Free Names for Nothingness by Georgia Blain

ice over the heat of her skin, she felt the shock of awareness of her bodily existence once again, and she closed her eyes, wanting only to become the water, to cease to exist in the stillness that surrounded her. This was all that mattered to her.The simple task of fetching the water had become the only reason for her life, and this simplicity was perfection.
    Back at camp, they meditated. Alone, under the sparse shade of a slender sapling, Caitlin tried to let go of all awareness, the sharp tang of the eucalypts, the dancing light on the boulders, the high call of the currawongs, the slow crawl of an ant across her ankle – and then she tried not even to try, simply to let it all drift, like the smoke from their campfire, curling up into the sky.
    Do not close your eyes. Do not block your ears. Do not shut down your senses.
    She was to open herself completely, to lie flat beneath the teeming tumultuous nature of all existence, completely surrendering herself to the power of the earth.
    Because it is only then that we cease to exist. It is only in a lack of all awareness that we reach awareness.
    And in each brief moment of total absence there was liberation, followed by the crashing realisation that she had once again been aware of reaching that state only to lose it in that very instant of realisation. It was a pattern that she told herself to accept, for only in accepting it would she liberate herself from its hold.
    In the evenings they fed and washed the devotees who acted as their instructors. Fraser was one of them but he was no longer Fraser to her, even when it was her turn to sponge him down, even when he told her to bathe his feet, and she knelt beside him, aware only of the duty she had been asked to perform, his nakedness close to her but not in the way it had once been, in an entirely new way, a way that felt far more right to her than the previous closeness they had shared.
    When their tasks were complete, they listened to readings in the darkness. Her head light from lack of food, Caitlin felt the words float away from her, becoming more substantial intheir weightlessness, so that the teachings became as Fraser had once described them to her, the very breath of life.
    On the second evening as they all rose to walk back to their tents, she felt the touch of Fraser’s hand on her arm, and she followed him as instructed.
    She had been selected, he told her, she and four others, to sit at the feet of their spiritual master.
    She did not say a word.
    He was being flown into the clearing above their camp tomorrow morning, Fraser said. She was expected to bathe beforehand and to wear a white robe, which she would be given.
    When he finished speaking, he motioned for her to leave, and she walked back to her tent in the darkness, the light from the stars obscured by the canopy of leaves, and she felt, for a moment, overwhelmed by the gift that was being presented to her. It was more than she had expected, more than she had even begun to allow herself to hope for, and she breathed in deeply, wanting the weight of her anticipation to lift from her shoulders.
    â€˜Do you see him often?’ she had once asked Fraser, and he told her that it was a rare honour.
    â€˜Unless, of course, you live on our land, and then he is a daily presence.’
    The next day she woke before dawn, the darkness of the night still impenetrable as they stumbled down to the waterfall to bathe and change. The thinness of her robes did little to protect her from the cool of the morning, and she shivered as she made her way back to the camp where she and the four others waited for Fraser to rise.
    They watched as he ate his breakfast, scraping the edge of the bowl with the tip of his finger, licking the last remnants of food out. When he finally finished, he beckoned for one of them to clear up.
    They would be climbing the mountain they could see on their left. They all looked in the direction he pointed. He would lead them.
    Caitlin