Finding myself
There is a nice photograph on my husband’s computer taken my his own DSLR during one of his solo bike trips in India. It was a picture of a long winding road with no end in sight and his bike resting quietly on the left. He had written a line to go with it: “Go far, travel within.“ The nomad in me instantly agreed.
Because I’ve felt that more than once. On certain walks, in certain places, in certain silences…when you’re alone and there’s nothing demanding your attention, your thoughts begin to surface differently, sometimes more clearly.
The idea lingered. I wanted to paint that moment where being physically distant from everything familiar brings you closer to yourself. I remember quickly scribbling these thoughts into my journal and then going about my evening, thinking I would come back to it later.
But ideas have a way of finding their own path and moment in time.
The bedtime story for my daughter that night was The Enchanted Forest by Enid Blyton. While I was reading to her, my imagination drifted and took me right inside the Mawphlong sacred forest in Meghalya, which I visited a few years back. A place so untouched, so deeply respected, that local belief holds you cannot even pluck a leaf without inviting misfortune. There is something humbling about that kind of reverence for nature… something almost magical. (And yes, that thought still makes me smile… LOL!)
Well, that gave me the setting.
Because what better place to lose yourself—and maybe find yourself—than a dense, quiet forest in the “abode of clouds”?
Those steps in the painting represent a slow climb into a an unfamiliar place that doesn’t know you. The fog came naturally after that. It is the kind of fog I remember from Meghalaya, the one that doesn’t just sit in the background but surrounds you completely… softening edges, blurring certainty, making everything feel a little quieter, a little more introspective.
But the landscape alone would be hard to comprehend. The work needed an anchor. I instinctively drew the silhouette in the fog. It’s kind of defining, but not enough - a version of oneself in that in-between space, just before you find your answer to a lingering from within yourself.
Thanks for reading this rather long blog post. One thought to leave you with…
If you look at this painting and feel something familiar, I think you have lived a version of that moment yourself!
