Suppose that we can leap beyond, or at least cheat, the fallacy of habit by which I, me, mine, can also suggest that which is not usually denoted by these pointers. That is, I is never a single autonomous agency clothed by the status afforded by language itself. I is never separate from an other I, whether that I is an English speaking I, or whether it is the light scattering particle I, or an amassment of hydrogen forming endless sky bound islands. I is a shortcut for a gardener and the garden. If we can suppose the above then our entrance into wilderness is granted, understanding that the I-agency is a humble custodian.

One of the recurring images that I hold is the image of myself in a field. The afternoon is disappearing into the evening while I am sitting on some sort of a small crate gazing into the distance. This is not a physical image, a photograph, that I’m holding but an internalised one. I do not recall the event when this image formed itself, nor do I consider it a memory. At some point, something has placed a seed that bloomed into that particular image. This image has been with me for a very long time, and I can describe it with a dream-like clarity. But the description cannot convey the synergy of the image and the experiencing interiority. The summoning of this image is the opening of a portal where this being can experience its own timeness.

Wilderness is the garden of interiority.

A human being is the garden and the gardener. A gentle wind plants itself in her garden through incessant ripples that trace its dance on the calm surface of the ocean. An unexpected gaze elicits a smile, which in passing by falls deeper within with a thundering laughter, seeding its echoes in his garden. Just like the earth is bathed by unrelenting cosmic rays, so is this garden showered by countless quarks of experienceable unknowability. Each burrowing deep within, awaiting an image, a sound, or a word, to sprout into a form — to fall in love.

Ivan Buljan