Nothing quite prepares you for the sight as you round the bend in the road. Now high up on the Rantberge about to descend into the desert. The Spreetshoogte Pass.
I can see for a thousand miles. The breath definitely taken away.
Impossible to describe a desert - this simply inexplicable geological masterpiece. My home for a week. Living in such a remote place with no compute connectivity and deafening peace is at once beautifully chaotic and positively disturbing. Positively.
The immense distances mean nothing.
1500 million years has not changed the impossible volcanic landscape stretched out before me very much - but I feel completely different. It's interesting how my Western mind pokes and challenges me as to how long I could feel inspired by this place. I will find out.
The relentless search for fresh input has slowed in its pace. Data to my brain now gets translated through uncommon bird sounds, snakes, lizards and insects crawling through my mind. 56 varieties of Scorpion.
The minute sparkling silica at my feet constantly shifted around by weird bugs and ants. Petrified twigs still slightly attached to the main branch are banging against the skeleton of a once proud antelope - or whatever it was. In other times I would be standing neck deep in a river.
An extraordinary performance is in continuous play that will outlive my time here.
A stark absence of all the usual western stimulus forces me into a random form of active seeking. Intrigue comes from a shadow now. And as the wind wanders over hot rock and dead grass my eyes follow and my brain rushes to cling on. In vain mostly.
I find myself bathing easily in this release from the everyday. The word to describe this could be contemplation but I know it isn't. Contrasting this new state with all the stuff - that becomes so stifling and irritating back in the other world - I could say I'm reflecting - but I'm not. Happily now a million miles from anything that I used to call important. Peace of heart and mind - that's enough.
What's the point comparing this place, my current mind and emotions with that totally other world. None - other that to realise the futility of needing to.
I have to break through needing to.
There is no switch.
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