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Rather than show the view, we will try to describe it. The conscious mind gives way to the sensation of the physical effect. The body rein acts the expansive gesture. A hand performs the dualities of the experience, both ordered and chaotic, irregular and repetitive, leaving space for the whole self to emerge.

We spend time mimicking each other’s shapes. In the same way the ocean can be a cloud and know the feeling of falling, and the cloud can be fog and know the feeling of becoming a wave, we begin to reflect the viewer’s ability to access what is innate, over what is fact.

Set against an empty horizon, we are filled by the sea and its rhythms. Immersed without interruption. Wet earth. Midnight sea. Grey air. Give something your attention and it will glow back at you. Nature can be a wide-open door, yet here we are looking out the window yearning for a porous boundary.

It is something to climb the mountain, to see the earth unobstructed, to feel its largeness upon you, but there is also something to be said of things that cannot be articulated, left to be unconquered. And what compels us to do so can remain a mystery.

The tide is pulling at the floorboards. Like a reflective ribbon between the sea and our field.

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[This piece of writing was commissioned by artist Cindy Leong for her exhibition A Moment’s Interlude, showing at Public Record.]