The painting on the wall reminded me of boundaries. A man, curled in a ball, hung suspended above water in a jump suit. Ropes circled his collar, wrists and ankles, where the jump suit ended and his skin began. A second frame was identical, except for a splash in the water below and the absence of the man's head, hands and feet. The unchanged jump suit, holding its form, hung suspended above the splash in the water below, its boundaries marked by the rope. It was label "Deep End".
In introducing Barbara, small mention was made of one of her other books: Al Liftend: uit het leven van een nederlandse avonturierster (The Act of Hitch-hiking: from the life of a Dutch adventurer), which our friend Erwan had brought to my attention mere months before. Hitch-hiking, it was said, was a peripheral interest of hers, and was of course, how I landed there.
When Erwan wrote me of the only book on hitching he'd read (in Dutch), I set out to find an English translation. The publishers informed me, to their regret, that none existed, but did put me in touch with its author, Barbara, who had coincidentally just (temporarily) moved from Toronto to Sydney. Some months later, sitting in the office of a prospective doctoral supervisor (I had been discussing the possibility of doctoral candidacy at the University of Tasmania) I heard that Barbara had been invited to Hobart to present a series of seminars on her recent work
