the wake of the golden tide's advance reveal hillsides and rivers. Gently swaying reedbeds appear upon the lake's shore. Ngurunderi's voice rolls into the distant future as a wall of blue thunder announces a golden eternity and the abiding laws of time.

Ngurunderi's two wives walk around the lake's shore. They step into the void of the future and are bathed with soft, golden light. They hear their husband approaching and as waves of fear spread over them, they turn to the future to gather the light. A soft, cool dawn, a bright ray of sunshine. They quickly make a raft of reeds and grass-trees and escape across Lake Albert. A meteor cuts a bright trail of light through the void and flame-yellow petals cascade to Earth. When the women land, their raft is transformed into living reeds and grass trees. They flee south, to eternity, in search of light.

I cleared a pathway to the capital. A ten dollar train ticket took me back to Evelyn. The city became a mecca, all roads led there. It sucked into its frenzied heart all life in the wake of revelation. Naretha in the darkness. She vanished as a small dark cloud beyond the sinking horizon. Her caged vision haunted me as I came to twisting alleys - streets where young men and women lined up to prostitute themselves. I returned to Evelyn. She took my hand and gently welcomed me with stories of her travels. We sat at night in a small cafe owned by an old man and his wife. Between plates of food and conversations confirming our intention to travel, we concluded pacts within which our existances became guaranteed and fortified. The city could easily take us. We nervously exchanged small amounts of money with the drug-dealers who lined the footpath after midnight. By reaching into the warm hand of night, they extended to us their vision of the city after the final revelation. It was then I came to understand Naretha. As I retraced in the half-light above the sinking street our course through the ruins of consciousness, I returned to the heart of the city to worship at a shrine to the fallen. At night we slept by an electric moon. Evelyn reached out from a decaying, septic darkness and rescued me from oblivion. The beggars returned from the edge of reality. In the passages by the railway station they hung their bodies in the darkness like torn flags. Cities rising, street-stalls, arcades of flowers, crowds of worshippers assemble at the temple. The musicians appeared at night and the streets by our hotel became a swirling arena of dance. Cities rising. Evelyn and I chased through passages in the sacred heart of the city and reality became a walled darkness, a smouldering fire onto which the bodies of the dead were thrown. At the edge of the morning the old woman returned. I recognized within her features the infinity of suffering as she crawled along the broken pavement. An old man stood within a doorway. His eyes reached out from an inner darkness as he smiled at us. After we spoke he retraced his footsteps slowly, as the road led back to the temple, where he made sacrifice upon the altar of his karma, to the countless spirits within the night. Cities rising. The predators consume within a shallow arc of burning neon all that youth has to offer. You are called from the street: "Come this way, love my daughter!" Then from the cascading spirals of light, a young woman appears, scantily clad, with eyes full of tragic innocence. Naretha in the darkness. Cities falling, galaxies rising. The streets to the palace are lined with gold. Devotees pour out from the temple into the pale yellow sunlight. Their journey through the frenetic streets will take them to a garden, a cool oasis of thought amid the chains of darkness. Evelyn and I took a bus trip through the universe. We departed a little after midnight, just after the beggars began sleeping in their doorways. By morning, we awoke to find an empty city in the future. The streets warped, tall grasses grew up from between the broken paving stones. At the end of a broken row of buildings, the temple collapsed and a final dream emerged. Beyond fallen columns and collapsed domes, I turned to see the old woman walking, sweeping the street clean as she sang and gathered wildflowers. Then the woman turned to us and said: "Fear not the apocalypse nor the sad reverberations from the past. This morning a golden future is revealed to you!"

There was a blue restaurant lit up at night. Beside a stove where a woman cooked was a blue bucket. Children practised ball-games in an alley which led into darkness. A single light-globe with a newspaper shade hung above a frying pan. We ate there for fifty cents. There was a tray of chopped lamb on the right, chicken on the left. A younger woman cooked while an older woman washed dishes in the bucket on the pavement. The restaurant was situated on a corner, part of a night market. The road to the right led into darkness; ahead and behind, a diamond and saphire universe. I chose the lamb, for what it was worth. We sat under a shop awning at the crossroads of opportunity. Another man ate at the same table. Nobody waited around. We ate the food, payed and left.

Coorong

Valley of The Kings. Dedicated to Vince and Andrew.

An empty city in the sand-dunes. Shadows of tall buildings extend beyond the honeycombed rock into pot-marked crevices and become hallways and entrances, alleys and passages. The emptied city reaches into the distance, five metres in front of me. My papers have blown there; the sun shines on my back. My page flaps in the wind: I am forced to hold it as I write. As my thoughts advance, I clear grains of sand from the white paper. I hear the gently lapping water at my rear. I hear the faint roar of the ocean in the distance as waves crash into Younghusband Peninsula. The city advances, I take a step forward. I move into the shadow. I stretch my leg to restore the circulation and turn to the dark blue water. A seagull sits on a rock twenty metres in front of me. By the end of this sentence, it has flown away.

A line of white foam has risen upon the water's edge. The sun in the west is a sinking wall of flame. As small, gentle waves lap onto the yellow sand, they carry with them slices of golden, shimmering light. Between the waves, the water appears as the quiet, dark body of the spirit. The water is golden to the west. A wide scythe of reflected sunlight reaches into the distance, into the sky.

I light a cigarette. The valley to my right appears as a broad avenue through the ruins of an empty city. The twisted, misshapen rock is crowned by a dying plant. The dense green foliage extends from the top of the rock about one metre. Beyond that, tall grasses colonize the shore. As the plateau drops onto the sandy beach, the dying plant hangs from the edge as there is no soil for its roots to take hold in. The plant begins to wither and die at this point. The green stems give way to a grey, dead bracken. At the top of the city, an old man is resting. He sleeps on the plateau's edge and his grey hair blows in the wind.

I turn to face the peninsula. Perhaps two kilometres to the south, a giant sand-bar rises in the water. It reaches into the west as far as a line of white cloud and a sinking wall of flame reflections. The sand-bar drops to the ocean beyond the horizon. It rises majestically in the east: the protected waters of the lagoon are surrounded by towering dunes. Where the wind has uprooted the vegetation, the sand extends in a broad yellow band to the dark blue water. A line of shrubs appear at the water's edge. They rise graciously, like a princess awakening from a dream.

The golden reflections lengthen. I return to the city as the rock absorbs the falling sunlight. I extend the vision to the honeycombed sandstone. A dream emerges and a world begins to form within the lengthening shadow. I return to the peninsula; the car is parked on a hillside. I am warm and free, I am alive.

My companion is in Melbourne. I left him almost one week ago. I hope he can return soon and extend the breadth of his vision to this journey. Without him here, I suspect my passage through this Dreaming will become a journey to a personal oblivion. In some ways I see him as an icon, a returning vision at the end of the darkness. When we are good together and we make plans under diamond canopies of stars, I am drawn into his confidence and become filled with optimism. If an avenue would open, I would write and ask him to return. At the moment, I am anchored here. I stay in the all-encompassing darkness at the edge of the rhythm, waiting. The broken shells of small crabs are littered on the sand. The seagulls move into the darkness as the shadows extend across the evening. I see a solitary farmhouse in the distance: an old stone dream at the shore of a deep blue canopy of water. Beyond my reflected image in the windscreen, it is the only thing that I can see.

I have been joined by friends from Adelaide. They are talking about nature being a sleeping beast, a giant, blue dream into which our thoughts are absorbed. They are fresh from the city: their passage to these shores has been swift and spontaneous. We found the freeway yesterday morning and the Dreamtime emerged beyond the hills surrounding the city. We drove into the blue sky on the blue background and crossed the river at Wellington. The river appeared as a burning pool of water, a pure white flame of passion at the bottom of my heart.

I have been thirsting for the rhythm. For days I wandered through the city streets searching for a way to continue. I sensed that my friend's input had come to an end and searched the streets for meaning. I visited old friends, Evelyn and Judy. I walked through the city to a friend's house - memory, darkness, began to form an impenetrable circle around me. The roofs of houses and the spires of churches formed a barrier beyond which it was impossible to travel. I found the ocean and the avenue. I found my freedom on the beach.

It was cold and deserted. A wall of peach and yellow cloud rose up in the south. Streetlights hurled large slices of orange neon into the darkening sky. The exits closed behind me and locked the city within a fortified arena. The residents locked their doors for the night, they pulled their curtains to. Reality is pervasive, it enters and resides in consciousness. As I lie in the sand by the gently lapping water, I am still recovering. The darkness rises within me as the distant ocean roars. Naretha in the darkness. Must I rise to proclaim your innocence? I am a man upon the beach at the edge of the universe! The seagulls have grown used to me; a flock of pellicans glide handsomely above the late afternoon water. A group of five seagulls has just flown past; they fly very slowly at a height of two metres. One seagull dives to the water and grabs a small crab. Rising to the air once more, the bird consumes its prey! When the seagulls disappear behind a rock-face, I am left alone in sandstone solitude.

The passage of the spirit to the south-east, the unity of humanity within a handful of grains of sand! Last night I slept in the car with my old friends. Ngurunderi's bark canoe hung in the opaque darkness as we laughed and talked. I came from the river to the shores of the Coorong. Eight pellicans fly in tight formation as the distant roar of the ocean extends across consciousness as a warm and gentle hand. I see an ant in the sand and a wall of sandstone honeycomb. The old man with grey hair is sleeping quietly on a cliff's edge. The streets have emptied within the city; a bleached white crab extends its pincer onto the street. It is a dream, it's an avenue. The darkness is leaving me. I shall turn around in a moment to find a beautiful blue sky. Naretha in the darkness. I rise to proclaim your innocence!

Rising grey water, warm sand to lie upon. As the earth yields under our weight, we are bathed in the soft luxury of the Universal Dream. At the edge of a gently lapping shoreline, we find ourselves ennobled. Our vision extends into the horizon where we recognize infinity. Ahead of us, in sandstone cavities, we visualize our paradise. Earth.

We travel through time and space, the sea-shore and the transcendental universe. Footprints through the sandhills extend to the south-east. We follow them past gently rising sandbanks; three ibisis pause in the rhythm to rest and dry their wings. The Valley Of The Kings is bathed in golden sunlight. Our journey from here to the south-east becomes a journey through revelatory beauty. We become at one with the spirit; we pause at the same instant. We rest in perfect harmony, we have broken free of our chains!

Footprints through the sandhills; three stars in the night-sky. Three thousand years ago, three beautiful girls walked across this beach. One of them was crippled! Can you see them? One of them is flashing, she is the crippled one! She has risen in the skies to the north above the lights of Murray Bridge. Footprints through the sandhills. We travel through a stunningly beautiful universe. Above a Datsun on the shores of the Coorong, a bark canoe has risen! "Can we travel, can we go there?" The Valley Of The Kings; advancing grey skies. Footprints through the sandhills extend to the south-east. A flock of seagulls fly into the wind and pull their nourishment from the water. A denuded strip of sand-bar in the distance and a broken feather in the sand. A wall of white foam at the water's edge. The rhythm. Unity.

I persuaded Evelyn to return with me. We journeyed through the forest to a future neither of us could understand. Naretha in the darkness. I see you praying to Allah for your suffering. Your heart. This ocean. Your spirit rises from your cage. I see you imprisoned, I reach out to you. Can I touch? Cities rising. The city diminished within our consciousness as a dying candle flame. At once we were estranged. Where previously our life was spent within a state of peaceful coexistance, we became separated as the avenues to the city reluctantly allowed our passage. Naretha in the darkness. I journeyed to her by express and found the familiar streets of Naretha's vision. The crowds pushed forward. The street-vendors opened their stalls and continued life as usual. A busy city, a dream revisited. A rickshaw driver in the shadows. I never knew his name.

A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. An old coloured lantern is swinging in the wind. I found Naretha in the darkness and begged the doctors to see her. I was eventually allowed to visit. I took her fried chicken and oranges. I stroked her shaking hand and tried to reassure her of my faith in her vision. She was led back into the darkness: she vanished into the screaming ward at the end of each one hour visit. I returned to the hotel where Evelyn waited patiently. The swirling lights of the international hotel dominated our consciousness and the rickshaw drivers tried to sell us packets of instant redemption.

Our room overlooked a dying street. The city stretched endlessly into the smouldering horizon. I visited Naretha each afternoon. From the caged darkness she threw flame white daggers of rebellion into the heart of her spiritual suffering. All dreams were lost. What remained was the night and the bars across the window. After the hysterical shadow, she found an ocean of tranquility within the princess' identity. The darkness became the palace and the bars became marble columns. "My father in the darkness!" she wept openly. The cage returned. She was led away and tranquillized. An old woman sang a wilted melody beside a barbed wire fence and a group of other patients. She was dressed in white, her face was thin and gaunt. She swayed as she sang. Naretha was dragged away behind her.

I write into a flame canopy. A glowing bed of embers upon the ocean shore. I travel where my vision takes me. Footprints through the sandhills have been eroded by the advance of night. An old man with grey hair sleeps on a cliff-edge. An insect has landed on my page: it is drawn into the spotlight which resembles a moon. If I look to the water's edge I see an impenetrable veil of darkness. The longer I attune myself to the darkness, I am able to detect the sky-line within the shadow. I feel as if I am standing on the edge of a precipice. Beyond the night; ahead, the fire! I see palaces rise and vast galaxies fall. From an age of gold, we move inevitably towards the darkness. "Can you hear it, can you see it?" A pure white flame is advancing through the universe. Beyond the horizon, beyond the edge of dawn, I see a prison or a castle wall. It is the advance of time beyond which I am incapable of seeing. Can you see me behind the wall of flame? Can I become illuminated at the water's edge? The Valley of the Kings has risen! We arrive at a point until we are transported from it! In the distance, perhaps four hundred metres along the coastline, I find complete darkness. Footprints through the sandhills. Three stars to the north are three sisters, one of whom is crippled. She is flashing, she is the crippled one! I breathe at the end of night; you breathe at the edge of night. Our flame reflections appear to us as a unified totality. We move into the velvet darkness. We are one!

If I rise to proclaim the night, please tell me about Naretha. A bank of grasses lead to the shore at the edge of a timeless sea. I am lost! Please do not attempt to rescue me. It is better you turn your attention to the innocent and the sick. I swim in oceans of samsara and rise to proclaim the Universal dawn. A wall of red fire has risen up at the end of the world. At the end of the night we enter the rhythm as the spirit consumes itself! Red embers glow in the fire. Night sky; bark canoe. Release into the spiritual infinity this perspective of the absolute!

The night is young, we are free. At once a vision beyond the daylight extends a promise of freedom to the innocent! A caged vision. A cliff-edge upon the shores of the Coorong. When the Tangani people first arrived in their country, they came from the north out of the inland scrub country. They heard a great noise so terrible that it brought them abruptly to a halt. Some were unable to move with fear while others began to rush around in panic. One man asked the people: "What will you do now?" They replied: "Let us go back!" Word went around. "We must stay here, we are cut off all around. Let us make the best of this country." The noise was made in order to tell the people they must stop. The noise was just like the sound of the great waves beating on the Coorong beach.

The white pages of this book become a Universal harmony as a yellow tongue of flame eats the canvases of night until the break of dawn.

"Are you sleeping? Can you see us?" We regroup at night. We are hunted! Our poetry spills as blood into the arc of night or a dying candle flame. Ours will be a new dawn rising. A glowing ember at the edge of the hunted night. Avenues open within the flame. A child is born in Thailand and a new era is announced! The spirit passes, an avenue lined with pearls and saphires opens to the south. Journey's end: a cool, blue oasis at the foot of the ocean. We travel between clouds and tall steeples; arcs of fire erupt across our path. We discover harmony. We enter fortified cities. We tread lightly upon the path to the heart of the sacred dimension. Discover light. Tall ships upon the ocean appear as islands of blue, blue, blue, tranquility upon the timeless shore. "Three thousand years ago, I tell you."

Three thousand years before the end of the world!

I move towards a city. As a dream evaporates upon the ocean shore, we emerge from the darkness and recognize within the tapestries of night a deep blue oasis from which a dying flame erupts. This is a symbol for the future. Naretha in the darkness. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. An old coloured lantern is swinging in the wind. Arcs of flame erupt around my spotlight. The dying yellow flame spreads towards the water's edge. The roar of the ocean spreads throughout the future as a crescendo of pure, white sound. Children's dreams spread across the breakwater. A tongue of flame eats the night and opens an avenue for the spirit. Footprints across the sandhills. I follow them through a wheel of fire to a frontier of a rising future. An old man is sleeping on a cliff-edge. His grey hair is tangled in the weeds. If I attempt to wake him, the spirit will rise and subdue his tranquil soul. An avenue to the south appears: a causeway through nebulous galaxies at the heart of the transcendental universe. I write into a flame canopy. The gentle, glowing embers will soon extinguish unless I feed them wood. The ocean is a dream I came across. If my friends leave, I shall attempt to continue. My spiritual definition is that I have recognized our golden destiny. Naretha in the darkness. I rise to proclaim your innocence.

Princess of the future. They didn't let you sleep at night. The darkness becomes a shadow within which you are enclosed. You set fire to your cell. The hospital authorities described you as uncontrollable. I found you weeping then you showed me large blue bruises you received from beatings in your cell. At the end of the darkness, you know I will come to you. I carried boxes of oranges and a vision of the future. The road to the hospital was bleached white by a fierce sun. I travelled every afternoon on a pilgrimage to the palace. We sat on a wooden bench with a table and a barbed-wire fence enclosed us. When the guards left, you stroked my face and I extended you my hand. Your soul breaks free. Your father emerges from the darkness and leads you past marble columns as he recounts stories from the ancient kingdom. You follow him to the water's edge. He leaves you on a hillside. The peninsula rises then extends to the south through a shimmering haze. I greet you. Naretha in the darkness. Footprints through the sandhills through the rhythm of life to the south.

I find myself upon a hillside. A large sand-flat extends across a dense, green strip of vegetation to the shores of a rising lagoon. A line of yellow hills rise in the distance and they are crowned by a small clump of bushes. The shallow blue water before the peninsula separates the mainland and reaches into the skies of the west as a diamond thread of light. Birdsong. It is morning. I walk around the shore to a ridge of dark rock extending into the water. If I find a place to cross, I may extend to the ocean the promise of this terrible poetry. The water is deep; it swirls around the rocks and forms a barrier beyond which I may not pass. I return to the hillside. Footprints across the sandhills. Naretha in the darkness becomes a journey through the ruins of time.

The twisted branches of small shrubs reach into the deep blue sky and form a circle around the sea-shore. An old wooden bridge has collapsed into the water at the end of a sandstone promontory. The grasses at my feet are dried and yellowed. I break them with my fingers to reveal an ancient layer of rock which crumbles as I snap pieces from it. A thought emerges: it is carried by the gentle wind across a calm blue expanse of water to the shores of the Southern ocean. My thoughts are transported to sandstone cliffs surrounding the lagoon in which an island rises. I visit the island with my mind and find it populated by men of great wisdom who have in some way survived the holocaust. They create civilizations; their vision of the ancient shore rests in accordance with that of the spirit. As they hunt and fish, their bodies embrace the tribal rhythm encompassing the unbroken panorama of the bay. I watch them move into an unconstructed future. Three beautiful girls gather cockle-shells upon the ocean shore. One of them is crippled, she is the flashing one. They walk towards the island; they are enclosed by the rhythm. I see them disappear beyond the sandstone cliffs as a hawke rises gracefully into the pierced blue velvet canopy of the sky.

(Ephesus)

I left Naretha in the psychiatric ward. I parted with her reluctantly and continued my journey with Evelyn. At the end of a road where the world sunk in rivers of mud, a city appeared and we entered. Cold rains drove us through Byzantium. The road to Istanbul was covered with a veil of fog. I took Evelyn's hand and led her through the ruins of a collapsed temple to a rising slab of granite where the heart of the city was consumed upon a sunken altar. Cardinals and priests led us through the ruins. We followed them across the crumbling paving stones to an ancient, ruined library. Within the sunken amphitheatre, we performed operettas in the moonlight and roared with the crowds as chariots hurled around the circuit!

The darkened vaults pressed open. We entered through broken doorways and were greeted by the legions. Feasts of fire! Fresh from the scene of fierce battles, we danced and sang to their rising crescendos. Then a sudden quiet descended. We rounded a corner that led to an ancient garden. An orange tree stood beside a wall of rising granite. Its thin grey branches were covered with a delicate layer of snow. A woman stooped in the garden over the frozen earth. Her hands were bloodied and frost-bitten from scratching an existance into the soil as the blood of vast armies congealed between her fingers as a heavy, acid rain. "Where do you come from?" she asked us. I visualised Naretha weeping as a hypodermic needle pierced her wrist. "Your blood dries wherever they shake your hand! I am the spirit of Ephesus. I am Roman to the core!"

We drove through the Turkish mountains. A city and a freeway. At the end of an ancient plateau we found a ruined city carved in a sandstone cliff-face. We crawled along the sunken passages to find an image of the Saviour painted high above a rock-face. His face was obliterated; his wrists were pierced and white.

The roar of the ocean. Footprints through the sandhills. I found a crossing to the peninsula and paddled through the water across to the other side. My friend accompanied me. We climbed the rising sand-bar and found a valley full of cockle-shells. We walked through the broken streets to an amphitheatre and the deep blue ocean roared.

We danced upon the golden sands as our true conceptions were realized. I collected cockle-shells; my friend tried to take a crab. We returned to the city. Ephesus rising! Within a walled garden at the end of time, an orange tree is covered with a delicate layer of snow. An old woman is walking along the Coorong. Her garden is the universe; her hands are bloodied and frost-bitten. I return to the beach three hours later. Footprints across the sandhills. The blood of vast armies congealed between her fingers as a heavy, acid rain.

I saw him upon the edge of the ocean! He rose within the sunlight to perform his stunning miracles! As the waves retreat to the body of the ocean, the stigmata open as a vortex and a cockle-shell withdraws into a universe of sand. I withdraw it from the cosmos. Man in balance takes from the earth and returns to retrace his footsteps. The flame yellow waves are rising in the west; the ocean pounds at the gates of the city. The old woman can be seen in the distance: her body arched and broken within the dying light. Ephesus rising! I return to the island. The Universal Spirit appears upon the crest of an emerald wave and commands the rhythm with his intense, all-embracing vision! There he is now; can you see him? He is standing peacefully like a lighthouse in the waves. He rises from the ocean. Ephesus collapses! Footprints across the sandhills extend to the southeast.

The night descends upon us as a warm and friendly hand. Within the distant galaxies, the spiritual nature of suffering manifests within the totality of Creation. Mighty Andromeda, the backbone of the Creator, installs within the universe an immense arc of flame-red petals. Our own galaxy, one of billions, rests by the side of a deep blue ocean where noble, gracious beings worship under the domes of a ancient temple. Between voyages to the distant shores of rising continents, the inhabitants awake each morning and pay tribute to their Creator who resides beyond the dimension. In this sense, He is unknowable yet the people in some way recognize Him. They journey through the rising wetlands. The primordial jungle yields reluctantly to allow their passage. A rich canopy of forest is illuminated by a crescent moon which appears upon the incredible horizon! As the sun rises, the people walk about in a soft, green luxury. At the heart of the sacred dimension, they fall at the feet of the Divine Master!

The city is an icon yet to be constructed. Only when the majestic Palaces of Man are erected at the site of the miracle of the fishes, can we turn to the ocean or to the new, rising sky-line and comprehend the magnitude of our incisive turn to the marvellous! What, then, of the monument? A fisherman has woken by a calm blue stretch of water he only previously imagined. His daughter, she is the crippled one, sits upon his knee as he recounts stories from the kingdom. The waves of the ocean rise in the distance. She acknowledges her father as he unveils the Seventh Heaven! Worlds collide, galaxies rise! The ocean invades her consciousness as a gentle smile extends across her father's face. As he reaches for her arm he finds her ennobled. Ephesus rising! Within a dying arc of candle light he turns to find his daughter sleeping by a log fire upon the ocean shore.

The emerald wave has risen! An ashen grey sky extends beyond a barren hillside across the horizon. Within this sad arc of falling daylight, our Creator extends to the universal victim a vision of the coming Paradise! Soft green grasses reach into the cosmos. A road through the sandhills leads through the unbroken, pregnant cloud. Beyond the marshy, flooded panorama, a soft luxurious island rises from the flooded lagoon to proclaim the ascendency of light and love. The spirit passes. Footprints across the sandhills. I hear him moving about within the gently falling rain or the curl of the wave as it rises. My eyes are heavy; my hand drops to the bottom of the page. Within the diamond beads of daylight falling across the windscreen, I sense the immense balance of cosmic forces beyond the avenues of the Dreamtime. I step back from the edge of the precipice; I cannot enter, Master! Did you enter my mind as a single, pure drop of rain? Or perhaps then I saw you with the Princess Highway in the distance. I watch a pure, black puddle and I know I see your face appear!

Your face is an ocean of suffering. As stories of your girlfriend unfold, the rain drives back your dreams into the darkness which extends across your shoulder. Your soul rests there among the splintered debris of your life. I see you in the darkness, the universal darkness surrounding the evaporating dream of your future happiness. Diamonds on the windscreen. You find yourself in an empty house with no furniture where you are greeted by the vision of a starving cockatoo. Avenues of sound and light appear - the roar of the ocean in the distance. When the Tangani people arrived at the Coorong, they ran around in panic until one man asked his people: "What will you do now?" Diamonds on the windscreen. The cool, gentle rain waters the dense, green vegetation beside a soft, luxurious island. When the light emerges, let us enter! I offer to take you there; may I extend my hand to you? We journey through an avenue. A bell at the bottom of the ocean announces the passage of time and the coming of the light. May we move forward together as our gaze returns to this haunted vision we carry. May the darkness become the shadow. May the avenue to the heart of the Dreamtime be surrounded by dense, green luxury and flame arrows of Divine Grace!

Diamonds on the windscreen. The emerald wave has risen! After the silence, the roar of the ocean touches us as a gloved hand at the end of a nebulous galaxy. The road leads onward! May I take you there, dear friend? I see you upon the ocean shore and you are at once absorbed within the body of the spirit. The rhythm in the distance. Footprints across the sandhills. Diamonds on the windscreen and burning canopies of light.

Parampari

You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should. Desiderata.

'Let me tell you of my experience. I stood before the Councils of the Lord and was amazed to find two beings there. I recognised one as a risen Christ; the other was Lucifer. I was constrained by an Archangel. Lucifer leant forward and demanded my death sentence. Christ said "Spare him!" The Archangel asked God to pronounce His judgement. God said: "Do not let him pass unless he seeks My wrath!"

I said: "No! I want to pass!" The Archangel constrained me. "I want to go on, please. Do not bar my passage."

"You must return now," the Archangel said. "The time has not yet arrived when the Lord seeks to judge you."'

Footprints across the sandhills. The cosmic forces are massing. There is a blue sky beyond the ocean. There is a purple haze within the sand. A grassy sand-dune reaches into the distance before the rising cliff-face. "Shall we pass, then? May we go there?" The world is consumed by the roar of the ocean. Small flowers break open, they burst, illuminate. A small bush at the foot of the sandhill is consumed by fire! The body of Parampari rises from the golden sand. The sun has risen, it is morning. A thunderstorm has driven the wild horses of night into the east where a new dimension rises. The body of Parampari is pounded by the ocean waves. I see him extending into the ocean as giant, granite boulders.

I returned alone to Naretha at the heart of the darkness. We journeyed through the burning cosmos and found ourselves transformed as the avenues of our life unfolded. Where previously the twisted shadows within the broken wreck of her father's houses threw an immense, dark veil across my consciousness, I then moved through the daylight and my conceptions were slowly realized. Naretha's palace rotted in tall, thick grasses. As we approached the marble hallways, we cleared a pathway through a life-time of accumulated debris. The weeds grew up; the deep wells were totally blocked with old cans and branches. An overgrown pathway led to a doorway. As a wall of white sunlight broke into the arena, the shadows crept away as banks of cumulus cloud. I stepped upon the warped, decaying timbers and entered a corridor at the end of which a window pressed open. The wooden shutters creaked in the wind. As darkness cleared away into the inaccessible recesses of Naretha's decaying cosmos, I found myself alone with a princess where any vision may take shape. I dreamed of freedom beyond the burning citadel. I trod across the marble floors and the rotten wood broke under my weight. I was airborne for a moment. I crashed into the walls of the sunken palace and Naretha helped me to my feet.

The sunlight broke through clouds of dust. Burning incense wafted through the chambers. Yet I did not comprehend the dimension of the kingdom! As a corridor of light appeared beyond the twisted debris, I turned to Naretha and recognized only her abject poverty. She led me further: I perceived my financial security could alleviate her suffering. I planned restorations; I sought to rebuild the kingdom. Then would my passage to the southern shores of this ruined continent bring my appeasement and her father's favourable judgement? There is a driving, blue ocean beyond the sunken beach. As the waves rise, they pound into the granite boulders at the edge of the swirling shoreline. The body of man then becomes the body of the galaxy. Naretha steps out of the darkness. I bring you oceans, fire!

Two women veilled in white with sky-blue skirts drifted past in silent vigil. Only later was the stillness broken by a hawker on a motorbike selling fruit and cigarettes. His persistance was rewarded by a small boy who approached the bike. The hawker and the boy walked to a tree to inspect a chained donkey. The donkey was bruised, beaten, confined to an area where the owner occasionally brought food. Life was cheap in the kingdom.

Chickens dug holes and searched for imaginary crumbs. Their cock a doodle doos had a distorted, larconic muteness to them. They sounded like: "You are here, too!" Then silence.

I wrote poetry about suffering, assylums. The well-shafts were disused and considered dangerous. The waters were poisonous, deadly. Peering into the darkness of a disused well-shaft was like being thrown into a pit filled with snakes. For an instant in the darkness, I imagined there was no escape.

I fed the chickens with left-over crumbs and they gathered as a swarm of bees in summer.

The cypress trees were still. The light breeze that passed through them barely made a whisper. As I lay and gazed into the darkening skies, I detected a gentle rustling upon the breeze. I reached out to Naretha and rested my hand on her shoulder. She lit a cigarette and sighed. Then we fell asleep. Nothing else changed.

Except a persistant cock that wandered past occasionally. Two goats appeared and chewed empty, plastic wrappers. Naretha occasionally stirred; someone turned the radio on. Children poked their faces around the corner. The chickens returned and dug more holes. Naretha's palace was partly made of wood and collapsed due to termite attack. It was necessary to climb a wooden step to enter which consisted of two wooden planks placed upon a concrete base. The door opened outwards, it creaked on its hinges. To the right of the corridor were two rooms: the first was a dark chamber used as a bathroom. It was necessary to use a plastic garbage bin to bathe using water from the only usable well. We used a cut-off plastic drink container to sleuce our bodies. The water ran to a hole in the floor where it drained outside. A wooden shutter shut out most of the daylight although two bright slices of light penetrated the darkness. The darkness became the property of Naretha as well as the two slices of white light.

To the left of the passage, after the brick chimney breast, a collapsed room sunk into the shadow. The floor gave way and the space between the broken joists and the foundations filled up with debris. When we needed firewood to heat water to bathe with, we helped ourselves to the timber from the broken floor. A concrete wash-stand occupied most of the room as well as a broken chair and pieces of fallen masonry. If a workman was given the job of repairing the house, the collapsed room would provide the most challenging work. The floors needed to be replaced as well as the joists. A wall partly collapsed and the shutters broke away from their hinges. A bright square of light illuminated the debris through the broken window. When darkness fell and the rest of the house sunk into immutable shadow, the room was the last to surrender to night's advance. Shadows there took longer to extinguish.

Opposite was a room where Naretha slept. Passing through the doorway was like approaching a distant kingdom where the gates of the palace are guarded by slender, agile fighters. A two metre length of cardboard and an empty can of cooking oil were the only permanent features although the room was filled up with clothes, a travelling bag and toiletries. Naretha had few possessions and although the room had a spartan appearance, a feminine warmth could be detected. This warmth perhaps had its origin in the empty tampon carton or the overflowing ashtray. Or it emmanated from the precise, feminine folds in the sheets and blankets or from the length of cardboard - with a hundred scribbled poems on it. The empty can of cooking oil had splashes of candle wax and tears upon it because this was used when Naretha chased the dragon. When I remember Naretha's room, I am reminded of a Hindu temple decorated with flowers. If she opened the shutter, the room was bathed with white, translucent light. It was from this light, from the origin of the light, that Naretha stepped.

Like a princess bathed in gold.

"I want to go to the city and buy heroin," she said as her voice shook with emotion. We got the night bus.

It seemed to rain forever, a dull, endless rain. The air was thick, loaded. And yet the crowds still thronged. In the vanquished city streets! Beyond the palace of queens! The city burst open like a field of wild poppies in springtime. When the rains broke in the evening, nature and the city became locked in savage conflict. The city emerged triumphant. The frenetic nights bathed in a ruined pool of shadow and light.

I went with Naretha in a taxi to the market. The night was pierced with bloodied swords of neon. It was easy to find a pusher in the shadows and among the empty building blocks. They came to us as we stood like thirteenth century saints, whispering passages from the Koran. Naretha grew tense as a figure approached us. After we completed the exchange we fled through passages and alleys to the sanctuary of an air-conditioned room at the heart of the city. Our journey was eased with the knowledge of our triumph over darkness. In the back-seat of a taxi or in the doorway of a brightly lit hotel perhaps we occasionally paused. It was during these moments we discovered the lost key to the doorway of our destiny. Had we behaved properly, we could look beyond the burning tongues of neon reflections and perhaps see within the smouldering shadows a path that led to peace and happiness. I sensed our coming ruination and drew from the streets the will to defy the inevitable. We created bonds of unity with the dealers and other addicts, with hopelessness and impoverishment. I knew that inevitably I would write for Naretha. Then Naretha became the streets themselves, the other addicts we called brother and sister. We became standard-bearers for the cause of unity! We fooled ourselves into believing we could emerge from the experience in triumph. Streets became mind. Consciousness became spirit. Naretha stepped onto a platform where her divinity was finally recognized! She blessed the addicts then gathered a power we derived from the night. She moulded the power in her hands and presented it through supplication to her father. The power became our destiny. (taqdir)

We lived on a small, thin strip. Its boundaries to the north and east were large, vacant blocks. To the west, a prison; south, a river. We barely left this desolate zone except for an occasional excursion to the rest of the world. Ours was a self-contained jungle from which only the foolish would venture. Strip A or B, as it could be known, satisfied our immediate needs. We could leave its boundaries within a future life and colonize another strip. Exchanging pieces of land is easy in a world of fast communications. Land is exchangeable but not life! We lived in a constant state of anonymity that our excursions to the night induced. We became, therefore, the images we projected. We became the couple you may pass upon a crowded street among a sea of faces, and you do not fail to recognize us. Something about us mesmerises you and we, for our part, are equally affected. Our lives can never be the same after we exchange greetings in this way. It is true to say that some days induced feelings of hopelessness and that within our brief passing we often felt alone and crushed. Yet we slowly colonized the strip and as we continued to do so we gathered the power. Naretha demanded the whole planet as a stage to perform, to enact her quest for the absolute. It was within this arena or from a distant vantage point that she hypnotised me with her half-real, half mythical personality. I watched her with an intense fascination as if I were a mere spectator being led into streets where I could more fully express myself. I was touched by Naretha. She touched me as a spirit touches a victim: quietly on the shoulder, in the dead of night.

She gave herself to me completely during this time. I had only to make occasional concessions such as buying her cigarettes and chunks of food - which inevitably ended up as vomit in the basin. There were many times we sat in a church-like silence, a silence punctuated by the sound of sighs and tears. Naretha's ritual remained heated, intense, as if it were charged with a newer, more dynamic electricity. It was within this silence, broken by heaves and sighs, that I began to write for her. Our existance remained as divided as a terrible Berlin, a new Korea born of suffering. Barbed-wire fences stretched across our room and only slowly came down in night shadows, in streets where we stopped to embrace amid the ecstasy of electric suns. Then a song penetrated the silence and a union occured. It was towards these moments that we moved with frenzied purpose. It was as if we were the sun and moon. No! It was as if the sun and moon were representative symbols for us. We sought union, eclipse, love and heroin. After we found what we wanted we drifted back across the room to our separateness and slowly prepared ourselves. I wanted to paint the streets with words and symbols. I turned to find Naretha in tears at a point I couldn't reach her. Our worlds collided and an immense tongue of pure, white love consumed us. Naretha in the darkness. I could never reach you. I rise to proclaim your innocence!

A devil stole a cheap plastic stone from one of Naretha's diamond rings. We searched the room but the devil made away with it. I let him go and it was only later, much later, that I learned he took it to New Zealand.

We walked along the railway tracks to the tallest sky-scraper. The electronic doors weren't operating properly so we entered through the basement. We walked down seemingly endless corridors, past aisle after aisle of conference rooms. We finally stumbled across a three-piece band with an American female vocalist who sang 'I couldn't give you everything.' The pianist wore a white suit. It was only when we looked closely that we learned the drummer didn't exist. His role was supplanted by an electronic organ with an inbuilt percussion unit. As the American woman sang and the pianist operated the switches, the drummer struggled to leave the unit and make his appearance on stage. We saw him in the half-light, a tall, well-built negro. The secret of his being was buried in his eyes which were bright and burned like suns. It was possible to see the joy in the newly born drummers eyes as he realized his appearance on stage heralded the dawn of a new age! Naretha and I shared this moment and although it was brief, it can be counted, along with our survival, as one of the many miracles of the twentieth century!

When the American woman stopped singing and the crowds dispersed the pianist shut down the unit and killed the drummer.

We passed some bushes later beside a street not far from the river. It was there, Naretha confided with me, that she first searched for her plastic diamond. "Just there, my friend, where my father once went to search for his kingdom. I went there and then I chased the dragon!"

We walked under bridges upon which saphire snakes of traffic crawled. It was early evening and the sky was yet to surrender to night's advance. Beyond the sky-scrapers upon the horizon, a brighter, bluish haze hung over the city. The colour blue imperceptibly faded into richer, deeper blues then finally black. A particularly bright star appeared among several others. I read in the morning newspaper that planet Mars would be clearly visible. I pointed this out to Naretha. Mars captured our attention for several moments then an aeroplane flew across the sky. The plane bisected the sky and left a long, smokey trail. After the plane passed, we could quite clearly see the outline of the planet. Mars quivered in the sky for a moment before it settled. "There's another planet," I said to Naretha."Perhaps there are people who live there who are just like us except they don't go out of their way to hurt one another. It's an unjust world," I continued.

"It's my diamond!" she interrupted. "The devil took my diamond up there! He thinks he's clever but I'll show him something!" Then she angrily walked away and left me standing on my own.

A yellow crescent moon sinks into the pounding waves. The cosmic forces are massing, the night descends upon our Greater Vehicle. I move into an immense blue dream beside a raging ocean, beneath a velvet canopy of stars. At the end of night's passage, we are woken. A small, unidentified animal runs across my shoulder. I turn the interior light on and make coffee. A ridge of streaked yellow cloud extends across the horizon. The ocean is roaring and the tide has retreated. I walk to the ocean - ridges of compressed sand fan out alonng the beach under gathering canopies of cloud. I find a protected gully and take shelter; I walk to the water's edge and circle huge domes of granite boulders. Footprints across the sandhills. The ocean drives forward; I am surrounded by rising water. I retrace my footsteps as the waves retreat. The flaming white streetlights of Kingston sink into the depths of the ocean. I find myself in a gully surrounded by tall grasses and rising sandhills. The body of the ocean laps at the feet of the evil sorcerer! He is consumed within the fires of nature. I pull my coat to and protect myself against the wind.

The spirit passes. I am sitting in a gully at the edge of a golden Dreaming. Ngurunderi pursued his wives as far south as this desolate, windswept beach. It was here he met Parampari. An avenue of creation appeared within the swirling distance. Ngurunderi's wives sensed imminent danger. They turned and slipped past the two men in the direction of the Coorong.

The world is a ghetto. Magic forces drive the animals into the safety of a swirling canopy of grasses. They are protected there. A sleepy lizard has woken; it raises its head from a jungle of tall grasses. Footprints across the sandhills; the cosmic forces are massing. Ngurunderi asked Parampari: "Have you seen my two wives, walking?" Parampari was an evil sorcerer. He started to argue and fight with Ngurunderi. The ocean, the beach and the sky, became a fierce battle-ground. Wild legions of frenzied beasts barred their teeth and snarled as they materialized from the darkened skies. The flames of hell rose up from a sandhill! As the two men fought using clubs and magic forces, the skies split assunder and a league of demons appeared.

Namas Te Nara Simhaya Prahlada dayine Hiranyak-asipor Vaksaya Sila Tanka Nakhalaye. Ito Nisimhah parato Nisimham adim saranam Prapadye. Tava Kara Kamala Vare Nakham Adbhuta Srmgam Dalita Hiranyakasipu Tanu. Bhrngam Kesava Dhrta Nara Hari Rupa Jaya Jagadisa Hare.

Lord Nisimha gives bliss to devotees like Prahlada Maharaja, Nrisimha with his long nails ripped apart by the demon Hiranyakasipu.

The two men fought using clubs and magic forces. Parampari, his black and blue body surrounded by snakes and demons, lunged forward yet Ngurunderi merely laughed! With a single, mighty blow, he sent Parampari crashing into the ocean waves. Then he burned the body to destroy its magic power. Parampari's body became the granite rocks upon the ocean shore. The waves encircle them, the sun rises in the sky. At the end of the darkness, evil is obliterated. The soft, golden light spreads into the future. A new day is born.

Then did the waves retreat and take the demons far away. To the bottom of the ocean where they dwell in a torrid half-light. Beauty and terror, the bride and the bridegroom, walk arm in arm along the golden sand. I see Parampari rising in the distance: beyond a small, sandy ridge where flaming grasses sway in the sunshine, the broken body of the sorcerer is laid to rest upon the beach. Dark clouds retreat into the western skies. A snarling red dragon is dragged beneath the waves as a small bird begins to sing. I see you within the sunlight. The emerald wave has risen! The spirit rises peacefully upon the body of the ocean and controls the rhythm with a graceful, seeking vision. Footprints across the sandhills turn to the west in retreat.

Hindmarsh Island

Last night I slept in the car by the ocean. I sat in the driver's seat and tried to restore my thoughts by focusing upon a crescent moon which appeared in the side-view mirror. As it sunk, it dragged me down with it. I entered the body of the ocean through a ring of bright water. It was there I encountered a school of sharks and knelt at the tail of the incredible mermaid. Her hair fell out and her skin turned green as she spoke. I heard her mention a princess from a faraway kingdom then strode from her festering body as she consumed herself. A wall of light spread across the marble floor. As I passed the island, I became part of the monolith.

From the depths of the swirling cosmos, the blue thread of the river flows into the ocean beyond the beautiful green island. A tall sandhill dips into the blue water before the ocean waves break across the incredible sandbar. There is a flame-yellow snake carved into the distant hillside. It rises within the shimmering distance and the Earth is at once devoured! A small group of beach-shacks rest beside the water. Two fishing boats appear within a soft frame of light beyond the windscreen. The local residents wake up. They walk about in the soft blue light by the water or take the road to the beach-shacks. I sit in a soft, slow atmosphere and compose my thoughts. Until recently, I was dreaming.

A fisherman stands upon the shores of the lagoon. I watch as he is absorbed into the universal rhythm. A tongue of blue flame rests upon his shoulder; his eyes penetrate the ocean spray. He becomes a small bush within a luscious canopy of grasses!

Herons glide majestically above the sheltered bay. As they dive into the water, the rhythm breaks open like a gunshot wound. Moments later, it is healed.

Pellicans ride the high sky. Further into the blue stillness, they preen their feathers and embrace the tribal ritual.

They turn to face the spirit. Footprints across the golden eternity. At the end of the peninsula, Ngurunderi's river flows into the ocean. South of the river is a wall of white water and burning darts of flame.

I bring you diamonds and saphires, my dear. I adorn you with gold. As the sun sinks into the cold earth, I take slices of sunshine from the sky and place them gently around your neck. As you turn to face me, you are encircled by a rising ocean. I take you to cities at the bottom of the ocean. We ride upon the crest of a sudden wave to the golden frontier of a faraway kingdom. I restore you in the wilderness and in doing so, I regain your heart. What precious metals adorn your sacred body? To what extent may I deliver you my vision and at the same time nourish yours?

Time is an island. Where once proud defenders of an ancient, higher culture fished from the shores of the all-embracing rhythm, time became a spatial dimension beyond which no man trod. Footprints across the golden eternity. There is a crescent moon in the rear-view mirror. I am drawn to it like a magnet or a moth to a candle flame. My body is slowly recovering. I watch the herons fish and feed a flock of seagulls. I have three ideas for survival: co-operation, friendship and trust. If I am drawn to the water's edge in the rhythm it is because my ideas of love and beauty have outgrown the perimeters of the city. It is cold outside. The wind from the south penetrates my clothing. There is a man who operates the ferry - he steers us through the perfumed darkness! Beyond the passing shadows is a road to oblivion beyond the ship-wreck at the edge of the night. Footprints across the golden eternity. I am led to the heart of the citadel by a chain of saphire streetlights which extinguish beyond the horizon. The river empties into the ocean. The rising tide swamps a sand-bar: the seagulls colonizing it are driven back to land. The rhythm appears as balance. The seagulls are resting on the shoreline. As the wind picks up again, they fly.

Daylight spreads across these pages. I restore myself slowly and colonize empty space with words. Naretha in the darkness. In what sense did consciousness become a galaxy or a freeway, an ocean or the blue dream of the river? Did I address you as simply Naretha or did we uncover within the avenues of our life a pathway to a golden destiny? I certainly felt it! As our colonization of the strip continued, as our addiction deepened, I sensed that from your spiritual suffering, we may all emerge one day in peace and unity. In this sense, I now see you as an island. I remember the infinite sadness of your dark brown eyes and see an ocean. I turn to the night-sky; Ngurunderi's bark canoe has risen! The frontiers of your realm are awash with golden sunlight. Perhaps I may enter the palace and take your hand once more. I may crown you a princess and your subjects will understand you are sent directly by Allah. Let them understand, then! If something is meant to happen, it will happen. This is my belief.

I watched Naretha chase the dragon as a delicate ritual embraced the shadow. She almost broke into song though attention to detail stifled her lament. She split the packet open and proceeded to arrange the table with purposeful ease. The cigarette lighter flared. The atmosphere filled up with thick, acrid smoke. We approached silence in the room. She focused her attention and burned the backing from a cigarette packet foil. As the flame rose up, the atmosphere spread out like a warm shadow throughout the fragmented darkness. The atmosphere heaved; her attempt to inhale proved unsuccessful. Silence returned.

I wanted to go to the city, the night.

Naretha finally sang but the melody was stifled by the sound of ambulance sirens screaming through the decaying city streets. Mosquitos fed from our ankles. Motor-cycle engines coughed and spluttered. The echo resounded in a room two blocks away.

Naretha smoked the heroin with an intense, unflinching concentration. She almost finished. As she approached the end of yet another dream, our hearts sank into absence. We became bright, illuminated.

Like an imaginary candle that once burned at the dark abyss of the altar. Our toothless priest was bald and wore a white vest. He wandered around like a nineteenth century missionary; the four corners of his hotel became the perimeters of his diocese. When we climbed the seemingly endless stairs on many hypnotic voyages, his was the face we saw at the frontier of his cash-desk. He cast shifting, suspicious glances at us as we passed him. I kept him in my sight at a respectful distance. He watched our movements and...calculated!

I called out to him as we descended the stairway to the street. He replied with a singular indifferance although the point had not been lost. He duly acknowledged this with a nod of the head and a glance. We stayed quiet and kept the room clean. My part of the bargain was complete. Placing trust in him was like emptying coins into loaded slot-machines!

I must pass him eventually and say nothing.

Naretha decided to fight me. I thought she was playing at being angry. "Why don't you bring me water?" she demanded with a threatening tone. I showed her the door. She sat upon the edge of the bed and sighed. She hadn't eaten properly for two days and her eyes resembled sunsets. I wandered into the infinite sadness of her eyes. I knelt down and kissed her shin. "You don't love me," she sobbed.

"I do," I said. "I do."

Morning was fifteen hours away. We passed through the night with slow, slow sleep. Moving into that abyss was like being press-ganged or mugged. I was conscious then I was not. At the frontier of sleep was a large pit filled with cities and people. I moved among them as a ghost but cannot recollect my experiences.

Naretha dreamed. I cannot guess what her thoughts may have been except that they centred on a sad, distant world where an old man lived in a golden palace. As the sun set in Naretha's dream, an equivilant sun was setting on us all.

Perhaps she knew she would die.

When the traffic began to roar again and stifled conversations echoed through the corridor, I knew it was morning. I walked down the steps into the brightness. The air was cool. The newspapers carried Olympic stories as the games were being hosted in Seoul. Could Lewis win four straight golds? The toothless man existed on the pavement by persuading motorists to pay a twenty cent parking fee. He slept like an abandoned baby on a blanket riddled with lice.

Another man slumped in a doorway. He wore brown, baggy trousers which hung like the empty sails of an old ship. He lowered his eyes as I passed him and gazed into the precipice of morning. Two hours later, he hadn't moved. It was as if he had been especially placed there to remind us of the thin line we trod.

A vacant faced old man stood by the entrance to the hotel. He leaned against the window with one arm while the other dangled limply by his side. His expression was aghast, senseless, as if someone just hit him. He was a man slowly dying. I watched him over a period of four days. After a particularly viscious sand-storm, I looked for him but he was gone.

The blind musicians fell silent. They lined the walls with their sad expressions and their tragic fatalism. The male musicians walked up and down the pavement while the women covered their faces with coloured cloth. The collection boxes were empty because the musicians awaited the crowds. It is said that through the loss of sight the remaining senses are heightened. If this is the case, the blind musicians must have realized their cause was hopeless on September twenty second. They didn't bother playing. They had a case of deja vu.

Among the gathering crowds moved the holy men whose appetites were wetted by the infinite.

Naretha's body lay crumpled like a small brown mound under a torn blanket. I sat and watched her breathe and my consciousness flooded with memory. Her hair was matted and her face was damaged by darkness. She asked for money when she woke. Then she went away again. The empty room was a payment I made for the previous night's existance. Empty rooms are a surcharge, levied against our state of being. As Naretha departed to the city, my heart bled and I turned the blood into words on white, empty pages.

She desperately pursued her unified reality. Within the dancing candle-flame and the acrid, rising smoke, all her visions could be realized. I sat for hours and watched her. Did I then see an avenue to the south appear? At what stage did consciousness merge and the ocean waves appear beyond the palace walls? I remember the river. It flows from the mountains in the east until it becomes the Dreamtime where it embraces your life. From spiritual unity, the void beyond the cosmos, we passed in varying degrees of harmony and found ourselves upon an avenue as the fabulous dimension appeared in every direction. We passed rising cliffs and quiet, sleeping lakes. I paused on a mountain to celebrate your state of being. Naretha now shines like the stars in the skies above the rhythm. I sleep with the window down. I inhale you, I exhale the antithesis. A cockle-shell upon a sandy beach becomes your navel. A small bush upon a sand-hill becomes your hair. I sit upon a furrow of sand by the beach and invoke the rising tide to obliterate your suffering. Amid the distant, swirling clouds, I barely comprehend your Seventh Heaven. Yet it is there. You become an island sloping gently to the ocean. Your body is the rhythm, an avenue for your soul.

I did not place you there. As a flock of seagulls glide gracefully above the sheltered water between the peninsula and Hindmarsh Island, I close my eyes and enter the rhythm to find a long darkness surrounded by streetlights. Reflections in the golden eternity. A marble floor awash with dreams, fire and smoke. A violet haze creeps throughout the golden palace. I awake, it is morning. A dark canopy of sky splits open and the streetlights sink into the water. As they are submerged, the eastern sky lightens. I lay in the smoking half-light buried in a dream from a faraway city. As I rise, I embrace the cosmic unity. I am carried far away to a sandhill beyond the ocean. I can find you sleeping there, Naretha. Did you not suffer for all humanity?

Footprints across the golden eternity. Ngurunderi followed his wives west through the sandhills of the Coorong and dug freshwater soaks to drink from. Having lost the women's trail he crossed the mouth of the Murray and started to walk around Encounter Bay. There he passed or created an island. Naretha or the cosmos. A cabbage butterfly dances in the sunshine. Nothing more.

Ghana Nila. The child of the Yaravas, the blue bodied Lord, beautiful and enchanting, the best among the dancers. The bearer of the mountain, Gopola, who looks charming with the flute, the killer of the demon Madhu.

I return to you, island. The ferry across the water. A princess' tear at the bottom of the ocean. Did I see you smile as you were absorbed within the essential unity of creation? I would journey to you by wind if I was a pure white dove. Or I could become a seed carried by a summer breeze. Would I then reach you, Princess Naretha? An island at the end of the river becomes an avenue to the ocean in the south. What lies beyond you? Is the cosmos so much a part of you that you become inseparable from it? May we journey on then? May other universes attach themselves to this dream to form a marvellous canopy upon which our thoughts may extend to embrace Universal Consciousness. A satin blanket of precious stones upon the shores of a golden eternity. A dream of a colony of birds upon a rising sandbar. I move to the ocean. I walk through soft brown grasses as the sun sinks in the west. Then you become so golden, dearest. Ridges of sand become the scented folds within your soft brown skin. I tread carefully so I avoid hurting you. It seems as if I leave deep brown scars upon your body with every step I take.

I walk around bushes. I am astounded by your beauty. The cockle-shells adorning your hip appear as tiny islands as they flare up in the light. A cool wave has risen. I see it in the distance. As it crashes into the sandbar, you emerge from the sea-spray as a pearl vision surrounded by comets and burning trails of light. Soon you will be plunged into darkness and then I may not behold you. May I stay and sleep beside a sheltered cove and sing you a lullaby? I am speechless! I walk in the garden and remove mounds of garbage so your wild flowers may breathe again. Ghana Nila. The child of the Yaravas. Naretha in the golden daylight. Soon it will be night and I must let you sleep.

Ratalang

Buses to cities, towns, arenas in which we perform. A vast power-station is awash with bleached sunlight. It becomes impenetrable, huge. An unconquerable fortress silhoutted against a featureless sky. Its periphery conforms to our conceptions of fabulous contrasts. Within a single frame, one instant of psychical revelation, our existances are summed up.

Buses to cities, towns, arenas in which we perform. The girl with the stunning face arrives. Does she transform our world with her inherant elegance which has among its many components: saphires, waterfalls at the border of the grasslands and the desert? Or does she transport us with her temporarily, at least as far as the next crossroad? Does she invite us to share the air she breathes through her perfect nostrils? Buses to cities, towns.

All we are really capable of as human beings is an endless gaze into a luxurious pond which forms in the space vacated by two deep brown eyes. We trace the outline of a small, angular face with high cheek-bones. Her chin is made of ivory and polished marble; the sun's rays illuminate her obliquely. I place her by the ocean. She walks across the rocks to the sandstone cliff-face. As she departs, I retrace her footsteps along the thin, winding path to a rain-cloud. As she enters, I close my eyes.

Buses to cities, towns, arenas in which we perform. Naretha learned of her son's whereabouts quite by chance - unless we accept that it was pre-deterrmined by God. A friend was invited to play hockey at a fund-raising event for an orphanage. The children gathered at an arena where they danced and sang for the players. It was a bright, sunny day in a child's life. His name is Muhammad. Since he was placed in an orphanage at an early age, he became a gifted singer. His teachers and friends sometimes had trouble preventing him from spontaneously breaking into song. The boy became transported: his young, strong voice rose up to fill the arena. Prizes were given to the children. Muhammad received first prize for his talent. At the end of the game the children were introduced to the players. One of the children said to one of the players: "Could you help me find my mother, please? I know she is from the same town as you. If you can find her, please tell her I am here. Her name is Naretha."

We checked our bags into a darkened room, a box where a torn red rag was draped across the window as a curtain. The bed was directly in front of us; like all beds in cheap hotels, it spread out of the cut-price darkness, an extension of the forming shadows in the unilluminated stretches of our rat-infested hole. The overhead fan was filthy, covered in layer after layer of dirt and grime. There was a sink and a desk as well as a chair. Previous guests lay on the bed as they smoked and dreamed. The streets became a nightmare. The smoker's faces became tense, haunted.

Naretha and I colonized the shadows with consciousness. Our race to the city, our pressing urgency, somehow imparted upon the enviroment the physical characteristics of our mental existances or our souls. Within moments of our arrival, we swept back to the night. I followed her first to the bed where we lay down our bags - then to the bathroom where I searched for a light-switch. Naretha searched through her bags by the bed. She became darkened, veilled. An incisiveness gripped her: "Come on, now." I heard her say. I followed her along the corridor. The stairs to the street weren't lit by electric light but by a doorway through which the streetlights reflected. "Come!" she said. I followed her to the night.

Until we reached a long bank of traffic where I was awakened from a siege of dreams.

Naretha's pace quickened on the pavement. The crowds who would slow another walker made her push harder, past overflowing doorways, then further into the city. I followed her with increasing difficulty. I pushed past anyone who crossed my path. Moments after my efforts to keep up acquired the attributes of a desperate man, I glanced through the crowds and caught sight of her again. She paused at a traffic light and turned to search for me. I slowed my pace and recomposed myself. Just as I caught up with her, we exchanged a glance that meant a million things. I touched her hand as we met. I could hear sitars and tambourines being played in the distance.

At the end of a nameless street, crouched between the marketstalls, was an old man who read fortunes, with his palms outstretched in supplication.

A man sat in a doorway and repaired broken shoes. He fought for the right to stay alive with a knife and a sheet of rubber.

Beyond them were the darkened streets and empty blocks. The smells of cooking and the impoverished drug-dealers of the night. A half-familiar face appeared. We gave the man money and he took tubes of heroin from his mouth. He stayed because we came to him. His profit margin came from people like us.

A short ride in a taxi; a plastic tube of peace.

Naretha chased the dragon as the more frenetic characteristics of her personality dragged themselves onto centre-stage. We set off in search of Muhammad with only the name of a suburb and a little information about an orphanage. We stole half an hour from time then began to prepare ourselves. Arriving back at the hotel with a small amount of heroin created a feeling of euphoria that could only be maintained by future excursions to the broken realm of the city. The night was a magnet. We were drawn into the flame. We sought expression for our sorrow as consciousness compounded. The arterial roads led to a causeway touched by the soft warmth of the city. As we sat in a taxi with the windows pulled down, we drank from the chalice of night, a warm riot of perfumes.

I found a helpful driver who I payed by the hour. He knew the city and spoke English well. Naretha gave him all the information she had - the name of a suburb; the suggestion of an orphanage. The driver had an idea where to go and decided to help us. The city resembled a spider's web touched by dew and neon; a blaze of blurred markets and brightly lit restaurants. The driver put his foot down when he found a straight passage. It was at times such as this that I believed fully in Naretha's divinity.

The driver had an idea. How to get from A to B and the origins of the world. It all sounded very new: the Indian race was the oldest in the world and formed one of two branches from which humanity descended. A woman appeared: "She had a red mark on her forehead." She lived in a hotel or was it another dimension? As she passed between this world and the future, humanity spread out in her wake. We arrived at a large stone wall. A heavy, iron gate hung in the perfumed darkness. Naretha left the car and tried to open the gate; I watched her in the headlights as she grappled with a chain. The driver continued talking until I had to stop him. We rang a bell. I think it was ten-o-clock. A light turned on; we heard a grating noise. After a key turned, an old woman appeared.

I remember her well. She at first appeared alarmed at our arrival so late at night. She became attentive as Naretha spoke. "What did you say your name is?" We smiled. The driver began to explain. We were looking for a nine year old boy. He brought us here in a taxi to an orphanage on the outskirts of the city. "Are we here?" The woman didn't answer him. "And his name. Do you remember how his name appeared on the papers you must have?" "I don't have any papers. I named him Muhammad," Naretha anxiously replied. The woman hesitated and walked towards the gates. "Muhammad," she repeated softly. "Are you sure about this?"

Four of us stood in silence. The old woman appeared deep in thought. The orphanage remained locked from the inside: an unlit building surrounded by tall, gently moving trees. "Is my son here?" Naretha finally asked. The woman held a set of keys, she attempted to open the padlock. We watched her through the darkness. She wore a black skirt and shiney, black leather shoes. I thought I was watching a shadow move about. A crescent moon briefly appeared from behind a torn fragment of cloud. "It's very late," she finally responded. "Can you come back tomorrow? The office is closed. The children are sleeping, it's very late. Do you want me to wake the boy after all these years to inform him his mother has arrived?"

We were on the outskirts of a very big city, with millions and millions of people. "Muhammad is here," Naretha whispered to me. Her voice trailed away into the darkness. The orphanage surrounded by tall, gently moving trees, seemed gigantic, huge. Four of us fell into silence. The taxi-driver had perhaps entered another universe. The expressions on our faces were all differant although they formed a kind of human jigsaw puzzle. The old woman and the taxi driver, Naretha and I. Four of us stood in silence, unsure which way to go. If Muhammad had looked from the window and seen us standing by the gate, he would, of course, have smiled.

"Follow me," the old woman called as she locked the gate behind her. "Could you not have come earlier in the day? It's so late now; the children are sleeping. I suppose it's not every day something like this happens - and one late night couldn't hurt anybody. I don't even know which dorm he's in. It would be a lot easier if you could come back in the morning. I'll talk to the boy first." She paused and waited for a response. None was forthcoming. Then she led us through the darkness to more darkness, at the end of which was a heavy, wooden door.

She opened it for us with one of her chunky keys. Four of us stood in silence: the old woman and the taxi-driver, Naretha and I. Once she allowed us in, the woman's warmth was felt by all of us. "What are you going to say to your son?" she asked. I was caught in an instant where neither time nor space had any meaning. I was paralysed momentarily like the beggars in the street. She asked again. "What will you say to the boy?"

I turned to Naretha. She wept.

"I don't know!" she sobbed. Then I lost myself again. The taxi-driver also lost himself. Perhaps he fell victim to the immensity of our situation or to the darkness and wood-panelling or to the sobs and tears.

"You had better start to think," the woman called.

When Muhammad was led down the stairs, a blue bridge burned in the sky with petals of blood and flame.

A gentle radiance generated from his eyes as he stood in front of us. As Naretha knelt before him and gently touched his face and shoulders, she spilled more tears than all the children of the world. Muhammad's eyes were warm and soft. If I was compelled to remove my gaze from him for a moment, my eyes returned to his as if they possessed a special power. His eyes became pools of warm divinity! He didn't speak during this first meeting but stood in front of Naretha as she knelt before him and and wept. From the moment I first heard Muhammad's name, I understood that if I met him, I would recognize an angel. I began to understand his fragile being seventy two hours later as I watched a mother reunite with her son. I watched his eyes. I always noticed his eyes. They were full of compassion. Was this compassion for his weeping mother? Or did he appear before us ennobled, loving and transcendental, like an angel or an apostle, a twentieth century saint?

The reunion could not continue forever. The old woman graciously intervened. She asked if we could come back in the morning after everyone had some sleep. "That would be better, wouldn't it." Naretha nodded in agreement and began to dry her eyes. Muhammad didn't move but started to smile. Naretha pulled him close to her and whispered in his ear. Whatever she said lasted several minutes. The expressions on their faces appeared electric, explosive, about to burst into flame. The spirit rose up within these moments! Naretha and Muhammad were always more than Naretha and Muhammad. They united as the ocean waves pound into a rising limestone shelf. Footprints across the golden eternity. The beach becomes a dream beyond a dark orphanage surrounded by tall, gently moving trees and a locked, heavy iron gate.

I walk among rock-pools. By the side of a long, cool beach where the golden water rises. A valley extends into the headland. A small creek runs through a reedbed to a silver sand-flat. It is here the seagulls rest upon the shore-line. A dark ridge of limestone rises above the endlessly turning waves. A pellican flies into a sunrise - it glides across the golden eternity with effortless ease. The dense grasses spread out as a gentle shower breaks the surface of the water. The sun's rays reach into a raincloud: as I complete this sentence, a soft arc of yellow flame breaks through. Diamonds on the windscreen. Muhammad sleeps in solitude.

A fine sea mist rises above the ocean in the distance. It obscures the headland and is beyond definition. It extends into the sky beyond the ocean and is beyond time and thought. It becomes a dimension.

A man with a black dog arrives to clean the toilet block. His dog jumps onto the roof of his blue utility then raises its nose and looks to the ocean. A child appears, the black dog barks at her. She walks towards the ocean before running out of sight.

Footprints across the golden eternity. The waves crash into the rocks before the steeply rising cliff-face. The slopes of the valley are covered with dense grasses. They extend to the beachfront. They receed into the wilderness. The solitary figure of a man walks across the shoreline. As the wave breaks open to reveal its mystery, the man retreats to the safety of the beach.

The silver waves rise up. Then they collapse into the body of the ocean. Last night I returned to sleep on the shore facing Hindmarsh Island. I peered across the dark, still water and found you resting there. You were so peaceful.

There was a dark shadow below the silver cloud of midnight. It was an orphanage enclosed by darkness, surrounded by tall trees. Hundreds of little children live in the darkness as well as an old woman. Muhammad lives in a room he shares with fifteen other boys. He keeps the clothes and the Puma runners we bought him in his locker. He has two photographs of all of us. Nothing more.

We drove to the Star Hotel: a journey to the dark heart of the city. I struck up conversation with the taxi driver and began to feel quite close to him. Eventually, there remained the city and the warm night air. The taxi driver knew the Star Hotel, it was on his way home he told us. It was a good area to work from, there were plenty of potential passengers. We sped through the city at midnight in his taxi and we talked to the taxi driver about his life-time experiences. He put his foot down and finished the story about the woman who saw divine apparitions. She had a red mark on her forehead, bless her.

Neither of us realized we would feel like getting fixed. The night was a spiral: descending into it was similiar to losing my footing, then falling, into a pit filled with mystery. Perhaps I thought of it first as we climbed the stairs to our rat-infested hole. "So much I want to fix. You come with me now to get a needle." We turned once more with quickened paces. The shop was a block away after an expanse of wasteland led into the darkness like a hand. As the shop was situated in the darkness but was always brightly lit, we mistook it for a lighthouse, far away in the ocean.

A friend by the name is Ali first showed me how to fix. After that I taught myself.

Japan was thousands of kilometres away.

I began to massage Naretha. I concentrated on her ankle. I fell in love with her ankles and hands. They were small and brown, soft to touch. I kneaded them for hours on end after darkness fell. She eventually fell asleep as I massaged her temples and earlobes with fingers as soft as rain-washed neon. Into the small hours of the morning. Upon the crest of the dream's flight!

Then she fixed in front of me with the knowledge that the needle's pokes and probes provoked a response within my consciousness similiar in many ways to crucifixion. I tried to avert my eyes but couldn't. The expression on her face, the pierced wrist, combined to drag my vision towards her. When she found a vein, a small fountain of blood spilled into the syringe. It radiated outwards like a flower and turned the pink solution red. Naretha worked the needle upwards, sideways, like a sword. Then release. A feeling of deep liberation spread across her consciousness as she plunged the solution into her soul. "Muhammad," she sobbed as she pulled the steel blade free then rubbed a small mound of skin with her finger. "I want to suffer for Muhammad."

I took the needle from her. It had a ring of dried blood congealed around the middle. I found a vein straight away and my blood flowed freely. I lived at a time when aspects of the human condition were revealed in huge waves which overwhelmed me. The room was awash with sorrow. We recomposed reality as the drug trickled slowly through our veins. A single light-globe's rays poured into the shadow then suddenly extinguished. Naretha's wide eyes pierced the darkness beyond the dream, back to the orphanage. It was there she rediscovered that she was born to suffer. Our room had a partition wall with ventilation inlets which ran along the ceiling. The light from the corridor shone through the vents as thin, irradiating strips and formed an impression upon the opposite wall which resembled a Japanese flag. A transformation occured as we entered the Land of the Rising Sun.

We slept that night near a pagoda at the foot of a mountain. Beyond the fish-ponds in the distance was a range of snow-capped hills. The air was chilled; the snow in the distance glistened underneath a bright, full moon. By the time the first tract of morning appeared, we embraced at the foot of a wall, a large stone wall, because the night was like a magnet which sucked waves of heat from our bodies. We hugged, then hugged closer. An exposed hand quickly darted underneath a fold of clothing. Among the other shadows in the courtyard, we formed one of them, a single shadow that waited, and occasionally readjusted. Morning spread slowly across the sky. It was a bitterly cold morning until the rising sun ascended in the sky to liberate us. Two Zen masters walked from a pagoda to a foot-bridge near the fish-ponds. The sun rose higher. It was over.

Naretha stirred. I could tell she had woken. "Did you have any dreams?" I asked as I pulled strands of hair from her face. "Did you go anywhere or do anything? Did you look for Muhammad again? Did you search for answers in the past or in the future?"

Naretha's body smelt sweet. A feminine odour comprised of sweat, oil and cigarettes. She came closer. Her lips searched for mine at the heart of the palace. A suffuse yellow light trickled through the gaps around the doorway and around the torn, red curtain. "Heroin," she whispered. "I love you."

Rocky outcrop, sunset streaks through broken time. Listen to the sounds of the Dreamtime. Blue. Golden. Green. Pearl. I walk by sleeping pools of water. As the emerald wave rises after sinking spirals of sunlight, a brief rainbow appears beyond the dark chasm. As I return, another bright arc forms upon my shoulder. I give it to you, Naretha. I donate you the sunshine. I celebrate your child.

He is with us now. Footprints across the golden eternity. The water is driven through a deep ravine. A wall of white foam breaks open to reveal its treasure. The waves retreat to reveal a sinking avenue. All is quiet within the citadel of the mind. Rainbows appear everywhere. To the left and the right; within the flaming red petals dripping from the sky. I walk to the shoreline and catch them. I hand you gorgeous blossoms. I carve from the immense darkness, streaks of light and flame!

Then would I free you? Muhammad in solitude. Could I extend my ageing hand and offer you golden bars of daylight? I see you smiling. I catch you in rock-pools. At the edge of a rising pool of water, I kneel to seek forgiveness for my love. The water breaks open. A princess' tear at the bottom of the ocean. I touch a sea-anemone with a pencil; you close your compassionate eyes.

Footprints across the golden eternity. Listen to the sounds of the Dreamtime. They are white, yellow. They burst into flame under a canopy of satin, shining pearl. The spirit passes. There is a blue dream at the edge of the bay where a transcendental island rises. Ngurunderi walked around Encounter Bay from the direction of Goolwa. He threw a huge tree into the ocean. He then transformed the tree into reeds so fish would be trapped in a chanel. A rainbow appeared upon his shoulder. A wall of white foam drove across the rocks and split open as a scented mist of precious gemstones. I collect them from rock-pools. A three-quarter moon rises in the blue eternity. Muhammad in solitude. The endless waves are rising.

Listen to the sounds of the Dreamtime. A newly born child is delivered upon the golden tipped rocks. He is the son of a white, magical finality. His pathway across the Seventh Heaven is adorned with sacred flowers. Then to the bottom of the ocean could I take you? Within the swirling-green waters, I am sure I can hear you! You are drowning. You are surrounded by a colony of mussels and a setting sun. The horizon is golden. Footprints across the golden eternity. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. Dream.

The sky is golden. As the sun is driven to the west, the waves rise in honour of your dream in perfect reality. Ngurunderi paused in the blue stillness. At Ratalang he hunted and killed a seal. Its dying gasps can still be heard among the rocks.

Kangjeinwal

The scented rain. The heart beat. Dedicated to Ray Simpson.

If I walk across these headlands to the golden eternity, will the last dying wish of a man whose life runs parallel with mine be heard from a tall vantage point? Did we ever understand love? Time is an island. The scented rain falls gently in the darkness.

His voice drifted to us through the candle flame. He called us to prayer from behind the village houses. Upon the waves of sound which flooded our consciousness, we journeyed through the dense cloud above the rising forest. Above the immense curve of the horizon, a crescent moon rose up in the bejewelled canopy of night.

Sweeping blue water; diamond lights of houses. They emerge upon the outstretched arm of Ramong (Encounter Bay) and become distant, gently sparkling gems upon the crest of the sinking headland. The land and ocean forge together as darkness falls. Distances become imperceptible. Beyond the gently lapping waves and the swirling ocean to the south, I detect the immense curve of the Earth as it spans from east to west. My vision rests upon the horizon the totality of which abides in harmony with the spirit. Land becomes universe. Consciousness is One.

Listen to the sounds of the Dreamtime. They are deep blue, diamond and grey. There is a silhouette of a man beside a car twenty metres away. He stands in a deep blue dream then drives away to reveal a stretch of coastline I only previously imagined. Now that I own the darkness, I become part of it. Listen to the sounds of the Dreamtime. This night belongs to you, Naretha. Everybody else has gone back home. There is nobody to share these moments with. Isn't it beautiful to be alone!

The scented rain is clearing. Below all the diamond points of light there is a soft band of reflected rain-drops extending across the dashboard and across my face. They become part of the heart-beat. They are encircled by the night. I pick them up and make a necklace. I place it around the neck of a princess in the darkness. Your followers are drawn to you. They touch a shining vision as you pass.

A band of cloud breaks open across the southern night sky. Silver and grey light spreads across the Dreamtime and becomes the darkness once again. The Earth is veilled. Naretha in the darkness. Footprints across the golden eternity. Is it possible you will gain the freedom you need to survive?

The clouds to the south are clearing. As they do so, a full moon is drawn across the sky behind a thin canopy of cloud. As I watch the moon, slices are cut from it. First it is half, then it becomes a crescent. The pieces are put together again by the town's people who walk at night by the rocks along a pathway to a western headland. They take the broken pieces of the moon from rock-pools and puddles which form under the silhouettes of pine trees. When they place the pieces of the moon back into the night-sky, the water before the rising granite island becomes silver, diamond and pearl.

I find solitude in the sounds of the waves. My friend moved back to the city. It is now Easter and he will rise tomorrow from the darkness of a slum boarding-house. The city will take him: a decaying, fetid reality will emerge from a soft, white dawn and a transformation will occur. "I'll call to see you Tuesday," I told him. "Why don't you talk to me mentally before that?" he asked. If I could share these moments with him, I would do so. I would take the broken pieces of the moon and adorn his broken body with fragments of night. I find solitude in the sounds of the waves. The city has passed away; the memory of its shadows pursued me through the countryside until the end of night. Today I found Naretha sleeping. I removed cockle-shells and seaweed from her soft, luxurious body. I turned to the west and drove.

The granite rocks of Pullen Island are pounded by the waves of the Dreamtime. A colony of seagulls rest there. I hear their squawks and cries above the curling waves. The curve of the Earth is swallowed by the darkness. Now that the skies are clearing, the moon appears unobscured and a band of stars rise up. The sheltered cove of Horseshoe Bay extends inland beyond the track where I parked the car. A man-made breakwater stretches into the ocean. Port Elliot spreads north from the ocean as precious ornaments surrounding an ancient throne.

The sun rises at the end of a long solitude. Sleep returns gradually. I turn to speak with my friend as I wake; then I realize he returned to the city. Did I go to the city again to retrieve him? I am unsure. I rise from the back seat and place my hand where his shoulder must be. I reach into the daylight; my arm is bathed in golden waves of solitude. Sunday. He is not yet risen.

The skies are huge; they encircle all my dreams. Clouds of dust are swept up by the wind and driven back into the rock-face or carried away to sea. I remain in dense solitude, unable to rise and break free.

Thoughts trail away to a band of yellow cloud streaked with memory. The wind rises up and desperately tugs my arm. Then a quiet returns until I am led onto an avenue where this vision may take shape. I am tempted to return to sleep yet I know the wind will prevent this occuring. It will rise to pursue me; to drive reluctant sentences onto paper so newer ones may restore the rhythm to a graceful, sacred sanctuary. My journey can have no value whatsoever unless its corresponding elements imbue consciousness with the sacred truths of destiny and divinity. At the end of this Dreaming, a long passage of time awaits until all life is resurrected. Can this time be reduced to a single day?

I succumb to sleep. I find myself in an English city with Evelyn. As I open a cupboard, a chunk of pure blue sky falls from the ceiling onto the floor. As I walk around it, a new friend says to us: "You will remarry, eventually."

I return to the future. A bright square of light cut from the wooden darkness a window through which the sun's golden rays penetrated. Naretha's brother stood by the golden window. His animated conversation seemed to draw from our darkness a passage to the future that we all may enter together - but from which we would separately emerge. "Here!" he gestured as he pointed to a block of land with piles of masonry and broken timber. "And here. Many, many houses. One over here; another by the well. My brother lived over there with his wife and there was an old man who lived over there for seventeen years. I always remember him, since the days of my childhood."

Naretha lit a cigarette. We sat in a room beside a golden scythe of daylight. I took material consciousness to Naretha's land. I thought that by injecting money into property we could all transform reality. We began to clear away rubbish; friends we made freely offered their services. After I employed two builders, the crumbling shadow of the Prince's old house rapidly disintegrated. I planned to leave part of the superstructure; some of the wooden cross-beams remained undamaged by time. After five days work all that remained was piles of bricks and timber: a huge, single mound of debris; a more carefully laid-out arrangement of usable timber beams. Naretha and Ali watched as the Prince's edifice was torn down. Erected slowly on the site was a new dream or vision which perhaps was mine alone. Ali turned to his sister: "Perhaps one day I must go to Indonesia and truely discover Islam!" he said.

"Maybe you will not have to travel so far," I replied.

He took his supply of morphine and mixed it with the water from the only usable well. Perhaps all that remained pure and untainted upon the land was the water we so frequently plunged into our arms. We didn't boil it. By refusing to do so we recognized something of the sacredness and purity of the Prince's life. He stood above us as an icon. He became the very land upon which we trod. Naretha sanctified his memory by spilling her blood on the ground he purchased. She extended her communion with him by slowly destroying herself. What remains will be spirit. The Prince and the Princess reunited in Paradise! To this end, Naretha pushed forward. She hastened her destruction with the aim of obtaining a life!

We heard him calling five times a day. We continued to labour intermittently yet none of us had the strength to finish. We visited friends within a neighbouring village; the sheer force of Naretha's personality propelled her through the broken shanties in search of a future where she could dream. The desperate faces came to us. In exchange for a small percentage, they delivered us heroin or morphine and we were spared the effort. The most common form of agreement was the price of three packets plus a bus-fare. Upon return, we were delivered two of them. When the night closed down and the roadblocks erected, our friends did not return. Another man appeared with a similiar proposition. We agreed if we trusted him. What a terrible perspective to place on trust. Drugs destroyed my morality! If I thought for an instant my money could provide us with an immunity from prosecution, I was wrong, so terribly wrong.

The guitarist arrived in the morning. We worked on two Jimi Hendrix songs and, although neither of us could sing, we felt that with a little practise we could find some work in restaurants. Hey Joe and Red House were our favourites and we sang them long into the night. The nights were empty cups which we filled with twenty year old words, words lost in time save for a few old recordings. The musicians from the sixties appeared on our doorstep and moved freely among us. On Naretha's land we were confronted with a universe spawned by the Prince who walked away from his homeland to sew the seeds of our future. We eulogised him daily with prayer and meditation; with Jimi Hendrix songs as well as a host of others. I wrote love songs for Naretha who inherited his legacy. She then held court in the kingdom she colonized with consciousness. Prince Ali moved silently among us. His gentle smile and his missing teeth; his torn jeans and his track-marks made him instantly recognizable as a true monarch! He slept at night in a dilapidated chicken coop with a packet of heroin and a second-hand needle. His world exploded as a dying galaxy. If we passed him on his day's journey, we felt the warm rush of a star pass by.

The guitarist played his standards. He was exceptionally good without being egotistical. Naretha passed by and our voices were tugged by the wind which blew through the cypress trees, a sudden luxurious breeze. When we realized the purpose of her visit, we glanced at each other and realized we would soon move. Our consciousness was jolted by the spark of command. "Someone needs to get smack," I told the guitarist. "I'll go with my friend," he replied.

It began to rain, a dull, endless rain. The builders worked when the opportunity arose; when the skies cleared and the heavy, rolling cloud blew away across the land. Naretha's friends arrived to visit us. The construction of our new Jerusalem became a focus of attention for the mainly unemployed youth of the town. I was absorbed into the community of peaceful Muslim people and at the same time I gradually absorbed their faith. I embarked upon a journey and felt compelled to go forward - to embrace the totality of Islamic consciousness and recognize God. Still, I dragged my feet. My attempts at prayer were half-hearted. I argued and questioned what was essentially beyond doubt. Naretha's friends didn't understand me. In kindness and generosity, they tried to help me improve.

A seed was about to germinate. I stood beside the Prince's decaying dream as I spoke with a friend. "Do you know there are groups in America who believe we are descendants of aliens who once visited Earth in flying saucers? Most people who hear such things have a good chuckle but these people may be crazy - but they could be right!" I pursued the line further: "Anything is possible unless we can prove the opposite! I don't believe in aliens personally but I have as much possibility to believe in them as I do in anything else!"

We stood beside two collapsing houses beneath tall cypress trees and a pure, blue sky. Naretha and I occupied the smallest house; the other, a much larger structure, was always out of bounds. I once trod lightly across the rotten floor-boards to avoid falling through them. A huge bee-hive formed around the rafters of the roof. When I saw it, I retraced my footsteps to the front door and left as quietly as possible. The house belonged to the Prince in exile; he used it until his family began to grow when a larger house was built. I lived beside it with Naretha: its huge, decaying structure imposed upon us as an ancient legend which after night-fall became a vast shadow, an enigma and a mystery from which we could never be absolved.

Naretha lived in this house as an infant. She returned to sit upon the verandah throughout her childhood. It was here she wrote poems in her recipe book. 'I am falling.' and 'I am a child.' are poems she translated for me. We transposed the darkness in accordance with tradition. Her father was the shadow and her father's presence became the darkness at the heart of the shadow. Naretha heard us talking. She picked from the earth a small, bright flower, a soft, white dream, and passed it to me. "God made this flower," she said.

Then she walked away and left me in charge of the legend. She taught me with a method I can only describe as psychological revelation. Her timing was perfection. As I grew to know her more fully, I began to understand that her life comprised of suffering and, from the depths of this suffering, she revealed knowledge. With the exception of her brother and son, others did not have the same power of compulsion over me. I was led onto a platform as a reluctant Christian before the gladiators. There was nothing I could do or say to halt the process. I can only understand our life in terms of destiny. Yet it is the knowledge of this coming destiny which astounds me. Three months after I met Naretha, I wrote the following poem. When I rediscovered it last month, I could barely believe my eyes.

Muslim songs twist in the room
Like smoke that bends to silence when you sleep

You guide me to a golden eternity Princess of the south
I submit to your will and in doing so, I ensure my own destruction.

We shall die by the hand of God
"Leave no sign in your wake!" He commands us.
As His servants, we obey the final injunction.
"Amen." we whisper with clenched teeth.

We were soldiers going to battle
The percussionist's drum forced our retreat
We were the last footmen on a field of blood and tears
We were the last ones to spill our guts.

I still don't understand it. I was an agnostic - yet I was commanded by God. I never heard of the Dreamtime - yet I was being guided to a golden eternity in the south. Everything was predetermined. Why? How did I know these things?

Naretha.

Ali and the guitarist returned after days travelling. They carried offerings: pink, white and pearl. As we drew our vision from the darkness, the dense panorama of the future unfolded before us like a flower. The house erected slowly; Naretha's behaviour became more frenetic. The shadow of the Prince dominated our existance. As my budget depleted, I tried to economize by using material from the Prince's old house. The bees prevented this; we discussed how to drive them away. I peered through the broken shutters at the huge hive in the rafters and saw a single obstacle which prevented our work from proceeding. I was told of a man from the village who could help us; I searched for him for a week only to find he had left the area. Other villagers came but quickly turned away again. The task was too dangerous, I was told. Unable to accept this, I tried to fight it with my will.

Perhaps, in this way, the bees became my judgement. With no access to our cross-beams, our vision floundered. The rains commenced, we were driven back to shelter. Our addiction deepened, Ali went away again. We shook with withdrawal by the time he returned. Our idea lay in ruins; Naretha slept and dreamed but most frequently she wept.

She began to leave me for long periods. She went to stay with the junkies who lived in dilapidated shanties. She returned at night by bicycle to myself and the land we attempted to sanctify. Her state of mind varied at this time between an enthusiasm for the cause we promoted to a profound spiritual suffering brought about by her addiction and the loss of innocence. When the night yielded under the weight of fattened storm-clouds, we made an inroad or an exchange took place. Perhaps I made her laugh or she sang a song which momentarily made light our situation. We could rise so high before we came back to earth again. Naretha roared with laughter when I explained about the dollar coins from the moon. She picked it up and pursued it: she walked into the local store and demanded her change in moon money! It was only small but it was something. Then she forgot it; our addiction surfaced. She began to weep again and there was nothing I could do or say.

Two of Naretha's friends came most often to visit me. We stayed in an old stone dream which was decorated with posters and a parachute. Yusuf and I discussed Libya and the Iranian Revolution. C brought marijuana and we doubled up on his bicycle to find an interesting place to smoke it. C spent a considerable amount of time teaching me how to pray. We made a carefully assembled tape-recording with all the information and instructions. As we embraced the ritual, our devotions trailed away as the heavy rains engulfed us. I stayed and waited patiently; Naretha returned by late evening. Perhaps a friend accompanied her or she came alone by rickshaw. It was only after she returned that my existance had any meaning. What she did, what she said. A story from Islam unfolded: the Prophet fled the infidels and took shelter in a cave. Upon seeing this, the faithful spiders quickly wove fresh webs across the cave entrance so it appeared undisturbed. The soldiers passed and the Prophet's life was spared. We slept that night as a thunderstorm engulfed us, a driving, perfumed rain.

At three-o-clock we heard thunder. We were awoken as a huge tree, its root system loosened by days of incessant rain, crashed through the velvet darkness into the undergrowth beside our house. The storm intensified shortly afterwards. We shrunk into the darkest corner of the room - away from pools of water which formed under the leaking roof. When we shot-up heroin, it seemed as if the world would engulf us as rapidly as the drug pumped through our veins. A mighty crashing sound burst through the darkness an hour before daybreak. I gripped Naretha's hand and tried to steady myself. We passed into the leaking corridor at daybreak and tried to open the door.

She stood beside me closely, this princess of darkness and addiction. I unlocked the door and pushed it open - and a wall of white water cut through our consciousness like a scythe through a field of wheat. The nomadic shadows swirled madly within the assembling daylight; the driving rain forced the door to almost as soon as I opened it. We paused in the shadow, helpless in the spotlight. As we retreated to the umbilical darkness, we entered a perfumed chapel in which our deliverance was assured. As drug-addicts, we inherited the Prince's legacy. We translated his vision with consciousness directly from the material into spiritual reality. I opened the side window. The Prince's old house had fallen down! I looked again - a pile of twisted debris lay in a collapsed mass upon the ground! Gone was the old, rotting shadow, gone was the balcony where Naretha wrote her poems; gone were the bees.

We sifted through piles of rubble when the rains ceased in search of our much-needed timber. I used a large plank of wood as a lever and slowly tore the shadow apart. A baker asked to purchase rotten timber for his ovens and a shop-keeper asked to buy the bricks. We watched as their workers tore strips of dreams from the mound of debris - until all that remained were sheets of corrugated iron. Our wooden cross-beams never materialized as the destruction was absolute. An old man arrived after three days and asked to buy the sheets of iron as he wanted to fence his chickens in. We gave them to him for nothing on condition he took them all. Nothing remained shortly afterwards except a memory. The shadow of the Prince passed away into eternity. The blue skies and the cypress trees remained, and a rectangle of ground with no grass.

Ali remained on the outside. If we looked for him we peered into the collapsed room to see if he slept in the chicken coop. He lay on a bench in the bus station if he wasn't there. The more frequently he travelled for fresh supplies of heroin, the greater his suffering became when he returned to live on his father's land. Everyone who knew him described him as the most intelligent in his family. Yet his days were spent in ruin with no comfort other than his drugs. Naretha reached out to him from the abyss of her own addiction. They went away and shared a needle; they returned in harmony to hasten their own destruction. Instead of making a stand, I fed them both with money. I should have left and sent them both only enough money to live. I followed them both into the spiral of addiction and torment we seemed to share as our collective definition. I lost twenty kilos which is nothing compared with a life.

I received an income at the end of the month and used it to pay for building supplies. With the framework completed, we filled in the spaces and laid a cement floor. We had only to line the walls and purchase aluminium windows before finally making the doors. My devotion to Naretha and my deepening addiction prevented me from working as much as the others. The further we sunk into the abyss, the harder even menial tasks became. I carried water to the house to bathe with. The rising water in the well threatened to swamp what I saw as our achievement. I threw a bucket ten metres to the water-table. The level had risen a metre by the next day. As the builders worked and Naretha and her brother sought nothing except heroin, I stood at a wash-stand by the well and endlessly scrubbed our clothes. Then I returned to them, to fix or to shave and make coffee. The newspapers carried stories of war and new governments. In our tragic separateness, we sought union by sharing our blood freely. There was no reason for it except the reason of addiction. It drove Ali on a journey to the east. This time he didn't return.

The guitarist arrived to try and guide us. He came each morning and led us into prayer. As we heightened our experiences through the ravages of addiction, we entered a higher level of consciousness where devotion and prayer assumed a hitherto unknown degree of intensity. Sabri's ritual deepened our lives immeasurably. I could never have understood Islam in the way I do without his guidance. Devotion became submission or surrender to the Will of God. By offering ourselves so freely, we at once abandoned the concept of free will. By fuelling Naretha's addiction, I allowed her the freedom to destroy her life as well as mine. If I embraced her cause, as I did; if I married her, as I had, then I had either to forge a new life for both of us or succumb to her vision of all life being suffering. Naretha took only one thing seriously: to follow the path of Islam and to avoid any sin which would prevent her reunion with her father in Paradise. Of course she defined her morality. I began to sense something beyond that. As her addiction deepened, I began to see her true identity beyond the purely visual. It was then she said to me, in the softest voice imaginable: "Did you come from Islam before you came to Islam? Our life has a purpose, hasn't it."

A bright, orange dawn broke through the cypress trees and washed the sleeping village with an embryonic light which absorbed the separateness of objects and turned them into a golden, panoramic dream. Elements of this single body glistened at the advent of daylight; a ring of water which rested like a mirror in the well-shaft, threw golden reflections back into the sky. I collected water to bathe with. I carried fourty litres of blue sky and cypress trees back to the darkness of Naretha's house. We injected cumulus cloud and swaying branches. When Naretha bathed, a cloud broke over her and she massaged it into her scalp. Each drop of water contained within itself the totality of creation. By sleucing ourselves or by carefully drawing water into a syringe from a table-spoon, we drew from each droplet of liquid, a hundred splintered reflections. The sun rose higher above the roofs of houses. Naretha pushed the window open and a flaming tongue of sunlight spread across the floorboards. As the children of the village walked along a sandy path in the direction of their school, a voice rose up from the golden eternity and proclaimed to the assembling multitudes: "Allah Aqbar!"

Then what dream did I pursue as the builders carefully completed the restoration of a house which, though Naretha was to live there, was built as a monument towards renewal. The skies washed out. I became stranded within a deepening isolation that, had I cared to look beyond myself, was shared equally by us all. Ali remained in prison. Unable to bail him due to lack of funds, we accepted his loss as a tax imposed upon existance. The guitarist arrived to speak with us. He offered us the comfort of his spiritual solidarity by extending into the deepening shadow his submission to the Will of God. We became one. We discussed how best to resolve the crisis we faced. That night we went to eat on the river-front in a restaurant at the edge of time. Beyond us lay the river and the transcendental night.

It was decided that in addition to building a house, I should also secure a regular income. Sabri was quite emphatic: if I had ideas myself, I was invited to discuss them. The problem, as Sabri saw it, was that due to my lack of money, I would be unable to settle in the province. Because of this, he thought, Naretha did not feel secure in the life I tried to assemble for her. "A house is not simply a building," he stated. "It is a place to live and raise a family. If this is what you want, you must secure an income. Have you any ideas?"
"I can write," I stated.
"Does that provide a regular income?" I responded in the negative. "I have an idea, Naretha." He turned to her and tried to involve her in the scheme. "When the highway is diverted through the city, all the local traffic will pass your land. I propose you build a coffee shop! I also propose to offer you my labour free of charge to help you achieve this goal. If you're interested, we can do this work cheaply. Can you get the money for this?"
"A coffee shop?"
"And then you can live in the house and be happy!"
"How much do we need?"
"Five thousand American for the building, maybe. Another thousand for the interior."
"And five thousand for the cappucino machine," I added humourously.
"What do you think, Naretha? It's a good idea or not?"
"And I can make cakes and be a waitress!"
"Why not?" he laughed. "It's better than this! And of course We need a good coffee shop."

We finished our dinner and walked through the village. Naretha sat quietly as Sabri spoke and both of us recognized aspects of truth in what he said. As we walked back to our newly completed house that night, I pondered a future neither of us could forsee. Perhaps in some way I recognized a future the shock-waves of which extended back into the past. As the night shadows danced and we passed rows of darkened houses, I turned to Naretha and gazed into the enormity of her life. We came together at a crossroad. I embraced the opportunity to extend knowledge beyond the visible. The knowledge of God was something I couldn't avoid if I wanted. I was led onto a path and found Naretha way beyond me, always leading the way. I followed her in spiritual life as well as in the material. She recoiled at the darkness as a devil appeared! She gripped my arm; I took her back to silence. We paused at a laneway. A narrow block of land stretched into the pit of night. Could we see the future? Could we see our future happiness form beyond our hopeless addiction?

"Don't make it here!" she said. "It's so expensive if you make this dream, this shop, in this colour black. I can show you my land, I can show you everything! This is my father's shop, come and see this light, this truth!" She took my hand and led me to an intersection. An old man sat on the pavement and reached into infinity. As we passed him, his coins sparkled in his outstretched hands. Perhaps he too, in a previous incarnation, tried to claim his happiness upon this land. We arrived at a doorway. I spoke enough of the language to understand the content of the exchange that followed. "Why have you not paid the rent on this property?" Naretha asked a startled shop-keeper.

He shrugged his shoulders and carried on working. Perhaps he thought that by ignoring Naretha she might go away. I retired to the background. "Please come back now, come and stand in my father's doorway!" she demanded. "If you want to make this land clean, you must do everything! It's no good a bit here and a bit there. Neil Armstrong went to the moon for the truth of Islam and you want to come to my father's land, it's the same I must tell you." She turned to the shopkeeper. "Why don't you want to pay the rent?"

The shop-keeper looked agitated. He was half-way through serving a customer. He turned to me and said in English: "Is this your idea, to make trouble like this?"
"I don't want to make trouble," I replied.
"Get out of my shop!" he demanded. "I'll call the police if you don't go!"
"Then get off my property!" Naretha screamed at him. "I'll give you seven days to get off my land!"

She took a mighty swing at the door and kicked it from its hinges. I tried to catch a breath and realized a large crowd formed behind us. I took her arm and tried to lead her. "Take your hands off me!" she screamed.

The night was a vortex. She kicked a table over and began to scream at the shop-keeper. I tried to take my leave only to be pushed back into a doorway. "Seven days!" she repeated. "I'll give you seven days to vacate or suffer! This is my father's land and I want to make it clean again. Everyone pays rent if I decide to accept it. If not, you go!"

Two police cars skidded to a halt on the road beside the mellee. Four young men leapt out and after they identified Naretha in the crowd they bundled her into one of the cars. I tried to follow but was prevented from doing so by a sturdy young policeman who simply raised his arm to bar my passage. I walked around to the other side of the car and entered through the passenger door. The policeman snarled at me. "If that's what you want, go ahead," he said.

They delivered us at top speed through the passage of the night. We were driven to the station in a blaze of flashing lights. Naretha shook with emotion. "Why am I here when the law-breakers go free?" she screamed. The night was a vortex. Naretha in the darkness. I felt removed from an arena where my words could make an impact. We were ushered to an empty room and the door was locked behind us. I sat on a wooden bench and quietly wrung my hands for what seemed like an eternity. A young detective eventually made an appearance. He formally introduced himself and made perfectly clear from the outset who was in control. "What's going on?" he asked in English. I gestured to Naretha: "A dispute about rent."
"I want to make a police-report," Naretha started. "The man in my shop doesn't..."
"What man in what shop?"
"In the east, of course. By the market. He doesn't pay rent and he won't get out. I want to make a..."
"So you must go to court in the morning. This isn't a police matter."
"My father's land is full of thieves! Throw them out, put them behind bars!"
"I advise you to keep your voice down or I shall throw YOU in the lock-up," the detective hissed at her.
Naretha looked at him pleadingly. "We want a coffee shop, we want a future," she wept. "It's here, on the corner." She took a piece of paper and began to draw a map. I watched as she drew a series of erratic lines across the paper then drew a large cross across the whole page. "This is my father's land!" she yelled. She drew a series of diagonal lines and handed the paper to the detective. "All this is my father's land!"
"I'm going to escort you to the gate and advise you to leave immediately. Causing a disturbance is a criminal offence - but I don't want to arrest you." He turned in my direction. "Take her to the hospital where she can recover."
"No!" she cried. A crowd of perhaps thirty onlookers gathered as we were led through a courtyard. "Nobody can know what will happen if my father's land remains impure! Everything will be destroyed by man and God will not prevent this!"
"I shall give you thirty seconds to get out of my sight!" the detective demanded.
Naretha turned to the assembling crowds. "I want to follow my father's life and make the land around me pure. We want to build a coffee shop on this land, my father's pure land!"
"Thirty seconds!" the detective quietly stated.
"We have fallen from that state of grace but now we want to start anew. If this land is full of thieves how can we achieve anything? We are not the criminals!"
"Fifteen seconds!"
I stood beside the detective and tried to gauge his intentions. Naretha addressed the crowd with a wild, firey speech. She stamped her foot on the ground and continued. "Truth and justice! If this land isn't God's land then how can we continue to live? Return to my father! He had perfect balance! Do you wish to ignore his life?"

The detective reached zero. I moved to Naretha to silence her. What right did I have? To deny the truth from others? I gauged the police would make an arrest and rugby-tackled Naretha through the front gate. Although she sobbed, she let me take her. I believe I acted in accordance with her interests. They let us go. A scented rain drove us through the night to a bicycle stand beside a restaurant. The shadows of night enveloped us. We pursued the lost night of innocence before the gates of the cement compound closed behind us. Naretha in the darkness. The blue island where your dreams embed themselves within their transcendental origin appears before me as I write these words. I suppress while you express the meaning of your life upon a stage you inherit as both a legacy and a lever of exposition. A woman upon the cliff-top raises her hand into the sky and is drawn into the vast panorama until I can no longer see her. Did the road to your house then appear as a night-passage to Golgotha? Did I begin to lose you because of my stubborness in refusing to hear you speak? I took your hand and you wilted in the darkness. You were an unforgettable fire that burned out of control and at the same time the exposed nerve of our being. Could you completely understand if I told you about this infinity? Did I then see the future? Did an avenue through the rhythm appear before the damaged gates at the end of time?

I return to you, island. Footprints across the golden eternity. I am the guardian and the keeper of your soul. I celebrate your existance with liquid fragments of sunset stolen from a sky far to the south of your dream of vast hemispheres. The deep blue ocean waves break open across the granite rocks. In what sense does the passage of the spirit signify an awakening; a celebration of eternity at the advent of golden night? The seashore is awash with slices of golden flame and the islands to the west are capped with golden sunshine. I watch the waves break open across the rocks of Pullen Island although my vision returns to the western skies where I know the spirit resides. The universal spirit finds its most perfect expression within a dense clump of vegetation to the west of the island. What expression can I find for my solitude? I am a man! Then I find the darkening headland suddenly illuminated by a thousand glistening jewels. A single wave rises into the granite rocks and resonates within the diamond diasphora. A footpath twenty metres away is only noticable because a hand-rail leads to a pristine wilderness. Let the night advance and the peach coloured skies grow dimmer until they extinguish and reveal a stunningly beautiful universe! Pullen Island becomes a shadow. I must turn off the flash-light to see it and adjust my vision to the darkness. Now I can describe it as a praying man facing east.

The dying vestiges of the sunset appear before the headland. The deepening red skies above Pultung rise like a mushroom cloud into the spectre of night. I shall soon be left alone with a spotlight. The vast arc of the bay extends from the south-east to Newland Head in the west. I turn off the spotlight; the blood-red skies are weeping. Diamonds on the windscreen. A woman walks past in the direction of the township. The darkness comes down on us. There is no light left. I am falling. It is night.

I drive to the top of the headland. My vision extends from a distant, disintegrating headlight in the east to the yellow and white swirling streetlights of Victor Harbor. I am drawn to the ocean. As the quietened water behind the break-water gently laps into the shore, long corridors of reflected streetlight break open across the darkness. Beside me is an obilisk with a plaque which reads as follows: "There's a city at the bottom of the ocean. There is a princess in a faraway land whose life most closely approximates our judgement of the divine. As her memory is sanctified, we shall raise a blue flag to commemorate each morning a golden ship passes."

Naretha in the darkness. In ten, twenty or eighty years time, you will perhaps look back for me, and find that I am a component of a dream you once had of angels who threw rubies into the water, and lithe, brown children dived after them.

Dawn. She awakens gradually. Unable to leave my sleeping-bag I am drawn back to a dream I once had of you. I awake. I am lying peacefully. A scented rain falls gently upon the windscreen and the island is cut to pieces by small rivers that slice the diamond panorama into liquid fragments which form above the body of the ocean a spiral of wind and rain. A rainbow appears in the skies to the west. Late last night I returned to sleep by the body of a bush, which became a fallen pine tree, offering golden promises. I was startled to see it beside the car! Now that the ocean is rising and the unremitting rain drives through the stillness, I return by foot to a steeply falling pathway where I find a garden. Soft brown pine-cones evoke memories of my youth. In the dream, I am at one point enclosed by the landscape; later, I am drawn to a candle flame or to the swollen green waves. I turn to find you in the Dreamtime until I am led away to a vast shoreline. As the rain advances as a wall of dark cloud upon the horizon, I return to the island and place upon a huge granite boulder a gemstone, which will always remain there, because it is blessed.

The submarine granite boulders rise above the swell intermittently. As they do so, a wall of white water invades the inner reaches of the island. Now that the skies are clearing, I expect to find solitude, dense, green solitude, and be peaceful. The second hand of the clock advances. Because of this, I am running out of time! I project into the future my perspective for the unfolding day. I see the clock face. Then I return to it. I eventually throw this perspective into the ocean, where one time in seven, it is cast into the rocks. Then the waves will correspond with the heavens. The passage of the spirit will correspond with our life. Because, Princess Naretha, some things are meant to be. Others are not and this is my faith.

The waters of Horseshoe Bay are awash with golden sunlight. As a huge bank of cloud advances to the shoreline, the reflection in the water softens, spreads, and eventually disintegrates. The sunlight reforms in the distance near Ratalang until it is chased to sea by an advancing legion of cloud. Dense green islands rise up! I see them forming in the south before the advancing cloud. After the sun breaks through a torn cloud, they spread out as a cool, green luxury, in every direction, until they become a memory. A rainbow breaks open across these white pages. I obliterate it with pen-strokes, with images of the kingdom, until it is no more.

A woman drives by near the cliff-top. She looks at me nervously; I see her eyes dart from side to side. Is it me she sees or the ocean? A silver whisp of cloud is driven to the headland where it rains down on her, until she is transformed. I turn; she has driven far, far away. Her eyes as they appeared to me resembled morning dew in clover. Perhaps now she has returned to the headland where she may grow older and less afraid. Did she respond to the rising islands of the Dreamtime or to her own paranoia, because she couldn't see?

Footprints across the golden eternity. I am astounded that within the mirror, another world is forming. It is a much darker, impenetrable mass where dense, black clouds form above a group of houses upon a hillside. The woman returns there. I see her walking across a hillside with her husband who wears an overcoat. She returns to the edge of the water by the granite boulders periodically, and stoops to wash her face there, because now she is a princess, and her husband is a king.

I move to the shoreline. Unable to draw sentences from the deep blue luxury of the rhythm, I suspect my location to be at fault. The skies lighten. An unbroken expanse of pure daylight spreads throughout the panorama of my solitude and I am compelled to move towards the sea. The waves as they break open across a rock-face twenty metres away sends splinters of white foam into the golden daylight. By becoming part of them, by diving into the ocean in search of sunken treasure, I reemerge upon the coastline in an acceptable form. I pray I can begin to write.

As a rainbow appears. It bridges the sky beyond the headland and connects Pullen Island with a torn fragment of cloud. At the end of the universe, the Rainbow Warrior has slept for millenia. His body is an arc of nebulous, firey gas in which planets form and small spiders weave silver webs. As he wakes to pursue his formidable destiny, he recognizes within the rising constellations, an ancient alignment of stars. It is Ngurunderi! The Spear of Destiny cast into the river! The Rainbow Warrior rises from his throne to pronounce his intention to the world: He will save the planet from enviromental destruction!

Footprints across the golden eternity. Ngurunderi stood on top of a granite boulder and cast his fishing net into the sea. As his net crashed into the water, it was miraculously transformed into the rocks of Pullen Island! A rainbow rises over them. The Rainbow Warrior has woken from an undisturbed sleep for the first time since the dawn of time!

The story of a princess unfolds within the Dreamtime. As her story is told, a soft veil of night descends to clothe the planet in a veil of dense, blue luxury. Ngurunderi's two wives travelled west around the steeply rising shoreline. The dimension they arrive at is equivilant to the Seventh Heaven or a perfumed garden in Paradise! Here is the story of a fallen princess. The planets, the galaxies, align to reveal the transcendental origin of love and suffering in the universe. Ngurunderi's spear transcends the dimension. He arrives to resolve the crisis! The night is trans-dimensional; a wooden quay beside the gently lapping waves drops to a jet-black eternity as fisherman gather on the shoreline. They cast their lines into the Dreamtime. As they retract them, they touch diamonds in the spotlight. The night is black and purple, green and white. All colours gather upon the northern shore and mass at the gates of the besieged city. The warriors are wearing purple cloaks, the innocents are clad in white. When dawn awakes at the end of a long siege, the streetlights will sink in the bay, and from the bottom of the harbour, an Angel of Destiny will rise! Her origin from deep within the universe can never be questioned by man although he may choose to ignore her. Dawn breaks across Ramong; dense, rolling cloud assembles over the land. Further out to sea, the sun momentarily breaks through a long band of yellow sky and turns the steel-grey waters into an incredible blue. Islands rise as bejeweled cities; they are cast adrift within the newly reforming dimension to seek their highest expression within the totality of creation! They are, of course, islands within the diasphora! They have remained as detached segments of the material since the Raminjeri people were dispossessed by thieves! As dawn breaks, a single fragment of cloud is lit up as a golden canopy, high in the sky. As the key to the golden city is turned, the splintered panorama is thrown together by Ngurunderi who has heralded a momentous reconstruction! The Rainbow Warrior has awoken! From a golden age, from the Seventh Heaven, we have come to this. This present epoch has been set aside for our liberation.

Pultung

Dedicated to Karmein Chan in Paradise.

We must organise immediately. We may seek expression for our coming freedom within the bonds of human unity we forge from chains and prison bars. We prepare to seize reality! We do so as men and women, Ngarrindjeri, Muslim, Christian, universal brother and sister, as we face a clear choice: Spiritual Revolution or annihilation of humanity! The spirit rises and the silver-grey waters of Ramong are peaceful beneath a molten grey sky. We must defeat the warriors and reclaim our beautiful planet. While our children starve, the wicked destroy our Creator's food-supplies to increase their filthy profits. Seize it from them, Children of the Garden! If they refuse to join us peacefully, with no favours set aside for them, then their annihilation must be complete! We advance in human unity towards an eternity where only our Creator's Authority is recognized. The militarists and greedy say they have the right to seize and plunder as this makes the wheels of commerce turn. How right they are! Yet at the time they deny our peaceful people the right to food and medicine, do they deny our right to smash their evil empires and restore our Creator's Paradise upon our beautiful Earth? Can they thwart our destiny? Can they pick a fight with God?

Our revolution must be peaceful. We shall advance in human unity and solidarity with the highest of peaceful intentions. If the militarists take up arms against us, our response must be rapid and final. In this way, it is peaceful! If we advance in the name of human unity with the aim of achieving peace, then how, if we are forced to defend ourselves, can our actions be judged to be war-like? Of course we are peaceful! Let not a single soul fall victim to their violence because we are unprepared! Their actions in the past have shown them to be most wicked when they destroyed cities such as Dresden and Hiroshima. Let us avoid the march into the slaughterhouse! We must rise up in the knowledge that if we do not prevent them, they may try to destroy our Garden rather than relinquish their control! This is the case with our Garden in Australia. We must restore the beauty of our Creator's Paradise. If we are opposed our Supreme Creator will hasten our victory and bring down a terrible scourge upon the wicked. If they do not truely repent and join us in our march to freedom, they will perish at the hands of the just! Let there be no trials or drawn out inquisitions after our victory. In the case of the unrepentant militarists, let there be burial mounds!

Our Supreme Creator has decreed the following in relation to our people and the beautiful planet we live on. There can be no nation other than the Nation of Unity with our Creator. National boundaries are an insult to our Transcendental Creator who created the Earth as an indivisible whole so humanity can grow and prosper. Any human being, with due respect and civility to other people, shall inherit as a birthright the freedom to settle anywhere on Earth and to pursue his or her personal destiny while rendering loving service to the planet. The Earth's resources can never be owned by man or corporation. The greedy have seized these resources and, by doing so, incur the wrath of our Supreme Creator who commands the weak and dispossessed to rise up and follow these decrees! The Earth's resources and associated technologies for the management of these resources, are a gift from God to the Children of Creation. Ownership of the Earth is God's alone. God commands the abolition of private property and greed and commands the oppressed masses to rise up and seize from the monopolies that which was illegally seized from the Earth.

Our Gracious God has created all just men and women equal. Be they Hopi Indian or Navaho, Muslim, Jew or Hindu. If they are followers of the Blessed Buddha or dearly beloved Jesus, then all stand equal before God who commands a new order to emerge! Let it be known that our Creator has allowed the present situation to develop so God's Children can resolve it. By steadfastly maintaining our knowledge that God will decide in favour of the oppressed, we must convince those who have been brainwashed by evil, that within the coming period, they must cleanse themselves or perish.

Your Creator is a just and merciful God who speaks to the Children of Creation through conscience. You will not be condemned, therefore, for the actions of others who have left this Earth before you. Your Creator knows, gentle child, that as you raise your voice in unity with your people for an end to persecution and hunger, that you are no sinner. God also recognizes in the faces of the wicked that which will be obliterated! God hears the music of the oppressed, the gently rising voices of the choir, pleading for an end to injustice. God also hears the music of the wicked who repeatedly call on the forces of darkness. Your Gracious Transcendental Creator will deliver in accordance with each wish. Why should our Most Gracious God wish to raise a band of sinners?

Every man, woman and child, shall be given, in accordance with the Master Plan, a suitable place to live and render loving service to God. God commands that this residence is not only fit for human habitation but must also be within a healthy enviroment where a new generation can learn of the benefits of being human instead of its miseries. In the period after the revolution, before humanity has had time to reconstruct the Creator's Realm in all its splendour and majesty, it may be necessary to house the oppressed masses in buildings vacated by the greedy. We must not grow accustomed to these dwellings lest we fall victim to the trappings of wealth and privelige. In the following fifty years, much of our time will be spent re-educating the victims of militarism. In the case that some militarists may attempt to mingle with us intent on deception, our response must be rapid and final. We must obliterate the scourge!

Your Most Gracious Supreme God commands an end to the torment God's Children undergo when they are born into this Paradise. Do not be deceived by those who claim that evil is a biproduct of ignorance. The origins of the wicked are dubious yet your Creator has allowed them to dwell among us until the present. Now you can remove them, whatever their age or sex. They are recognizable within youth as bullies to other children. They taunt God's Children with names such as gook or nigger. In adulthood, they become armed defenders of greed and ignorance, terrorising, kidnapping and killing, those who oppose their will. It is better you do not conciliate with them as their conciliation is only a guise to protect their immediate personal interests. God will give you immediate sanction to silence them forever. If they oppose us with violence and their death will prevent further violence, you may silence them with the knowledge that by ridding the planet of their despicable presence, the growth of future generations is assured.

Their leaders have the most wicked intentions. They plan to leave the Earth and colonise space. They plan to leave the Earth in ruins, with its atmosphere destroyed, with the sacred places of the Garden smashed by nuclear weapons, and humanity destroyed. How completely and utterly evil they are! And how complete our destruction of them must be! When we rise, we must do so with our profound love of humanity and our knowledge of our deliverance. For we are the majority and they are the minority! Do not be fooled by present appearances: many of those who practise militarism will be changed in the coming period. They are essentially good men and women who have been led astray. When we call them they will come to us. They will abandon their paid positions in the prisons and so-called justice system and say to us: "What can we do to reconstruct God's Paradise on Earth?" Shall we answer them by turning to them with animosity and demand their punishment? Or shall we point out to them, quietly and resolutely, that our demand for the return of our food supply is essential if we are to survive? When we dismantle the prisons, brick by brick, shall we turn to the dispossessed and say: "You were at fault!" or shall we gather the perpetrators of crimes against wealth and privelige and advance to the depths of the dungeon, where we come face to face with the perpetrators of evil, and finish off their existance then and there? No death is too good for some of them! We shall be benevolent. In the case of men and women who have committed heinous crimes against humanity, we shall respond with a single bullet, delivered by the Grace of God.

Your Most Gracious Creator commands applied technology be placed at the hands of the righteous. God therefore commands that within the first moments of glorious revolution, a free universal health care service should be established throughout the world. If by chance a professional is tempted to receive a fee for his or her services, then this fee may take the form of the sternest of warnings that an investigation will follow which may lead to deregistration.

For every man or woman who follows the path of the Divine, an eternal reward is offered. No longer should humanity advance so readily to death except by the Creator's command. To follow leaders is a negation of God's injunction that all peace-loving people are born equal and free. The revolution may be corrupted by the wicked who seek to lead God's Children astray. Simply do the bare minimum. Secure the food-supply at all points and seize what weapons you fear may be used against you. Take control of radio and television stations then wait. Bulletins can be issued to advise the people of the unfolding situation. Yet this information will only be essential to advise the struggling masses. The militarists who have plunged the world into despair will know what is coming to them if they dare lift a finger in the name of restoring order. Sudden and swift annihilation must be our response!

Earth is our only home. As individuals and as people we embrace our destiny as God speaks to us through conscience and commands us to intervene. All knowledge resides in the Divine Presence. Our Supreme Creator rarely intervenes in Earth's affairs but commands men and women to carry the Divine Messages. Abortions must cease for this reason, as once an egg is fertilized, God will develop a Divine Plan for the child. Human intervention after fertilization is a denial of God's Will! If you embrace God you will be welcomed with transcendental love. If you turn against God you will be thwarted. You were free until now to believe or disbelieve. Our Most Gracious Creator does not mind if you approach the Divine Presence with a turban because you are a Child of God and at the same time a Sikh, and God is joyful if you wear dreadlocks. The Supreme One celebrates all the children's differences and reminds us to turn to our heart. There you will find the Gracious Divine Presence if you are open to this love. Our Most Beloved Creator will resolve the conflict in the coming period. This message comes not from Jerusalem but from Australia. This message comes from our Most Gracious God.

Do you think for a moment that the Divine Heart could become so hardened to violence that God has grown to ignore it as we have? When the Children of God are gunned down in Soweto and Los Angeles, our Most Gracious Creator is reduced to bitter tears! Our Loving Transcendental Creator sees the Australian police beating another of God's Children to death and measures the people's polite calls for a proper investigation. Now the Children of Paradise are called upon to rise up and annihilate the evil in their midst!

Our Most Beloved Transcendental Creator commands the righteous to prepare for a world population of twenty billion. Such is the Divine Rejoicing at the coming defeat of the wicked that God plans to send us many children to populate the Earth. In this rejoicing, God is safe in the knowledge that evil will be defeated as the most beloved Children of God will be entrusted to smash the evil empires. God is safe in the knowledge that evil will no longer be present to burn train-loads of wheat rather than feed the hungry. Our Creator also knows that the previous Divine Injunction which forbids the charging of interest on credits, will also be upheld. God is Divine, all embracing knowledge. Deliverance is planned for us, not damnation. We are guided to the true source of wealth within loving transcendental harmony. We are guided to this knowledge and to a realization of the Master Plan, as the Divine love for the Children of God is so great, we will not be allowed to suffer for much longer. God is our Saviour! We must render loving service to the Divine Heart.

Our Divine Creator commands us to destroy all weapons once the threat of counter-revolution is removed. You may keep some weapons of mass destruction to deflect an asteroid or comet. Should God wish to deliver you from such a natural catastrophe, the Divine One may do so by providing you with the technology to achieve this yourself. If no solution can be found by you, render loving prayer to the Divine Heart and you will not be forsaken. If this world were to end tomorrow, God would never let you go, as you are the Children of the Eternal Garden. God loves every one of you. This is why opportunities have been created for you to live in blessed peace.

Children of the Garden, the period ahead will bring a great trial onto the stages of the Earth. We must prepare self-sustaining agricultural systems which aid our expansion as a dynamic population, capable of growth and harmony, as we render loving service to God. We must also develop desalination techniques; yet God will help us do this, so we may transform what has been destroyed, into a beautiful flowering garden. The fruits of the Earth must then be transported, by the Grace of God, to those most in need. Your Divine Creator will repay you ten-fold. God will bring fresh crops in abundance. God will deliver earthquakes and floods to test your resolve to break from the past!

Your Most Beloved Creator urges you to protect the Paradise called Planet Earth. If there was ever a time when burning fossil fuels and thereby releasing poisonous gases into the atmosphere was acceptable, then this is no longer the case. By providing you with the ability of applying scientific techniques to engineering problems, your Glorious Creator provides you with the key to your progress as well as your destiny. You know the Earth is finite; and so your responses to problems associated with your technological development must sit comfortably with this fact. Your Loving Transcendental Creator did not make oceans as pure as pearls and teeming with fish so you can scuttle your poisonous cargoes into their depths. God did not make the Seven Heavens, each one placed carefully above the other, so you can emit toxic gases into them. You are also expressly forbidden from propelling toxic substances into the solar-system, as this is the body of God you defile. Will you heed the wishes of God? Will you grasp the opportunity to live in peaceful coexistance now that God is willing to provide for you? Your Most Loving Creator will create the conditions where you will succeed where others have failed.

God commands the poor and oppressed to forge bonds of unity and meticulously plan for revolution. The embryonic flower of peaceful revolution will then unfold. Your Merciful Creator commands that if a confrontation is planned by the militarists, then the first task of all just men and women, is to neutralize this threat. You may do so peacefully by announcing to the assembled soldiers your intention to welcome them to the cause of peace. If they desist, be ready; remember the lessons of Tehran! If a gunman opens fire, turn to the soldiers with your hearts and seek their protection. They will not hurt you, as your Most Gracious God will command them to turn their guns on the wicked. In this way, the revolution can gain ground until the victory of the just is assured.

They will come to us in droves throughout the world. Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Jewish soldiers will lay down their weapons and refuse to turn them against the people. Beware of their high-command! Until they can see that their cause is hopeless, that they are surrounded by joyous, peaceful people, they may conspire with the greedy to protect their filthy riches. Have faith in destiny, Children of the Garden! The march from servitude and slavery has only just begun! We shall become unstoppable because our Divine Creator is on our side. If the nationalist military cliques choose to kill ninety nine percent of our population, our love for humanity is so great, that we will make this sacrifice. Do you imagine the Supreme Creator will forsake you? Are you not aware that as our people are killed around the globe, our Most Gracious God is preparing a terrible scourge for the wicked! Your Divine Creator commands you to smash the degenerate empires and share equally and freely the fruits of this beautiful world! It is God's Creation and it is God who commands you. Do you not realize that your Creator is capable of all?

If God willed it, God could strike at the heart of every evil conspiracy, without your assistance, so you would be free. Yet your Creator demands that you forge new bonds of unity between all the various people, so you may live in harmony, and so the good will come to the fore. God has given you the freedom until now to believe or disbelieve, to be faithful or untrue. These were trials God created for us. The militarists and the greedy are now drawn into isolation and God's Children can easily be recognized. In the coming period the differences will be even more pronounced. Your Glorious Creator has planned the future in this way to assure your victory and hasten the destruction of evil. How sure is the judgement of our most Gracious God!

God will make life easy for you except in matters of judgement. You will be delivered to Paradise in this life and the next. You will live in abundance by sharing. By rendering loving service to our Gracious Supreme Creator, you will inherit Eternal Paradise. You will live forever and find a place to dwell in the cosmos beside your spirit ancestors. God's Wisdom will reside within you and you will move into the future as a strong, united faith. You will appear unto the Divine one as the finest of all creations. As you approach the Divine Heart, you will be welcomed to Eternal Paradise and God will be eager to have you within the Divine Presence. You may share your experiences and those of your family. You may share joy and you may share sorrow. When the Supreme Creator becomes convinced you have embraced the universal knowledge at the heart of existance, God will leave you to converse with others. Then God will return if by chance you are sad. God is the most loving, generous Creator! If you have a problem you can turn to the Divine Heart. God will intervene on your behalf if it is appropriate. You will be taken to gardens watered by running streams and you will be blessed there, by a rock-pool, and you will be close to your young sister. Your Creator will cover you with Divine Warmth.

God knows your suffering has been endless. God knows that from the day your brothers were arrested after speaking out for freedom, that an impossible, heavy weight has been placed upon your heart. God knows that as you close your eyes and try to sleep, you return in your dream to the jungle track in Sri Lanka, where you follow your brothers, as they are led to their death. God is with you, gentle Child of the Universe. God will clothe you with the moon and stars and commands the Children of the Garden to obliterate evil. God commands this for you because nothing is closer to God than the Children of the Garden. God has created a future for you. What more can be done?

God blesses the Ngarrindjeri infant by placing her within the soft arc of the universe. God teaches her cosmic unity and provides her with transcendental knowledge. She is taught how to best live on the Earth and, if she falters, God will carry her. Your Blessed Supreme Creator will then show her a pathway upon which she may tread. She is led past rising islands, bathed in soft, yellow sunshine, around a steeply rising coastline, until she is absorbed within the Divine Heart. God commands you to pray as the bombs fall down on you. You are commanded to pray as your family starve. Then God will gather you, sons and daughters of the revolution, and instruct you how to emerge from this terror. If God so wished, the wicked could be annihilated tomorrow, without your assistance, and then you would be free. Our Most Gracious God commands us to unite the planet. God knows that humanity has not fallen from grace and that the pure, strong spirit resides within the Children of the Garden. God commands us to prepare for rebellion against the wicked. Will you rise up, Children of the Garden?

You must declare God's Creation indivisible. Men and women must be free to settle in accordance with their needs. The greedy and the wicked have taken God's Earth and plundered its resources. By imposing nationality upon us, they have escaped justice for so long. You are one, Children of the Garden. Yet the militarists and the greedy have corrupted life. Will you return to the God who created you? Will you rise up as your glorious God commands?

Blessed be the day of the peace-makers. You shall rise in unison and lay the unrepentant war-mongers in unmarked graves. Ask them before they perish why they acted in the way they did. Then cover your ears in case they corrupt you. They are well-versed in evil so do not let them plead ignorance. Do not let them leave the Earth, Children of the Garden; do not let them escape!

The story of a princess unfolds within the Dreamtime. The birds sing in the morning and islands rise from the sea. She is a reincarnation of suffering and torment. She emerges from the cosmos and resides within our prison world. Naretha, in the darkness. In what sense did God awaken you as you slept beside a burning constellation, and send you back to Earth again, so one day we can be free? The clouds roll away again; the body of an ancient dreaming lifts away into the distance as you are carried away to The Almighty. God will wipe your tears away and lead you across marble palace floors to your father, a prince upon an ancient throne. A restored dream which, if we care to look more closely, is the Kingdom of the Supreme Creator.

Kaike

Dedicated to the man who fed the magpies and to you.

The rising green island is connected to the mainland by a long wooden bridge which spans the shallow waters. As I walk across it I am greeted by an old woman who walks slowly with a child. She passes a fisherman, an old man with a bicycle who is protected from the elements by a long overcoat. As I sit upon the soft, green grasses of the headland, I restore to the vast panorama my perspective of the golden water and the golden dreams we had. They are lost now. A thousand moons and a thousand sunsets have separated you and I across this blue eternity. In the eternity somewhere, as I sought desperately to reach you, you drifted across a rising sand-bar, until I could reach you no more.

If you were a boat anchored in the harbour, I became the river, then flowed into the sea. The lush green grasses growing up around my feet may anchor me here permanently, in which case you can leave me, until I become encrusted with cockle-shells and orange lichen, as my love for you will never die. A flock of seagulls gather; they cry from a distance that a man has arrived upon their island. They patrol the blue-green waters as a golden band of sunlight spreads out across the bay and bathes the cliff-face with a soft warmth which I touch. If the rock were to yield, I would go down into the earth, deep into the soft, brown earth, and then I would meet you, Naretha, in the darkness. Now I must stay here to ponder what might have been, if we led differant lives or if you and your father had not been sent by God.

Then did you tear the gold necklace I bought you and throw it to the ground as you returned to your half-world - a ward where screaming patients were constrained within their terror by ten milligrams of misery or a jacket with a belt. I came to you. I found you in a cage and you wept when you saw me. I pushed my hand through the bars and stroked your face until I was led away again. If I lost you once, I lost you one hundred times, then I kept returning, as I found life without your love such an impossible proposition. Naretha in the darkness. A child's broken wristwatch lying in the gutter. An old coloured lantern swinging in the wind.

Where did we stand then? At the confluence of two rivers we stood in the velvet darkness, as the savage lights of the city circled in the water, and the last streaked clouds of the sunset sunk into the night. We listened to Aretha Franklin. An Almighty Fire rose up within us until a man appeared with heroin, when we fled in to the night. The shadows closed around us. Last night as I parked the car beside the fishermen, a bank of cloud towered high above the hillside and I found within the swirling darkness, a beautiful silver-domed mosque. "Magic!" you implored as you gripped my arm. "Magic!" Then the city yielded. A passage opened beyond the night and we fled through its darkened alleyways. At the end of our journey the hotel room above the busy street became a citadel to which you led me quietly, suddenly like an infant, as a warm sphere of tragic innocence, lit up in the candle's flame.

It was then I named you Naretha. Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. You became a metaphor for love.

Footsteps across the golden eternity. The late afternoon colours slowly forge together. By slowly releasing into the cool, blue dream this driven poetry, a primordial rhythm breaks free to gather around the distant rock-face. The granite boulders appear to be flung into the earth by a mighty fist which has slammed down into the headland and caused the earth to crumble! Ramong is now sleeping. Although Wright Island a kilometre out to sea is awash with golden sunlight, the waves appear still until they break across the granite rocks. The trees are motionless. As I pause to listen, two sparrows chirp upon the outstretched limb of a pine tree. I hear a magpie. It releases into the stillness a rising cry, a single cry, which is heard by another. Ngurunderi is resting. He made a shelter of granite rocks and rested on Kaike. (Granite Island) The afternoon quiet is only disturbed by birdsong and the sound of flies buzzing in the car. The ocean seems distant. I watch a distant colony of gulls circle, fall graciously, around Wright Island. They swarm like bees around the western shore. The mighty island of Kaike rises beyond them. Granite boulders look as if they have been hurled into the island by a huge fist!

A rainbow rises over Seal Island. A man with a silver Mercedes discovers that by extending his hand the magpies will take food from him. Ngurunderi is sleeping. Can you hear him breathing? The man feeding the magpies raises his head as one of his female companions takes his photograph. The rainbow went west into the ocean. As the magpies feed, they are swooped down upon by seagulls. One magpie flies at a seagull and attacks it. After coffee, four people retire to the Mercedes. The man who has been feeding the magpies asks: "Have you got a photograph of that, dear?" His friend replies: "No, did you want one?" He then says: "I could draw from that, from the photo." His friend takes two photographs, one after the other. The man walks to the side of the car and takes the camera from her. He takes three more photographs of Wright Island with Kaike in distance. Then he gets into the car and drives away.

It is quiet now, only the sound of birdsong. Ngurunderi has built a shelter of granite rocks and is sleeping. The lights of the city are diamond, golden. As the city fades into the darkness, a silver streak of cloud, high in the skies to the south, is reflected upon the water, where it becomes a moonbeam.

Two magpies return. They land on a railing erected by the council. After searching the ground for crumbs they do not find, they fly to the top of a pine tree until one of them decides to leave. The other stretches its wings as a small fishing boat makes slow headway into the sheltered cove between the island and the mainland. A young man walks past. He walks along the road beside the car to Longkuwar (The Bluff). A few moments later, I see his solitary figure walk across the ridge to the peak. I thought I saw him again for an instant but then he disappeared.

My car is parked three thousand five hundred and eighty miles away from the South Pole.

The early evening waters darken. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the Dreamtime. The lights of Pultung begin to glisten on the rising shoreline. The long wooden bridge which leads to Kaike has eight lights attached to it at regular intervals. The island itself extends almost one kilometre from its northern tip to the south where it is pounded by the waves.

Ngurunderi is resting at the south of the island. He has built a shelter from granite boulders and is sleeping. As the city is obscured by darkness, warm dreams spread throughout my body. Kaike is obscured by deep, black jets of water as night falls. As I peer into the shadow, I sense Ngurunderi's mighty spirit begin to stir. He wakes! He rises! The ground shakes beneath his feet as he walks. He walks to a part of the island where he finds a pathway leading to the ocean. By leaping from boulder to boulder, he approaches the water's edge. A vertical drop bars his passage. He clambers over rocks to a point where he can descend. The waves break open across the rocks. Within a sheltered inlet, the water rises up to cover a spherical slab of granite which has remained in place since the beginning of time. Ngurunderi reaches into the water and touches the granite sphere and in this way, Naretha, golden child of the universe, was born.

Footsteps across the golden eternity. Naretha in the darkness. Pultung raises into the headland at the end of a long, wooden bridge. The passing of the spirit heralds the beginning of a new, golden age. The bridge extends into the darkness of the ocean. The rising island is totally enclosed by the night. Ngurunderi is walking. He slowly turns to face the ocean as he approaches the coastline. It is now enclosed by darkness and he cannot see his wives.

I enter a long passage where my dreams may recover you. I try to continue writing yet I am pushed back to sleep. In this way, I visit cities, golden cities, with magnificent silver domes, and ancient, cobblestone streets. I turn to face the obilisk. It rises into the soft, white clouds from a hillside beside a fortress. It towers above a pine tree into the calm blue stillness, and dwarfs the ancient city, which is itself a dream. I search for you endlessly. Naretha in the darkness. At the end of my passage, I turn to the coliseum, where I am awakened by soldiers and led through the starlit streets.

Rising islands in the wilderness. Footsteps across the golden eternity. Although it is morning, a crescent moon is drawn across the transfigured universe, until it sinks into the ocean waves, where it becomes a new moon or shoals of teeming fish.

I am led through the darkness yet I cannot find you. The magnificent palace at the end of a silver causeway is surrounded by slender, agile fighters whose only duty is to protect their timeless king. He resides upon a hilltop or on a beach among the sea-weed; the causeway appears to narrow - a dark passage leads to an ante-chamber where the ocean swirls around and the skies begin to bleed. "Naretha!" I call. "What kingdom have I entered?" A marble floor awash with sunlight spreads slowly yet uncontrollably into the distance, where it is absorbed within the headland, as the Kingdom is proclaimed.

The spirit rises. Ngurunderi pursues his destiny to create to the western side of the island. He walks around the coastline then wades through the shallow waters where he turns to the ocean and throws spears into the sea.

Arcs of fire, flames of destiny! As the first spear crashes into the ocean it is transformed into Seal Island. The ocean rises up and the long spear carves a burning trail of sunlight into the sea-bed. Ngurunderi takes a second spear: he hurls it into the calm, blue water. A golden scythe of sunlight is cast across the bay. As the spear crashes into the sea a thousand liquid fragments of sunlight are hurled into the silver void of eternity until they fall down upon the shoreline as a violet, purple rain. Wright Island forms as the waves are parted. The steeply rising cliff-face is instantly capped with a dense blanket of green. After the ocean settles the waves break ceaselessly into granite boulders as a soft, golden light embraces them, and the island rises timelessly into creation's newest shore.

Ngurunderi turns west and walks around the coastline. The hillside to the north is a barren, yellow blaze. He climbs the cliff to the west and hears a loud splashing and laughing from his wives at King's Beach. He hurls another spear into the deep blue ocean. West Island forms in the assembling creation! The ocean waves pound into the rocky coastline of Petrel Cove. The pathway across the cliff-top bursts into flame!

There is a pathway across an emerald cliff-top. There is a diamond blue bridge burning in the sky. Ngurunderi hurls his club to the ground and it is transformed in a pure, saphire flame of creation into Longkuwar, the ancient landform, the steeply rising granite headland, the flaming gateway of destiny, an archway for our soul.

Night Passage

Dedicated to John and Alice Coltrane.

I shall never begin to express these emotions unless I turn the spotlight off and listen to the ocean waves as they break into a rising limestone shelf, then turn to the stars in the blue velvet sky and slowly trace my finger around a constellation. Perhaps then I would find you, Princess Naretha. In the darkness, bathed in spirals of starlight, I look for you at the peak of Longkuwar; or later, much later, I search for you as I drift out to sea in an old wooden boat. Perhaps then I would find you, Naretha. There is a road through a tunnel. If I drive through it I am likely to emerge at the other end with diamonds and slices of gold attached to my body. I am reluctant. Although I seek to fulfil my destiny by returning to you, I find more expression at present within the sound of the ocean, which rolls and crashes, until the night is transcendental.

A mighty force. God's army masses! The road to the west is plunged into darkness. By following it I hasten life or hasten the possibility of life, beyond the vast, timeless river; beyond the sea. We go forward, don't we? If there is life after you, I find it hard to contemplate. If I attempt to do so, I perhaps see myself as a man, a very old man, walking around in a torn brown cape beside a mosque, in an English city, or somewhere upon the seashore. For a moment I am transported there. Waves like these continue to break or else God seeks to intervene in other people's lives. Could I see you out there? If not, I shall pursue an endless highway into a western oblivion where I may find you again, after a long distance. Why does everything tend to disintegrate? The ocean, of course. I return to it and by doing so, I return to you, Princess Naretha.

There is a passage to the end of time. As it opens, the night air thickens, until I can see no further than the most distant star in the sky. By driving into the night, I discover golden canopies which appear above me, and you, as all life is sacred. The Milky Way extends from the west into Longkuwar. It is enclosed there, in the saphire darkness, as a passage opens to the west. The soft shadows disintegrate as I drive. I awaken. I uncover the opening into the rhythm and discover a sleeping forest as the transfigured silhouettes of night rush past. A bank of low cloud on the road across a hillside is suspended upon a summit of creation by our Transcendental Supreme God. If we pass into it, we increase our knowledge of infinity immeasurably, as waves of cloud become waves of harmony, and we know we are at peace. Streaks of cloud awash with the pure, white starlight of our Omni-Present Creator are transformed into a gentle rain which turns us into spirit, at the end of life's passage. Is it not God's Creation we are commanded to save in God's name? I wonder why this happened to me. Naretha, in the darkness. The morning has awoken. Have I lived this life before?

Cosmic Clouds

There is a dream I once heard of named Waieruwar. The spirits who dwell there follow their Transcendental Master. It is in the universe, among the galaxies, or by the shores of an ancient, sacred lake. It is our destiny, beyond the ocean, at an infinity where we can gather pearls and other treasures, before we turn to pray. Ngurunderi said to his people: "I am going first, you will come after me." By defining the pattern of creation God invokes laws for the Children of the Garden to live by. Yet as we continue to flout these laws, can we not see that we turn our backs on our Most Gracious God? Are we not as Iraqis, Palestinians, Jews, brother and sister? God defined it as such, therefore it is! Shall we ignore these commands as we approach our most dangerous hour?

There is a silver-blue ocean before the distant, rising island. The name of the island is Karta, the land of the dead. Twenty kilometres to the south of Parson's Beach, two smaller islands, The Pages, rise as testament to love and God's eternal laws. Footsteps across the golden eternity. Ngurunderi's wives flee west towards Cape Jervis. It is morning. The sun has broken through a high canopy of cloud and washes the Earth in soft, golden light. The wind picks up. If I lean forward, I can see the waves crash into the rocks far below the towering cliff-face. Two kilometres to the west an emerald-green headland protudes into the sea. The bushes swirl and dance as the wind is driven through them. The skies to the east have darkened ahead of a coming storm. The passing of the spirit: a lone seagull rises into the blue eternity and is suspended there, ennobled and graceful, before it flies away.

Naretha in the darkness. I remain true to you as a beautiful ressurection and as a man whose only motive is to ease your spiritual suffering. As I left you one evening to return to Australia, I had a vision, a dreadful vision, that I would never see you again. I lived in hope after this time which inevitably turned to despair. Although I found you, didn't I? Could I not find you within the bonds of unity arising from the people as our trial became more extreme?

My father teaches jihad then returns to the masjid.

The ocean in the distance. The soft, golden light of creation spreading through the universe as a luxurious warm wave. Ngurunderi calls out for his wives to halt but they run through the emerald-green water towards Karta, the land of the dead. He rises above the cliffs and commands the sea to rise! And the waves come in, crashing, pounding, driving the women from their path. They fight the rising water until they drown. Their bodies are transformed into the Pages Islands.

Ngurunderi crosses to Karta and creates a swamp-oak tree to rest under. Blue skies, bridges, dreams and frequencies. The sound of the wind rustling through the branches of the tree causes him to mourn the loss of his wives. He now knows it is time to leave this world. Footsteps across the golden eternity. He walks across the island and dives into the swirling green waves to prepare his spirit. Ngurunderi then enters the spirit world of Waieruwar. He becomes a bright star which will surely burn forever. He is located in the Milky Way.

The Spear of Destiny has been cast into the river. Parson's Beach. 31/4/1992 september 2009