Dead Reckoning

Dead Reckoning is a convergence of works made across my health journey – Uncharted Waters, Voyage to Disaster, Wayfaring – anchored in limestone reefs, the Abrolhos Islands and the Batavia wreck.

A vital tool, but with inherent fallibilities, dead reckoning is navigation method relying on estimating one’s current track, from past bearings.

Plunged between the island groups of Occam’s Razor and Hickam’s Dictum, navigation is tumultuous, erratic – requiring feats of endurance.

A constant push – pull between medical disciplines, hypothesise in care, diagnostics and treatments.

Dead reckoning is how I feel as a complex patient.
Often finding nothing.
Often retracing your path.
Often colliding with the unknown – the vast unmapped spaces, the submerged reefs – causing chaos and confusion.
Occasionally, finding land.

I often feel like a rogue explorer, braving the unknown in ferocious seas with a captive crew. Sea weary. Every storm is a battle. Land is a shipwreck. Lack of wind is lack of progress.

But when I pause to look, in the stillness, I see inherent knowledge of how to survive – and to even thrive – exists all around me.

Different ways of being emerge gently – on the the islands, in the ocean, and though people (patients) sharing their lived experiences.

I was never the first person here.

I will never be the last.

I hold my breath, dive deep, and uncover these treasures.

The imagery of the ocean, of navigation, shipwreck, treading water, the act of drowning and of submersion, is the constant visual dialogue of my injury. These motifs are how I make sense of my experiences.