Art

What are these curious markings?

On Tuesday, I went down to the Drop Stone bench to photograph the setting crescent moon over Auk Point. Can you sense how the shivers on a bitter cold winter night “taught” me to move the camera like a calligrapher’s pen, thereby capturing and creating an alphabet of moon script? Can you see the crescent moon hidden in every one of the 42 calligraphic specimens of soft lunar light shown above and below?

Faith

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.

These are the first two stanzas of David Whyte’s profoundly metaphoric poem ‘Faith’ where he links the moon’s crescent waning phrase with the abstract notion of faith; the sort of knowing that, even though entering into a period of darkness, after three days of invisibility the moon “will” re-appear and begin its journey towards fulness.

Using an almost Arabic like, flowing lunar script, I offer my own interpretation of David Whyte’s ‘Faith’ as a visual, visceral poem of how faith hides and can be found in the slim crescent waxing sliver of light moving towards fullness, away from the dark.

Nearly ten years ago after a week of emotional disturbance following the 9/11 catastrophe in America, I set up a tent in a secluded section of Windgrove and meditated there for three days trying to come to grips with the global and personal enormity of what had happened. This period of time coincided with a new moon. On my last evening while looking towards the setting sun, there, faintly visible, was this impossibly thin sliver of fragile light.

To be honest, I can’t recall whether or not I was already familiar with David Whyte’s poem, but seeing this “new moon, slender and barely open” did open me to faith and a certain knowledge that a fullness of light will return, not only to my life, but to all life. A peace came over me, quieted the heavier elements of despair and left just a healthy residual of “blessed unrest”.

While packing up the tent and walking the short distance to my home, I also reflected on the notion that even though the Greens political party in Tasmania only received 13% of the vote, this equated to the amount of light reflected in a crescent moon. Maybe, I thought, it wasn’t necessary for the Greens to ever become the majority ruling party. Maybe, it was enough for them to be their smaller, slender selves and stay as a beckon of light in the darkness surrounding us, constantly offering up faith and hope.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.

David Whyte

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In July I will be teaching two workshops at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California. The Esalen catalogue description of each course follows.

Week of July 3-8, 2011
Learning From Leonardo: The Role of the Arts in Overcoming Our Crisis of Perception
Fritjof Capra & Peter Adams

Leonardo da Vinci, the great genius of the Renaissance, developed a unique synthesis of art, science, and technology. In this course, Fritjof Capra and Peter Adams, a scientist and an artist who have both been frequent visitors to Esalen, will discuss Leonardo’s synthesis and its great relevance to the present time. They will argue that, in order to overcome the crisis of perception that lies at the root of the major problems of our time, it will be critical to integrate an artistic dimension into the ecological perspectives of science, philosophy, and spirituality.

Workshop participants will be engaged not only intellectually, but also physically and emotionally, in adaptations of Leonardo’s methodology in observations, experiments, and artistic expressions within the Esalen landscape.

Week of July 17-22, 2011
Artful Strategies for a Changing World
Peter Adams

You are not alone in feeling a dark mountain casting its ever-increasing shadow upon your optimistic and determined efforts to bring about social or environmental change. In today’s world of melting ice caps, species extinction, economic uncertainty, and increasing religious and political fundamentalism, your compassionate heart is also melting.

Let’s look, together, at how the deepening despair that accompanies global upheaval can be greeted with the tangible, felt awareness of the eternal beauty that resides in every nook and cranny. Simply put: “How shall we love when we are losing everything?”
Art can be a key to answering this question. During our time together we’ll look deeply into the importance of living an engaged and artistic life, as well as explore the how-to’s of living creatively.

Poet James L. White writes:
When you return to something you love
It’s already beyond repair.
You wear it broken.

In this workshop, through stories, poetry, and hands-on manipulation of materials, you can massage your heart so that your felt responses to the world are not shut down. Rather, they remain awake to the terrible importance of capturing the beauty in a blade of grass or a shard of broken glass.

Whether you are a layperson of no particular artistic direction or a studio artist, we will experience how life, as seen through the lens of artistic behavior, can sustain us as we sail upon troubled waters.

For further information on Esalen and other courses on offer, please go to their website:

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