Holy Shit!

Has it really been a year and a half since my last journal entry on 5 June, 2008? Yep. Just shy of the mark by only two weeks.

Well, I’m back. Welcome home.

My shadow precedes me as I walk through the gate.

In the intervening 18 months since the last entry I spent six of them travelling around the world, installed and de-installed after a month’s exhibition a 6 metre/ 20 foot tall one ton sculpture in Denmark that took four full months to carve at Windgrove before shipping, heart-breakingly separated from my partner Sally, lost my confidence and sense of purpose, charged into my early childhood behavioral patterns through therapy sessions,got back into Buddhist mindfulness meditation, kayaked in northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, hugged several gigantic red wood trees in California, spent three nude weeks at the Harbin hot springs resort, walked with poet David Whyte in England’s Lake District, studied a full month with Thomas Moore, Jules Cashford and Fritjof Capra at Schumacher College, undertook an eight day silent retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, nourished my soul, reconnected with scores of friends in Germany, France, England and America, swam with the wild dolphins in Hawaii and, above all else, kept the faith that one day I would find more light in the day than darkness.

That’s it in a very tiny one sentence nutshell. Over the coming months I will tease out the above as well as keeping my readers informed of the daily happenings at Windgrove.

Past regular readers will notice that today’s blog has a new look and layout. My webmaster Allan Moult has spent the past three days here at Windgrove working with me in setting up the new look blog site. Moving all the earlier material over from Expression Engine to the new blogging platform Word Press will take time. Just to move one previous entry over to the new site takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes depending on the number of photos and the formatting of the writing. As there were 300 previous entries from five years of writing, this process will take a few weeks. So, bear with me while I slowly bring the past journal entries over to this new site.

Although there are bittersweet moments in rereading each previous entry that has a photo of Sally in it, and there are many that do, there is a lesson here in letting go with compassion and kindness rather than trying to block out the past through forgetfulness.

Actually, it fits right in with most of the philosophy of this blog: Life is a mixture of bliss and torment. It is a worthy pursuit to walk this human path with a generosity of spirit endeavoring to spread happiness to all beings. May we never stray too far off.

For the past two months—or ever since the last piece of wood was put onto the Peace Fire on April 6, thereby allowing it to come to an end after six continuous years of burning— a sense of “empty anticipation” has been a constant companion. Empty in the sense that what I most desire right now is to simply empty myself out, sit still and listen. Anticipation, in the sense that the next important phase of my life is arriving and I want to be ready for this encounter; uncluttered and free of excessive constraints whether physical, emotional or even spiritual.

There Is a Place Beyond Ambition

When the flute players
couldn’t think of what to say next

they laid down their pipes,
then they lay down themselves
beside the river

and just listened.
Some of them, after a while,
jumped up
and disappeared back inside the busy town.
But the rest —
so quiet, not even thoughtful —
are still there,

still listening.

Mary Oliver

Alice Walker dedicated the following poem, “Light Baggage”, to Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, and Jean Toomer; all writers who, at some point in their careers, left the “career” of writing and went off seeking writing’s very heart: life itself. Zora went back to her native Florida where she lived in a one-room cabin and raised her own food; Jean Toomer became a Quaker and country philosopher in Bucks Counth, Pennsylvania; and Nella Larson became a nurse.

Light Baggage
(for Zora, Nella, Jean)*

there is a magic
lingering after people
to whom success is merely personal.
who, when the public prepares a feast
for their belated acceptance parties,
pack it up like light baggage
and disappear into the swamps of Florida
or go looking for newer Gods
in the Oak tree country
of Pennsylvania.
or decide, quite suddenly, to try nursing,
midwifery, anonymous among the sick and the poor.
stories about such people
tell us little;
and if a hundred photographs survive
each one will show a different face.
someone out of step. alone out there, absorbed;
fishing in the waters of experience
a slouched back against the shoulders
of the world.

Alice Walker

I, like Zora, Nella and Jean, feel the need to leave the public’s gaze, close the gates of Windgrove and turn the energy of my emerging elder years towards a new, as yet unknown, direction. These next months are to be a period of emptying myself of ritualized duties, writing weeky blogs and laying down the banners, so to speak, to find more time in the day to just listen. To be like the empty Tibetan temple bowl that resonants clearly and beautifully when hit, this is my present goal.

As patterns emerge, I’ll blog them. If nothing else, there will be the occasional post on whatever artistic endeavors I am undertaking.

So, for now, after five and a half years of weekly blogs, goodbye.

Twenty years ago my optometrist told me that because of a mild astigmatism in each of my two eyes I should wear glasses to correct both the near and far “imperfections” of my sight. I took his advice for reading and sculpting, but didn’t care to increase the focal length of “perfect” vision beyond reading because of the hassle of dealing with glasses while being outdoors. Besides, it wasn’t such a big issue in that even with my diminished focusability I could still enjoy all that passed before me.

All, that is, except the stars. They just weren’t crisp and pinpoint sharp as in my youth. Nightly I yearned to gaze upon them with focused clarity and marvel once again at their scintillating brilliance where each distinct star was full of planetary potential capable of being home to untold numbers of exquisite life forms.

Yesterday I picked up my new “star gazing” glasses and when I first put them on back at Windgrove to look into the huddle of trees near the house, well, it was nothing short of a miracle. Such clarity. The peelings of bark and each individual twig with each individual leaf stood out clearly in all their radiant selfness as though a dirty window had been washed clean. I could see more “into” the tree than ever before and I felt like a scientist with some giant high resolution microscope able to differentiate the numerable parts of the whole. All afternoon I stared in awe at the squeeky clean highly defined world before my eyes.

Slowly, though, I began to feel like some sort of peeping Tom peering into the inner workings of the more secret private life of the tree. The increased clarity was certainly welcome, but thinking about it now, maybe I don’t need to see so clearly and with such individuation each of the component parts that make up the whole. Maybe I only need to wear my new miracle glasses just occasionally like on cold nights to view a pointillist Milky Way. Maybe I bit of fuzziness to fuse the world back together into a single tapestry of color and light is okay. Like a Monet painting. Like the following poem:

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the street lights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affection.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: Fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the houses of parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that do not know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, liles on water
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

…… Lisel Mueller

How will time judge me? Damned if I know.
My accomplishment is, I got up today.
I tried to write a poem. K’ung-fu Tzu said,
“The study of the low penetrates the high.”

Sam Hamill

The poetry of Hamill speaks to me on those slow mornings when high inspiration fails in its bid to whip me into a frenzy of creative endeavor.  Just getting out of bed and being a quiet observer provides sufficient meaning to the day. A walk of low expectations has many delights.

…..And in the end,
it doesn’t matter that we suffered or
did not suffer for our art, but that we
found in verse the courage to stand against
the state, political and religious.

How often you’ve said you don’t know a thing
about Zen or the Tao, but you’re a sage
all the same, and in the tradition of
Chuang Tzu and Confucius, a questioner,
a loner who has struggled to reach out.

Sam Hamill

Your cells are a country of ten thousand trillion citizens, each devoted in some intensively specific way to your overall well-being. There isn’t a thing they don’t do for you. They let you feel pleasure and form thoughts. They enable you to stand and stretch and caper. When you eat, they extract the nutrients, distribute the energy, and carry off the wastes—all those things you learned about in school biology—but they also remember to make you hungry in the first place and reward you with a feeling of well-being afterwards so that you won’t forget to eat again. They keep your hair growing, your ears waxed, you brain quietly purring. They manage every corner of your being. They will jump to your defence the instant you are threatened. They will unhesitatingly die for you—billions of them do so daily. And not once in all your years have you thanked even one of them. So let us take a moment now to regard them with the wonder and appreciation they deserve.

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

A week ago, last Wednesday, I went into surgery for a definite inguinal hernia operation on the right side of my groin with the possibility of a second one on the left side. Opening my eyes after the anaesthetic wore off, the surgeon said that he had actually performed a triple hernia operation with the third one being an umbilical hernia.

Initially, I was glad that all the holes had been patched and sewn up, but, as the invasive nature of the operation covered a wider than normal section of my belly, the pain associated with “one” hernia operation was multiplied by three, and, as the morphine’s soporific effect diminished, I more than once cursed the frailty of my body as I attempted to walk from the bed to the toilet; as, I attempted, even to pee.

However (and here is why I started off with the Bill Bryson quote), as the days moved along and I could ease into the comfort of the fireside sofa more freely, I was able to look down onto my belly and not just see an ugly wound. Rather, it became an area of marvellous magic; a continuous healing machine working 24 hours, seven days a week to keep itself whole.

The bruise, whilst seemingly not the prettiest thing to look at, is actually a very visual indication of the cells Bryson talks about doing their work. Isolating the bruise, as in the above photo, reveals a beautifully abstract “live” color-field painting that daily takes on different hues and patterns. The little wisps of black brush strokes are the re-emerging belly hairs; not yet curly, but definitely well on their way. The first days of anguish are now gone and I watch in fascination, and gratitude, as this vastly complex system rearranges itself back into health.

So, a round of applause to all those involved in this great group effort. First, to the billions of cells doing their thing so that I can continue doing my thing. Second, to the very skilful surgeon, Rob Bohmer, and the many nurses who took care of me while in hospital.  And, thirdly, to my partner, Sally, who not only has had the sole task of feeding and looking after my comfort levels here at Windgrove, but has also had to do all the daily chores around the place, including splitting two wheelbarrow loads of wood each day to keep the house fires burning these wintry days and nights.

Come to think of it, I’m beginning to like the cosiness of the sofa and all the attendant services. Maybe, I’ll fake the pain a bit, just to have one more tea and cake served with, yet another, kiss on the forehead.

Winter solstice eve in the southern hemisphere. The sun sets early; too early. Pushes the man, who has been outside sculptling, inside to find the hearth’s warmth. Pushes him inward, into himself, to fathom this longest passage of dark time. By fireside, as a second, tinier “winter sun” heats up both the soup and those great paws of hands that have fondled tree and stone some 60 odd years, the man wonders just how many more of these great turnings of the earth and sun he will witness before becoming too witless to know what it was ever all about.

He thinks of what still needs to be done on the land upon which he dwells. He thinks of his teacher, Wendell Berry, and a line from this farmer’s poem, A Vision: … a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here…

On this winter solstice eve, a chilling winter rain is blown through the dark. As the ground moistens and softens up for tree planting, a possibility is nurtured and a calculation is made on how many more trees need still be planted before “an old forest will stand”. Fifteen thousand. On average, he puts in 400 per year. Looks like he’ll be putting in the last trees on his 100th birthday. Looks like he needs to keep his wits about in order to be around to witness forty more winter solstices.

A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our season welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
along the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windrows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.

Wendell Berry

Oh, Divine One.

Life has tumbled me in so many harsh ways that, now, the bones of this scrubbed body lie clean and free of the last resistance to Love.

Take these bones then,

And, at cliff’s edge, place in a nest of she-oak needles, lichen and bedfordia.

Softly,

Your heart flies in on dimming light. Touches down, caresses. Makes me finally whole.

After complaining at the local medical clinic this week that my right testicle was constantly sore, the doctor prescribed Voltaren, a strong anti-inflammatory. Well, the drug didn’t do much for my balls, but it sure did wonders for my knees. For the first time in years, I felt totally free and fleet of foot (like when I was a teenager). No joint pain at night, none while working, none hiking with a heavy pack (carrying stones) and none running. Fantastic. What a thrill.

Remember the 1990 movie, Awakenings, where a man (played by Robert De Niro) is brought out of a decades-long, trance like sleep through the use of the drug L-DOPA? Loosely based on a true story by neurologist Oliver Sacks, De Niro’s character is exuberant with his new found freedom, but eventually realises that the drug that brought him out of his long term semi-coma is not long lasting enough to permanently keep him “awake”. Slowly he will slide back into his isolated world.

I will admit to crying when he asks one of the nurses to have a last dance with him. Can anyone even begin to imagine what anguish this man would have felt knowing that soon he would no longer be able to hold onto a woman and move freely, confidently across the dance floor?

Certainly not as dramatic as the movie, but my magic pills put me between a rock and a hard spot, as well. You see, the tiny writing on the package warned that I could take the pills for five days only because of the possible adverse affect on my liver and kidneys with prolonged usage. Aware that my testicular pain is tied in with a kidney that has passed kidney stones and that extra precaution has to be exercised when taking drugs, I knew that my knee’s new found freedom would be short lived.

Sadly, reluctantly, I popped one, last pill, did a little jog on the beach, danced a sweet dance on the lawn … and then waited for the return of the ongoing daily ache of arthritic knees.

But…… not before I was able to experience once again what William Stafford writes:

Most mornings I get away, slip out
the door before light, set forth on the dim, gray
road, letting my feet find a cadence
that softly carries me on. Nobody
is up–all alone my journey begins.

(from the poem, Run before Dawn)

Or….. what Marge Piercy writes:

It is not the running I love, thump
thump with my leaden feet that only
infrequently are winged and prancing,
but the light that glints off the cattails
as the wind furrows them, the rum cherries
reddening leaf and fruit, the way the pines
blacken the sunlight on their bristles,
the hawk circling, stooping, floating
low over beige grasses,….

(from the poem, Morning athletes)

I’m now back to a slower, more careful walk through life’s wonders. Still, it was a blessing of sorts, those few days when I was transported to a time when the body had no wounds and knew no pain. 

A few weeks back (October 4) I posted the story, The Tiny moving the Mighty. I also sent a version of this story to a Tasmanian online news journal so “the locals” could have a read of what I thought was a good yarn. Well, the feedback was mostly negative.

An example:

I think I missed the point…… was this story about rich people in a luxury liner burning tonnes of fuel an hour, your property “Windgrove” or selling a sculpture? The relevance of your significance fails to impress.

After spending a couple of days digesting the pros and cons of having gone public with this story, I lay down under a non-Australian tree.

Looking up into its luminous deciduous leaves I felt a moment’s twang of home sickness for the trees of my youth; for those shading tree climbing giants that sheltered a shy boy in northern Michigan from the taunts and ridicule of his peers.

The feeling passed, but it did make apparent to me the necessity of knowing how to remain grounded and certain of one’s truth when going public with it. It was a reminder that no matter how motivated we feel to changing the status quo, or doing what we feel is the right thing, there will always be others who feel that what we are on about is utter crap.

This past Sunday I hosted an Australian Open Garden Scheme day at Windgrove and, with the help of my friend, Miche Marion, spent a leisurely 8 hours sitting outside chatting to the 45 or so people who had driven from as far away as northern Tasmania to get here. Nothing big or grand. No fancy tents or display tables. The feeling among all was that, although tiny, something good was happening here at Windgrove.

The only slight complaint was a good natured grumble from a visitor who had used the outdoor toilet I had built for these events. The toilet, she said, needed a bowl of water and towel for people to use. Flicking her fingers as she walked away, I turned to Miche and said: I don’t know about you, but my mother taught me not to piss on my fingers.

On Tuesday I went down to the beach early in the day to sit and watch my Melbourne friend and his son catch some surf. They were excited.

Now, a couple of days later, Craig and Ben and the rest of their family have continued their journey up the east coast of Tasmania. And me? I am still sitting by the the beach watching wave after wave continue their steady march onto the sands of time.

Today, being the equinox when supposedly all light falls equally everywhere around the globe, I am wondering whether or not a father and son can ever reach any sort of equanimity with each other?

As children, do we ever grow up in the eyes of our parents no matter what our age?

Once, when I was 42 years old and visiting my father, I ordered a coffee at the local cafe we had gone to for breakfast. “What? Are you drinking coffee now?”, he asked in a tone just short of reprimanding, as though I was still the 17 year old athlete preparing for the state swimming championships.

Do we ever forget being the child?

In the following poem Stanley Kunitz has this reflection:

The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave mustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

Stanley Kunitz