Nature as teacher

Rust in peace

January 29, 2010

Is this trash? Does it mar the landscape?

After having each served a nine month stint as a cover for the Peace Fire during the six years from 2002 till 2008 these ten galvanized, circular lids now lay with their backs to the ground for a final sleep until their slow dissolve back into the earth.

Rust — a reddish iron oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture and helped along at Windgrove by a sprinkle of sea salt.

Lovely patina. Rather “rustic”.

The fire pit that these lids both protected from rain and wind as well slowing down the combustion rate of the burning logs now sits empty. However, there is something in the remnant fiery afterglow of today’s dormant lids that never fails to rekindle in my mind the many months of daily tending to the Peace Fire and nurturing it along with some 60 tons of firewood.

Instruction from Bly

…….I consider
The Smirnoff bottle on the coffee table; a fly
Lands on it. And then it all happens: the life
Of that bottle flashes before me. Little by little.
Or quickly, it is used up; empty, as clear as it was
Full, it journeys to the dump: it rests upon the mounds of
Beautiful excess where what we are –
Sunflowers, grass, sand –
Is joined to what we make –
Cans, tires and it itself in every form of bottle.
I put on my s.s. coveralls, a saffron robe, knowing I have found
What I was sent to find. The sky speaks to me; the sound
Of the cars on Highway 2 is a song. Soon I will see the pumps.
Those curved rectangles shaped like the U.S. and smell the gas.
Our incense. O country, O moon, O stars,
O american rhyme is yours is mine is ours.

(author unknown)

Notwithstanding the reference to America, I like the notion that the world is one interconnected, chaotic, jumble of material objects. What’s the difference between a vodka bottle and a fly? A rusting lid or decaying log? Does location make a difference? Is one object inherently more beautiful/ugly than the other?

A tree discards a leaf or two. Is this litter? A human discards a can or two. Is this litter? Considering that the origin of “litter” comes from “bed”, the tree is literally littering.

Not that I’m in favour of trashing the landscape, but trash found in the landscape just might offer us an insight into what “ephemeral” might mean in a “natural” setting. My Shakespeare Bench certainly did.

More than anything, though, the rusting lids offer us a chance to reflect upon our own ultimate return to dust.

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Mix sun, water and oil

January 19, 2010

Leonardo da Vinci is widely known as an artist and not so well known as a scientist. He was equally both. And what informed both his art and science was a keen observation of nature and its many interconnections. One could even say that Leonardo was an early advocate of a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world around him.

Because I will be co-teaching a course on Leonardo this coming May with physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra — where I take the role of Leonardo the artist and Fritjof that of Leonardo the scientist — I have been preparing myself by trying to be as deeply observant of nature as Leonardo would have been in his daily walks around Florence, Milan or elsewhere in Italy. Not that I haven’t been doing this regularly in my life here at Windgrove, but the focus is a bit sharper; a bit more curious as to the physics and creativity behind the events.

Last week I had a problem. There was mosquito larvae in the large Balinese water bowl. So, like a scientist, I scratched my head and remembered that a custom in outback farms in Australia was to put kerosene into water tanks to stop the mosquito larvae from growing. It wasn’t because the kero acted as a poison, rather, because oil floats on water, the larvae couldn’t break through it to get a breath of air.

Like Leonardo, who was always improving on previous past solutions, I reasoned that since it was the “oil” aspect that killed the larva a better solution would be to use something not petroleum based and bad for the environment. Therefore, I chose olive oil.

I poured a bit into the water bowl and lo, and behold, my artist self was amazed at the wonderous light show that bubbled up as the oil separated into little droplets and floated to the surface.

My scientist self was intrigued at how the sun’s rays were being dispersed as they passed through each individual drop of oil and focused to a point behind the drop. Would oils of different viscosities give different results? And how did the length of the cone relate to the diameter of the droplet?

“Too beautiful!” stated the artist. “Like little trumpets”.

“Add some more oil.” pleaded the scientist.

“Hark, the herald angels sing.” blurted the artist as I conjured up a whole host of heavenly angels trumpeting the praises of the beauty of this earth.

“Did you kill the little buggers?” asked the morally neutral scientist waiting for a positive response to the experiment.

“Awesome. Just fucking awesome.” they both said.

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A cautionary tale

January 12, 2010

Inertia results, not so much in the delay of the future, but in the destruction of its potential.

For a very long time I was aware that the Shakespeare Bench was slowly degrading and that if I wanted its carved-into-the-wood message of “tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in brooks” to have a longer life, the bench would need to be taken away from its outdoor position along the Peace Path, refurbished and placed indoors.

Although my seemingly good intentions were stymied by a host of delaying factors, the underlying theme was “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

Well, tomorrow is now not likely to come, not after a neighbour and I sat on the bench and it collapsed to the ground under our combined weight because the bench’s interior wood had rotted away leaving just a thin outer shell of little strength.

I could go on and write about how the bench was “returning back to nature” and only following a “natural cycle of life”.

But while true that it was aging nicely and taking on a wonderful patina of grey and lichen, with a modicum of care it could have remained in service many, many more years.

And this is the point I want to make: Even as an ardent environmentalist/artist, I was caught napping, so to speak, and let a very important sculpture fall into disrepair basically through laziness.

It doesn’t matter if this “laziness” was culturally, hormonally, politically, relationally or circumstantially induced. The bottom line is that the talk I talk: “that there are tongues in trees and sermons in stones”, wasn’t honoured by a willingness on my part to be an engaged steward of this message.

So, I’ll take on this “healthy” shame, learn from it, and do what I can to be a better active reciprocator of all the goodness given me by the trees and stones of this earth.

The broken bench has been taken away. Not to be placed on the trash heap, but to be brought to my studio as there just might be a “new” sculpture in the making. One that carries several messages of deep ecology, stewardship and reciprocity and the dangers of not living the words.

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A mathematical genius

December 5, 2007

It is generally assumed that humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions, but a study published this week in “Current Biology” provides proof that chimpanzees are better than humans at basic numeric memory. In a simple mathematical test devised by Kyoto University cognitive scientist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, “Ayumu” (the most prodigious of the six chimps who trained for the “exam”) consistently beat three of the nine college students even after the students were themselves trained for half a year. This doesn’t prove that chimpanzees are better at all maths, but it does offer compelling, scientific proof that the human “animal” and all the other animals found on the great web of life are not all that different. Basically, we are all one. There is no human—animal divide.

Let’s take the test one step further and see if “Nature” is better at mathematics that humans.

The test is to see whether or not a human can build—quickly, easily and with no fuss—a three dimensional spiral phyllotaxis pattern that demonstrates the “golden proportion” and the Fibonacci sequence.

banksia_pod_2 Just outside my kitchen window grows a “saw tooth” Banksia and it is producing—quickly, easily and with no fuss—several winning examples of the above test question. It seems to me that even plants can beat humans in the mathematics game. Proof that the notion of a human—nature divide is as fallacious as the human—animal divide.

Boy, do we humans have to learn to eat humble pie.

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Sauntering along

November 8, 2007

echnida_07

Now that spring is here the cute echidna has come out of hibernation and can be seen sauntering along in its hungry way looking to terrify any ant colony she finds. A walk along the “Peace?” path reveals upheaved ground where sharp claws and a pointy snout have wrecked havoc on the peaceful ants who, until the echidna’s devastating visit, were simply going about tending to their community’s needs in their highly organised and well thought out manner.

When the marauding echidna brings catastrophe to the ants, how long before they regain sufficient hope to rebuild what was lost? When an earthquake levels a village how long before the villagers find sufficient courage to pile stone upon stone again to wall out danger?

It is not possible to live forever safely out of harm’s way. One can, though, learn to appreciate the terrifying teaching beauty of earth’s awesome intricacies.

And in spring’s profusion of colour, what of the sweet lives of the bees who dart daringly and innocently from flower to flower?

squarosa

Black Bear in the Orchard

It was a long winter.
But the bees were mostly awake
in their perfect house,
the workers whirling their wings
to make heat.
Then the bear woke,

too hungry not to remember
where the orchard was,
and the hives.
He was not a picklock.
He was a sledge that leaned
into their front wall and came out

the other side.
What could the bees do?
Their stings were as nothing.
They had planned everything
sufficiently
except for this: catastrophe.

They slumped under the bear’s breath.
They vanished into the curl of his tongue.
Some had just enough time
to think of how it might have been —
the cold easing,
the smell of leaves and flowers

floating in,
then the scouts going out,
then their coming back, and their dancing —
nothing different
but what happens in our own village.
What pity for the tiny souls

who are so hopeful, and work so diligently
until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw.
Someday, of course, the bear himself
will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.
Nature, under her long green hair,
has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even
when there are many,
as people, in a town or a village.
And what, moreover, is catastrophe?
Is it the sharp sword of God,
or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear
blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,
slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,
and saunters on.

Mary Oliver

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Shifting realities

October 11, 2007

I find it amazing that no matter how certain we are of things, not only are things susceptible to change, they can change in an instant. We can be looking right into the eyes of an issue, convinced of its reality. Then, with the subtlest shift of thinking or of events, it appears in a new light.

stormdeck_ferns_3 stormdeck_ferns_4

Graphically, this was demonstrated this week as I was photographing the bracken ferns that grow low to the ground in the area next to the storm deck known as “the wind grove”, the property’s namesake. In a matter of seconds, as a brief sun shower swept through and even as the tree’s shadows remained discernible, the light from the setting sun bouncing off the ferns shifted from golden to silvery. A whole new world appeared in a flash, as beautiful and as enchanting as what came before. Who would have thought these two worlds existed so close to each other?

When things are going well, we might fear that the shit will soon enough hit the fan. True enough. But the situation is just as often the reverse: when things are at their darkest, something or someone can appear to give us hope.

This happened in Australia last week when the federal minister for the environment (actually, minister against the environment) gave his approval for the southern hemisphere’s largest pulp mill to be built in Tasmania. It was a dark hour indeed and many of us felt understandably depressed. Yet within the day, the major newspapers and some highly influential CEO’s and other individuals came from behind their self imposed walls of silence and began speaking out against the political hypocrisy and economic stupidity of this project.

Daily now, the ranks of opposition are swelling and, where last week I must admit to feeling the debate had been lost, today hope is showering down in a mixture of golden and silvery light.