In the 19th century I was a male builder in Sydney. I had a distinctive striped shirt and a cheery disposition and was working up on the joists of timber framed buildings. Later in that same life I was an alcoholic getting wasted in a bar, feeling desolate because I’d lost my leg in a fall and could no longer work. I drank myself into oblivion.
In the early 18th century I was the newly married wife of a merchant, travelling to London in a carriage, wearing a beautiful green velvet cloak. We lived in Limehouse, near the river. I fell sick and died young.
In the life before that I was an Irish peasant woman, living at the bottom of a cliff at the back of a beach. I lived with my brother. Abject, grinding poverty, living hand to mouth.
Prior to that one, or maybe before, I was a wealthy sea captain. I lived well, and had a large family in a sort of hall house. I had a fabulous carved chair that I sat in at the head of my table. I was lost at sea.
Then there was a very quick one. Chinese baby, massacred along with my whole family, and possibly whole community. Soul in and out.
The most distant one was ancient Egypt. I was a woman painting a face on the mummy of my baby who had died. It was not the first time I had done this. I had had a lot of losses. But I had a fulfilled life, with some kind of administrative role to do with the building of the pyramids.