Submersion

Submersion (River Murray), October 2003, JB

The temporary erasure of the datum places the experience of the world outside the normal shape of existence. That which is familiar becomes reconfigured, obscured, poignantly adrift. The intrusion of water, sand, ash, or burying by earth, or the slow accretion over the years, alters the fixed point of the plane upon which we exist. Like Pompeii, like Ninfa ... like Bath. The sedimentation of the ages, of the sudden and tragic, and of prolonged accumulation of dust, debris, slowly strands the things of the world just outside it. Like the liminality of the fragmentary, the ruined, there is a melting of boundaries with submersion.

Submersion (Halswell), May 2009, JB