A Billabong

A distortion in her preflight instruction

A 4-hour flight turned into a 15-hour ordeal

A crash in a Peruvian penal colony

A float down the Amazon River on handmade raft

A month adrift in a state-sized billabong in the middle of the rainforest

A fear in her eyes

A pursing of her lips

A flaring of her nostrils

A chore to deal with this level of “fucked-up-ness”

A recounting of “The World is a War Film”

A place where nothing is imbued with meaning

“But it is ontology — the investigation of the nature of being — that travelers do.”

— Cynthia Ozick / ”The Shock of Teapots”