Tarruru, I have met you. You are more than contentment, more than pleasure with terror, more than satisfaction, joy, beauty. Tarruru, I know you in my body and my hopes. I thank Moorumburri for sharing his language, for helping to define you when we speak, when we are aware of what it is to go on, to seek a song that matters, which is healing. Tarruru, you are a blessing; a blessing of the sunset, the dying down, the peace of mind.
I have felt you on the slopes of Macchu Picchu, looking down on the Andes, and feeling a sense of belonging, not of nature in its never-ending vastness, but the harmony that comes with culture in a place where snow meets stone meets carving meets civilisation and the moon, with clouds and jaguars and all the world’s visitors. Standing there, looking down upon your ruins and across the distance to the mountains, it made sense to be there, to be in the pocket of a warm earth mother’s apron, to be created by the place in such a way that you are made again, not anew, but reconnected with your faith of being alone, a moment of tarruru.
I have felt you flying back home, soaring over cloud and patchwork quilt of wheat field, dusty brown and reddish hue, the scarp below and the city in the distance, greeting me with warm feeling. A homecoming when you did not know you belonged, knowing that this is out there alone, a hub for a wheel with all your people coming in from the edge to rest here, to relax and find comfort in your streets, to wander and reflect on what it is to come here, to come from here. That is the feeling when you fly over as if in a dream.
I have felt you driving forever, through the suburbs, past gnomes and concrete flamingos, past lawns so well loved, on endless asphalt streets stopping for lights and pedestrian crossing, past football ovals and cricket clubs, past swimming pools where the children play for hours. In those ordinary streets that stretch on and on, I saw you as you matter for the ordinary fella, the everyday kind of contentment that comes with being at ease, in your home, settling in to the couch with an old friend and a cuppa.
I have felt you in the warm embrace of my beloved, when we have sat together and laughed at what has transpired, about how far we have come and what we have seen together, the days we drove through rolling green hills and the nights we spent at urban skyscrapers, the time we dreamed of a quarter acre.
I have felt you in the marrow of my bones, in my tongue when it was on fire, in my lungs as I swam underwater. I have known you for moments and hours, for years on end when I did not know better. Tarruru I see you every evening when move from one chapter to another, from one star to a million others, in the pink and orange and red and purple haze of the dying day when the night fills us with hope of what we have accomplished and how we get to spend the rest of it, together.
