'In the monastic tradition the desert is a sacred place of simultaneous being and nothingness'.
Nicole Kraus, Man walks into a room
This is a novel I read a while ago - the writing was beautiful and the subject difficult, and this understanding of the desert and empty spaces simply captured me.
I think I was reading it not long after we had flown over the Central Australian desert again, visited the rich red land around Alice Springs. I have discovered or learned that I am captivated by nothingness, by emptiness...
I read these words, I say them softly out loud. I repeat them.
Somehow they capture the time and the place and the space where the desert is all about being - about pausing, being mindful of your existence, and considering your place in this vast landscape. Yet they understand perfectly that at the same time it is all about the nothingness, the emptiness, the void, in a way.
Perhaps it is the vastness and the emptiness of the landscape which enables you to focus on being. That somehow that stage or back drop allows you to focus on you and your part in it.
One of the things I feel in the desert is a real sense of wholeness, a sense that the emptiness, in fact, fills me up.
Red Desert - Central Australia.
Nicole Kraus, Man walks into a room
This is a novel I read a while ago - the writing was beautiful and the subject difficult, and this understanding of the desert and empty spaces simply captured me.
I think I was reading it not long after we had flown over the Central Australian desert again, visited the rich red land around Alice Springs. I have discovered or learned that I am captivated by nothingness, by emptiness...
I read these words, I say them softly out loud. I repeat them.
Somehow they capture the time and the place and the space where the desert is all about being - about pausing, being mindful of your existence, and considering your place in this vast landscape. Yet they understand perfectly that at the same time it is all about the nothingness, the emptiness, the void, in a way.
Perhaps it is the vastness and the emptiness of the landscape which enables you to focus on being. That somehow that stage or back drop allows you to focus on you and your part in it.
One of the things I feel in the desert is a real sense of wholeness, a sense that the emptiness, in fact, fills me up.
Red Desert - Central Australia.
hat deep sense of space in the curve of the rim and the stars so close & bright at night you can touch them
ReplyDeleteYes Mo - that sense of infinity yet also nearness; like the desert it can offer you the whole spectrum in a vista.
DeleteYour photo captures the quote perfectly, Fiona!
ReplyDeleteThanks Carol.
DeleteThe desert outside Dubai at sunset, with the breeze blowing wisps of sand from the top of the, seemingly endless, rows of dunes, was one of the most spiritual moments of my life. There is definitely something about that stillness and empty space that reaches into your core.
ReplyDeleteYou get it Jo - sounds like you have had similar experiences with the desert and what it can create within us...
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