Heading Deep Into Headland
As a third-year creative writing student at Massey University, I’m drawn to the craft behind the stories we read. Dismantling the journey of an author’s words not only reveals the choices, rhythm and hidden layers that shape meaning, but also strengthens our own writing. I invite you to linger with the stories that spark something in you, and dig a little deeper until you uncover the flame at their core.
As I read Sarah Jane Barnett's Just Outside of Seeing (issue 24), I was stuck on a flight to Melbourne—which could be worse, given it’s a short four-hour flight—but I wanted off. The more this feeling consumed my thoughts, the harder it became to sit still. The irony was blatantly obvious: I was reading an introspective view of meditation and mindfulness while struggling to sit still. The tension between discomfort and being still is the central component of Barnett’s essay, where the writing is a contemplation and exploration of what it means to be present. Barnett masterfully achieves this through a lyrical essay, allowing thoughts to flow nonlinearly and weaving pockets of her life that are poignant to her current situation, while playfully incorporating poetic craft. The essay does not just explore mindfulness; it performs it.
Memories and thoughts are separated by asterisks, fragmented in reflections and observations of her past through her present self—a self that feels ‘discontinuous’. The true art of Just Outside of Seeing lies in its ability to introduce many seemingly contrasting elements at once. One of the most prominent of these is the image of Barnett’s ear against her son’s door, listening to the silence between each note he plays on the piano. The reflection is a reminder of the importance of stillness, of how the silence in between notes is what ‘allows us to hear the tune’. Much like this, the asterisks separate each memory, as with the rest, between notes, creating space for meaning to form. Barnett draws this reflection to the forefront to help readers understand the sense of discontinuity that midlife has brought her. Where she once stood at the door of her son’s room, creating memories in the melody, she now faces the door of herself and is confronted by silence.
Just Outside of Seeing is the first piece Barnett has written in three years, which makes it even more hauntingly beautiful. The writing stems from a state of in-between—not a beginning or an ending, but a place of floating, watching life go by as parts fragment across past and present. The writing is raw, honest and unfiltered, taking readers on a journey of how meditation can teach ‘us to find the middle balance between the two’. Rather than offering answers or resolutions, Barnett creates room for stillness, silence, and uncertainty, trusting that by sitting with these, readers will make their own connections. Just Outside of Seeing is a gentle reminder that meaning is not always formed through resolution, rather through the quiet act of witnessing oneself, even in times of unease.
