Charlotte Du Cann

You might think, as I did, that that emergence is coming out of something and leaving difficulty behind, but I discovered, as I wrote this piece, it is in fact about becoming a different kind of creature for a world turned upside down. The Labyrinth is a training ground for a re-entry.

To find satisfaction you have to have an encounter with the real world and absorb its great subtleties. It’s difficult to make the deep connections about food without meeting the people that grow the plants or bake the bread, or doing those things yourself.

From here I can return to my old country, neither prodigal nor victorious, but someone unexpected, without history, without illusion, appearing beside a silvery bush whose bitterness frees the spirits of this haunted earth and colours everything green.

First you taste the fruit, then you know the territory, then you find the flower. That is the way round it is. Sometimes you travel a long way to come home with empty hands.

Something beyond history happens in these topsy-turvy moments—a crack in time, a glimpse into another way of being human. The fire is a bridge.

What happens when you leave your ordinary life behind and put your attention on the vast mysterious being that surrounds our  homelands in a time of disruption and loss?