Elements

Aphrodite lifts her foaming mouth to the beach
and steps from her shell.

M.C. Richards from “A Westerner Visits Australia”

My guess is that, aside from poet M.C. Richards, most museum goers would look at ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Odilon Redon (1840-1916) and not be fully aware that Redon’s use of the sea shell wasn’t purely decorative, but used as a potent symbol of the vulva in his depiction of Venus’ (or Aphrodite’s) birth.

This week, friend and colleague Douglas Webster and I went to Roaring Beach to find our own examples of tidal rock formations that carry the signature of our Earth Mother Gaia. We weren’t disappointed.

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This past week I burned off a pile of wood debris accumulated over the past five years in order to create an ash bed for a much larger garden. The visuals were powerful. Such intensity. Such immediate transformation.

Such a potent symbol for transformation.

To the Beloved

Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I’ll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

Rilke, The Book of Hours II, 7

And, stepping out of the fire with her right foot was a fire goddess. The most ancient Greek fire goddess Hestia, perhaps? Or, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, Pele?

She seemed to suggest to me that the fire of transformation was okay; that change was a necessary part of existence.

Change

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not thin it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

Rilke, Sonnets to Oprheus II, 12

But too much change?

Consider this:

The Flame of Life

Find a candle and place it unlit in front of you with a box of matches at the ready. Now take a match and light the candle, watching carefully as the flame leaps into life.

See the flame burning easily and constantly, and contemplate the fact that what you are seeing happens only because there is just the right amount of oxygen in the air. Had there been just 10% more oxygen, the flame created when you lit the match would have set you on fire, as well as the furniture in the room and then the whole house. From there the fire would have spread far and wide without stopping. Had you lived in South America, the fire would have spread over the whole continent and thence to central America and eventually to the whole of North America. Anyone lighting just a single match on any island, or on any isolated land mass would have created a similar unstop able fiery holocaust.

On the other hand, with around 15% oxygen in the air, your brain would be unable to generate enough energy to sustain your consciousness, and you would be unaware of the candle, the flame or the fact that you are reading this text.

Stephan Harding, Animate Earth

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When I and my neighbours Steve and Yve first ventured into the storm to check out the tremendous waves, a hugh gust of wind snapped a giant branch off a tree just in front of us and, like frightened, yet excited kids, we scurried back into the wood fired warm house until the wind abated somewhat (and played a second game of Scrabble).

Presenting a sense of scale to the size of a wave is difficult. In the top image, to photograph a wave breaking from where I am standing, and, seeing the length of this wave extend all the way over to Auk Point (a kilometer and a half or one mile), only happens about once a year. The distance it then has to travel, rolling and frothing to the beach, is well over half a kilometer. At this distance from the beach, local knowledge has this wave peaking at 10 meters/33 feet. Such power. Such magnificence.

Gosh, it was windy. And cold. The combined noise of the breaking surf and gale force winds made us feel as though we were in some hugh orchestra pit with all the musicians gone mad. Standing in the open for any length of time was impossible. By the end of our hammered walk our cheeks were cheery red and we relished having witnessed something few people get to experience. A real reward for living where we do at Roaring Beach looking out into Storm Bay and the Southern Ocean.

At one delirious moment while sheltering behind a wind breaking she-oak observing the increasingly larger swells thunder in, I exclaimed: “Look! Look at those fuckers!”

Neighbour Steve replied: “For Peter, who never swears, to say ‘fuck’, must mean that these really are big waves.”

We looked and laughed in astonishment at the immensity being hurled at us, through us.

During moments like this, the world takes over. Whatever personal emotions or intellectual discourses I had carried into this meeting with wind, water and sleet was soon blown away. Nothing remained but pure astonished exhilaration.

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
  mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the 
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always, with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

Mary Oliver

The next morning I awoke to the sun shining through the still whistling wind. Another great day, in which to observe with reverence the magic of living at Windgrove, was beginning.

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