Windgrove — Life on the Edge

A stronger Christmas message

December 19, 2011

Does good will blossom at this time of year?

When gift giving is pushed upon us by stores everywhere large and small, on-line or in malls, if we take away the guilt factor from beneath the Christmas tree are we left with anything?

Hopefully, the notion that offering something to someone — whether family, friend or foe — is not seen as an obligation, but a heart felt act of goodliness.

And the offering does not have to be gift wrapped in a box delivered by three wise men. It can be as simple as a gesture of kindliness. A smile to a stranger could do. Or, better yet, extending a hand of empathic compassion to a street person living hard.

Second Chances

What are the chances a raindrop
from last night’s storm caught
in the upturned cup of an autumn leaf
will fall from this tree I pass under
and land on the tip of my lit cigarette,
scuffing it out? What are the chances
my niece will hit bottom before Christmas,
a drop we all long for, and quit heroin?
What are the chances of being hit
by a bus, a truck, a hell-bound train
or inheriting the gene for cancer,
addiction? What good are statistics
on a morning like this? What good
is my niece to anyone but herself?
What are the chances any of you
are reading this poem?
Dear men,
whom I have not met,
when you meet her on the street
wearing the wounds that won’t heal
and she offers you the only thing
she has left, what are the chances
you’ll take pity on her fallen body?

Dorianne Laux

Maybe the above poem seems a bit strong for a Christmas message of goodwill to all, peace on earth and joyful tidings, but what “Second Chances” hints at is that we all have an opportunity, especially at Christmas, to change how we behave towards others. As in every year at this time, we have another chance to reach out for the hand that is extended in a plea for help.

And possibly more important, we just might have a second chance to reach out for the hand that is extended to help lift us up.

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Melbourne highlights

December 12, 2011

Two weeks ago I wrote about a dream where I had smashed through glass to escape the crushing mediocrity of conformity. Interestingly enough, a couple of days later I flew to Melbourne to watch a friend perform in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” where the character Chief escapes an authoritarian mental institution by smashing his way out through a barred glass window. A nice confirmation of the power of dreams.

My more pedestrian “holiday escape” to Melbourne is presented below — without words — in the form of a story board where each photo is connected to the one above and below. Carefully arranged through colour, form and metaphor, the beauty, joy and personal significance of events unfolds.

Visiting the city and meeting up with old and new friends over six days in some 20 restaurants and cafes was a delicious, coffee and pastry fueled delight.

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Tree men

December 5, 2011

Perched atop a thin eucalyptus branch with surprising grace, looking perky as a cockatoo and with the audacious moniker of “Petal”, he deftly prunes. In another nearby tree his forest activist workmate Nishe mimics.

They “earn” money by protecting homes such as mine from overhanging branches that in high winds could fall, or, in bush fires drop embers hot and dangerous upon the roof.

They “spend money” by purchasing expensive gear and then climbing the world’s tallest eucalyptus trees in Tasmania’s old growth forests and perch themselves up some 50 meters or higher and wait patiently for days at a time, sometimes weeks, until the police with frustration eventually meet with them in their aerial homes and a momentary truce is signed.

Their tree guerilla actions buys time for the trees, but it can only slow down the inevitable logging before the machinery of a corrupt government enters and destroys,

From up high in the Weld or Florentine valley trees, Nishe and Petal bear witness to two things.

First, is the ongoing destruction of ancient eco-systems, tens of thousands of years old. Painful, this brings them an unbearable saddness.

Second, though, equally emotional and more precious, is that they appreciate how especially privileged they are to be able to witness, from their high altitude perspective, a rare “human” glimpse of the verdant forest of trees and wildlife below and around them. Now, this is truly eagle awesome.

Over food, whiskey and wine at my home for three days of compassionate, artful tree pruning and tree climbing explorations around the area, they shared many stories of experienced grief and of much delight.

In the following poem about the life of trees, substitute eucalyptus trees for pine trees, and, where it reads “They fear nothing but the Hurricane, and Fire,” add chain saw. And yes, I’m very much aware of the irony of what I have done to my eucalyptus trees to what the loggers do, but pruning is not the same as clear felling.

The Life of Trees

The pines rub their great noise
into the spangled dark, scratch
their itchy boughs against the house,
and that moan’s mystery translates roughly
into the drudgery of ownership: time
to drag the ladder from the shed,
climb onto the roof with a saw
between my teeth, cut
those suckers down. What’s reality
if not a long exhaustive cringe
from the blade, the teeth? I want to sleep
and dream the life of trees, beings
from the muted world who care
nothing for Money, Politics, Power,
Will or Right, who want little from the night
but a few dead stars going dim, a white owl
lifting from their limbs, who want only
to sink their roots into the wet ground
and terrify the worms or shake
their bleary heads like fashion models
or old hippies. If trees could speak
they wouldn’t, only hum some low
green note, roll their pinecones
down the empty streets and blame it,
with a shrug, on the cold wind.
During the day they sleep inside
their furry bark, clouds shredding
like ancient lace above their crowns.
Sun. Rain. Snow. Wind. They fear
nothing but the Hurricane, and Fire,
that whipped bully who rises up
and becomes his own dead father.
In the storms the young ones
bend and bend and the old know
they may not make it, go down
with the power lines sparking,
broken at the trunk. They fling
their branches, forked sacrifice
to the beaten earth. They do not pray.
If they make a sound it’s eaten
by the wind. And though the stars
return they do not offer thanks, only
ooze a thicker sap from their roundish
concentric wounds, clap the water
from their needles, straighten their spines
and breathe, and breathe again.

Dorianne Laux

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Splitting seed

November 28, 2011

How reluctantly
the bee emerges from deep
within the peony

Basho

“…..the spotted touch-me-nots

which give such an intimate response
if you touch one of the tiny swollen pods–
faintly striped, fat in the middle,

and containing a tense spring,
an unspiraling release

that flings the seeds in all directions.
I touch, and between my fingers

the miniature violence spends itself.

Like the seeds I’m propelled
toward some future field…”

Chase Twichell, from the poem “Touch-Me-Not”

Still being shaped and still on its side as first shown two weeks ago, this second in the series of dehiscence inspired sculptures (working title: “Fingering Eros”) is slowly birthed.

Along with poetry, the visual influences that guide my carving hand are: hakea nuts, reflections of the Peace Garden’s Split Rock, and, a dancing, tantric deity: the Dakini.

“…..He enters me and joy
sprouts from us as from a split seed.”

Mary Karr, from the poem “Sinners Welcome”

Click here for full view of Dakini

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Occupy your life

November 21, 2011

To seek change takes courage. The old system doesn’t want to let loose of its grip anytime soon. None more so than within one’s own life.

I took a walk out to the “Point” the other evening. Sitting down, I watched the sun break through clouds that for most of the day had drizzled soft welcoming rain. In the quiet of the evening light a deep gratitude washed over me to have been blessed with this property Windgrove and the life I’m able to experience here.

But it didn’t just fall into my lap. It took listening — really listening to and heeding — the “still, small voice” that resides within all of us. A voice, though, that is generally pushed aside because of ……. well, any number of seemingly “rational” reasons.

Around this time twenty years ago in 1991, I purchased a 100 acre barren, sheep ravaged parcel of coastal land and threw in my tenured position at the School of Art, University of Tasmania, in order to strike out on an unknown path that I had absolutely no idea where it would lead to other than it would deepen and transform myself and my life’s Work in a big, big way.

At the time all I had to go on was a gut feeling that I needed to leave “the system” if I were to make full use of my pledge made the previous New Year to: “Be of service”.

This would not be a weekend hike in the woods. It would be a complete re-write of the societal script I, as a westerner, was born to follow.

Most of my friends cautioned against the move. Many felt I was suffering from a middle age crisis brought on by the burning down of my house nine months earlier. Who in their rational mind, they argued, would, at the age of 45, quit a very sought after university position and move to a remote block of land far from the capital city Hobart?

Despite their protestations, I wanted to trust my gut instincts, but some residual uncertainty did cling to my waking mind. One night a very clear, unambiguous dream made me wake up feeling totally assured of the correctness of this audacious act.

The following is the story of the dream that gave me a complete confirmation of my heart’s decision.

The whole dream takes place in the building where I had taught for seven years. A simple explanation of its architecture is a four story roofed building surrounding an atrium courtyard. Classrooms and studios ring the outside walls. Between the 1st and 2nd levels is a glass dome. The upper levels look down upon the glass dome.

In the dream:

I am on the ground floor of the art school expressing the wish to leave, but three, then four, then five anonymous men dressed in grey suits start coming towards me voicing displeasure. I walk to the stairwell and ascend to the next floor.

Looking around me I see eight, then a few more men coming towards me telling me in louder and louder voices “You can’t leave this institution. It is forbidden.” I walk to the stairwell and ascend to the 3rd level.

There are many more men this time. In fact, they are coming out of all the classrooms all around the walkway; the walkway that looks down upon the glass dome. Their voices are increasingly getting louder and more strident. It is also getting darker. I walk to the stairwell and ascend to the 4th and top level.

There are now about 100 grey suited men coming from everywhere, now screaming: “You must stop this foolishness. You must remain here. You must remain one of us. We will get you in the end.”

As they press forward I have no where left to go. It is very dark in the building. I look slowly around face to face, eye ball to eye ball, at these sad, lifeless men and know full well I would rather leap to my death than surrender to their deadness. Without hesitation I climb on top of the guard rail, stand for moment and then push off with all my strength into a beautiful swan dive with arms outstretched in complete surrendered abandonment and plummet to the glass dome three floors below.

I smash into the glass with such force that thousands upon thousands of shards are splintered everywhere. Simultaneously, a thick, soft, velvety red curtain drape appears and I wrap my arms around it.

The drape — like when a theatre curtain falls between acts — lowers me in a standing position to the ground. As a dog shakes water off its back, I shake off the many bits of glass. There is a door. I open it and walk outside to a sun filled, tree filled, very green landscape to begin the next phase of my life.

Several months later, with a badly constructed mile and a half driveway, only candles for light, no phone, no running water and no flush toilet, I knew Death driving around in his shiny black stretch limousine looking at a suburban map detailing linear streets, white picket fences, tidy lawns and 2.5 children would have great difficulty finding me in my camouflaged bus. Great difficulty, indeed.

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Emergence

November 14, 2011

The four piece sculpture ‘Dehiscence I’ sits proudly finished with its protruding seed head emerging from a protective outer coat and softer fleshy interior. Hidden beneath (unseen) is a developing, yet ‘unborn’ next generation seed.

Intentionally a bit phallic, intentionally a bit vulvalic, the sculpture is a recognition that life is only born out of a joining of opposites. The merging of yin and yang.

When he came wholly forth
I took him up in my hands and bent
over and smelled
the black, glistening fur
of his head, as empty space
must have bent
over the newborn planet
and smelled the grasslands and the ferns.

Galway Kinnel, from the poem Lastness

These two photos don’t show the “seed stone”, but on its side — roughly formed, slowly emerging — is a second sculpture that will portray a dehiscing seed bursting out of its protective, hard casing into the world. I find this metaphor on life — the coming forth on the genes of others into a mysterious unknown — an important issue worthy of much discussion.

In a Tree House

Light
Will someday split you open
Even if your life is now a cage,

For a divine seed, the crown of destiny,
Is hidden and sown on an ancient, fertile plain
You hold the title to.

Love will surely bust you wide open
Into an unfettered, blooming new galaxy

Even if your mind is now
A spoiled mule.

A life-giving radiance will come,
The Friend’s gratuity will come –

O look again within yourself,
For I know you were once the elegant host
To all the marvels in creation.

From a sacred crevice in your body
A bow rises each night
And shoots your soul into God.

Behold the Beautiful Drunk Singing One
From the lunar vantage point of love.

God is conducting the affairs
Of the whole universe

While throwing wild parties
In a tree house — on a limb
In your heart.

Hafiz