There’s something to be said against familiarity. It truly does breed a kind of contempt, an inattention to detail, a glossing over of nuance. I think I know what to expect so I stop paying attention. Sitting at a cafe, whose walls are illustrated in jungle themed banana leaves, on the outskirts of Gadigal Country in Sydney, Australia I roost in complacency. I am in a city whose language I speak fluently, whose cuisine I recognize, whose customs I am acquainted with. The lack of tension provides comfort. I don’t need to work at translation. Vigilance is no longer required. The greed of being an amateur expert sways me. Because I know a little, I think I understand.
After all, when a modern metropolis looks and behaves like every other, what else is there to glean? A place isn’t unique because it has a colorful sign of its name sitting in a commercial plaza. A location has meaning because it allows one to answer the question: how do I know where I am? So many details can help guide us to the complicated response: geology, historical heritage, vernacular architecture, bioregionalism, artisans, and cultural proclivities. In a place where it’s not possible to experience the joy of being a novice, how can I prevent loss of imagination? How do I search for what’s different about the somewhere I am?
Like mushrooms, the stories are buried. I root, I burrow, I attend to what’s missing from the picture, what seems to like staying hidden, and what is asking for exposure. Rather than clinging to the comfort of the “real thing,” distorting a narrative because it isn’t what pleases me, I adjust to consider other ways of inhabiting this space. After all, I remind myself, there’s a whole distinct season occurring on the opposite hemisphere of the planet.
Click-clack, click-clack, click-click-clack. The rhythm beckons. Are the jacaranda branches speaking? Is it the raven floating over the lawn? I ferret my way from silky oaks to rat’s tail orchids draped over a fig. I amble past magnolias to a docent-led group under the umbrella of palms. “Do you feel the streams underneath as your feet touch mother earth?” In the gravel little squiggles appear from the end of the guide’s walking stick, a magical network of tributaries. “These waterways fill up the landscape. Make their way to the five river systems around us. Can you hear them pumping, pumping this heart beat?” Click-click-click. The guide bangs together two wooden batons. “We acknowledge this heart beat. We acknowledge our caretaker mother earth. We acknowledge the water custodians and the wisdom of our elders.”
An invitation I can’t ignore to deepen my acquaintance with the region. I wiggle my toes inside their shoes, hoping to catch a hint of that thrumming. “Notice the trees circling these water courses. They are witnesses to our history. Family members. So they and everyone else they sustain becomes part of our circle.” The docent draws a ring in the dirt, encompassed by larger ones. “As our relationship sphere enlarges, so does our imagination. As we move across terrain, we listen to all the stories our kin has to tell so that we can carry their knowledge forward. Because that’s what our purpose is.”
“Earth has already provided us with the tools and blueprints for success. So whether it’s river wattle lore or saltwater fishing laws, we are in constant communication with nature. For our culture, to be ‘of a place,’ is to be in conversation with our surroundings, our ancestors, and with future generations.” My breath catches. How can I still not know the names of my neighborhood plants? Or the history of the redwoods that used to live on the land I walk daily? Or tell the differing chirps of hummingbirds and sparrows nesting in my community? I’ve been busy searching for stories and forgot to listen to the ones being told to me.
In a narrow alley I hear a symphony of tongues as I watch noodles boiling, dumplings bubbling, and garlic frying. While the Gadigal guide transcribed earth, these transplants interpret flavors. As I read their transmuted histories in the sambal, the gochujang, the hoisin, I think about the importance of translation. A bridge between cultures, an intermediary, an amplifier of limitations, translation can approach a destination but never attain the original’s true meaning. This makes the interpreter in many ways a tourist of implications, a child of languages, a novice to any project. Which doesn’t have to be a deficiency when the translator understands their constraints, when the joy of the work is in the wonder the journey engenders rather than becoming an expert.
For both First Nations and many Asian settlers of this territory, non-linear thinking and translation has been integral to their storytelling and understanding of the world. A way of not only seeing the angled, limited surface tale, but also the ones that keep revolving around time and relationships. Finding these other rivers of narration, navigating the unfamiliar, grappling with the limits of translation keeps us and our world beautifully vibrant and diverse.
TRAVEL NOTE: “Kindred” by Gunai author and artist Kirli Saunders talks community, weaving personal and universal into each keen poem in the collection.