Climb for long enough and the mountain reclaims the suburbs. At the summit there is a curved rock jutting out from the scrub. Come here at mushroom season, when the moon is just off full and you’ll see an alligator nestled into the rock, sometimes hungry, sometimes peaceful, always reflecting your deceptive mind.

The lights of the city are far enough away to appear beautiful. What I know to be oppressive and dense has been transformed into a flickering landscape, as surreal as that Alex Grey print you bought for me on King St.

‘The city is a cruise ship. If you close one eye slightly and look to the left you’ll see it. I think it’s an insect city. It looks sinister. What if the cars are insects and they’re plotting a rebellion? Even the trees look ominous. It’s the little shrubs that get me, they are gremlins in this half light.’

I’ve always been captivated by magic. When my childhood dream land of Narnia failed to appear through my wardrobe after multiple attempts, I resigned myself to logical explanations and scientific evidence. I sat in class and watched perfectly good words like aluminium and potassium shortened to ugly abbreviations with numbers after them. X=mc2. Find the root of 5. Everything has an explanation if you apply this formula. It made my brain go numb. They kept missing the most important parts – like the spells cast in the forest and how to summon the headless horseman by scratching runes into the earth.

Yes, I believe in magic. It fills me up so I can embrace life in the mundane moments – the visits to the RTA, unpaid parking fines and end of lease cleans. But maybe, just maybe, if I get very still and very present, they will become magical too.

@emmawandphotography