Cartography of a Wandering
There are journeys we embark upon without ever lifting a foot, distant lands that pull us in long before we reach them. In waiting, they are born in dreams—blazing, elusive—visions of light and salt haunting closed eyelids. But when at last our steps sink into them, the elsewhere becomes fire, a living truth, vaster than anything the imagination could have sketched. Every horizon crossed is a memory in the making, a recollection being shaped, and wandering, a thread stretched between what was dreamed and what is offered to the skin.
I walk with no destination, yet every path recognizes me. Beneath my steps, the earth breathes, imbued with the shadows of those who crossed it before me. The shores of Denmark still echo with the chants of the longships slicing through the foam, cradled by Njörd, god of the seas. In the Fiji Islands, the wind carries the whispers of celestial navigators, children of Tangaroa, following the constellations like golden threads woven between worlds. In Ireland, the cliffs murmur the call of Avalon, that place which vanishes the moment you believe you have reached it. Everywhere, the sea carves the coasts as it carves souls, and the wind sculpts forgotten names into the stone. The horizon recedes with every step, an untouchable dancer, fleeing and drawing us in all at once.
Space dissolves, Time fades. Only the instant remains, suspended between appearing and vanishing. In Galway, on a beach where the sand melts beneath the waves, I lift my eyes to a sky torn by the wind into shifting galaxies. Boats rock at anchor, spectral silhouettes, the pendulums of a world caught between two worlds. Here, night extinguishes nothing—it reveals. Beneath the boundless expanse, I am no more than a fragment of matter among others, woven of the same fabric as wind, water, and stone. No boundary remains between realms, no separation between the living and the inanimate. I am a moment of the world, fleeting yet inscribed within its infinity.
I photograph what evades, what resists form, what trembles under the light. Not to capture, but to hold onto a heartbeat, a breath, a vibration. The image is not a halt; it is a passage, a doorway left ajar to an elsewhere that refuses to be named. Each frame is a fragment of wandering, a relic of the Whole.
The journey never ends. The steps move on, but the landscapes remain imprinted in the gaze, pulsing like a promise never quite fulfilled. There is joy in wandering, a childlike wonder in forever chasing an elusive horizon, in embracing the unknown without seeking to confine it. The anchor will never be cast—not out of fear, but by nature. In wandering, there is a sovereign intoxication—the thrill of following the horizon without reaching it, of being a fragment carried by the wind, a crest of foam reborn with every wave, a nomadic song engraved in the ether of the world.
You, who burn my dreams from a thousand miles away, become a sailboat. Feel the wet, salty wind whipping your face. The crisp taste of adventure as your tongue clears your lips. Let our sterns cross for the length of a heavy night, warm as a blanket. Amid mirages and sand-covered ruins, let’s anchor together. The bombs of our kin appear like protective stars in this sunlit night. Let us travel with the same motion of stillness, our souls euphoric, curled toward the windows of an elsewhere rich with novelty. Love unravels Time. The movement resumes. Hear the Earth’s heart beating deep. It is this pulse that calls us, this maternal rhythm that cradles our drifting slumber. To step out is to return, yet always, finally, to hear the beating—the song that assures us All is One. I see your ship now, far away; it will take only a century and a turn for our flesh to meet again, leaving our memories to wander through the powerful recollections of the senses.
