le 15 fevrier 09

Ties

It’s incredible how I feel this connection
grow
inside me
between me and this land

I can actually feel it extending
like an umbilical chord
Inching its way out of me
Not to be removed

Because I give birth to it
the same way
one gave birth to me



I migrated to Australia at the age of thirteen, to the sleepy city of Perth. As a teenager, having come from an Indonesia gripped by the excitement of a recent youth-led political revolution, Western Australia did nothing but breed the restlessness inside of me.

I experienced a brief stint in France, which was the haven I had designated in order to run away from Australia. On my last day there, as I watched the sun rise over a derelict Bordeaux, I had my first venture towards understanding the saying: 'Peace comes from within', as my father had once told me in a failed attempt to curtail the restlessness.

In 2004, I returned to Sydney and now find myself unexpectedly re-imagining my connection to place.