Life on the Edge

Song (4)

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

Wendell Berry

By happy conincidence, I came across the above Wendell Berry poem a few days before Sally Horne set up in the studio to paint a series of four mandalas while in residence at Windgrove. With today being a “solstice” event, it only seems appropriate that she is painting circles within circles.

Myself......?  I have come to accept the coming and going of Wingrove residents who leave me “changed, changing”; each resident a new cycle within the many cycles that we all turn in.

Also, in the mail this week, a copy of D.H. Lawrence’s version of the importance of recognizing, through ritual, that the solstice turnings are a necessary component of deepening our love for all and sundry. 

“Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal—merely personal feeling—taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magical connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth, the sun and the stars, and love is a grining mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life and expected it to keep on blooming in our vase on the table…

...it is a question of relationship. We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos, through daily ritual—the rituals of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of kindling the fire and pouring water...”

Nine years ago while still living in the bus, I built a simple storage room and office plus spare bedroom. Then, when I moved into the main house it sort of reverted to a small studio space for visiting artists. The problem, however, was that the space was relatively dark and every artist that tried to paint inside this room had some difficulty with the lighting. There was also the small problem that a fire almost burned the place down five years ago and the walls had a sort of sooty look to them.

So...... three coats of white paint, new curtains, new floor, new shelves and new light fixtures add a whole new chapter to this room. Climbing up and down the ladder to paint the ceiling was challenging, but, wow, what a transformation.

The next artist-in-residence, Sally Horne, arrives tomorrow. Hopefully, this new studio will be a joy for her to work in.

I’m also very much aware that fancy facilities don’t necessarily translate into inspired work. Even in my commercial grade, stainless steel, spotless kitchen, I can burn the toast. The question can even be raised: “Can one be given too much?”.  If we’re surrounded with luxury, does the artistic muse fall asleep?  Was my artistic output greater or lesser during the four years from 1992 till 1996 when I had no electricity, no running water, no toilet, no telephone?

Nothing human manufactured, anyway. And herein lies a possible answer as there were plenty of “earth” luxuries. Windgrove was a beautiful then as it is now so the key might be to balance the comforts with the discomforts.

Last week, when 12 year old Vincent and I sat on hard granite stumps and shared stories, we didn’t seem to mind the lack of a leather lounge suite.

Then again, there is the saying: “The mind can only absorb what the butt can endure.”

Upon returning from Hobart yesterday (about the time the sun was just beginning its descent over the edge of the world), I walked out to the Sunset Bench with its new deck. It had been built by Pino and myself just two days earlier and I had quickly come to like, even as one sat firmly on the bench, how the deck floated and nudged one’s spirit over that edge and out over the water.

The difference, however, between sitting on it the first couple of days when Bill’s and Pino’s energy and friendship were still amply present at Windgrove and last night when, once again, I was alone, was starkly evident.

It had only been a few hours since I had left Bill and Pino in Hobart to begin their journey back to America, and as I approached the Sunset Bench and saw it positioned empty out in space, the not-unexpected sadness of their departure stripped some of the color from the day. The deck and bench hovered black and white tempting me to “take a seat”, but it was difficult to climb on board for I feared something could take hold of me; something that I had kept pushed down for years.

The sadness I accept as a consequence of love. The fear, I will work on.

Oh, to embrace life fully—to embrace even friendship fully—is to spread the jam of bitter sweetness upon the bread of one’s existence. Get used to the flavour, I say. It is most nourishing.

*************

This morning the color has returned. If you don’t believe me, just take a walk with me down the Peace Path. Hidden in the bushes and floating two feet off the ground is Bill’s sculpture, “Fishing for Peace”.  Made up of found objects from the beach and my studio, this little boat of blue, maroon, orange and yellow will bring joy to anyone.

It gladdens the heart.

Weighing in at 1000 pounds and over ten feet/3 meters in length, the top half of the Gull Stone Bench has finally been hoisted into position within the circled native grass sanctuary overlooking Roaring Beach. After ten years in the making, walkers of the Peace Path now have one more place to rest and enjoy the view. It’s a stunner.

Everyone has heard variations of the following, but it bears repeating. Three people are all at the same construction site doing the same thing. When asked what they are doing the first person says, “Making $20 per hour” and the second person says, “framing up a wall”. The third person, however, says, “I’m building a cathedral”.

Having Bill and Pino around Windgrove for the past two weeks clearly demonstrates that their approach to work falls into the third category. Nothing is too difficult to do, or too demanding or too “un-vacation” like. The days spin with creative energy, resourceful work and playful banter. Their motivation stems from a philosophy that work of any sort can be worthwhile.

Jared Diamond writes in “Collapse” about how the younger people are leaving the farms in Montana for a more easy, more prosperous life elsewhere because they view their grandparents has having had to work too hard with little to show for it. Diamond then writes: “Montana farmers today who continue to farm into their old age do it in part because they love the lifestyle and take great pride in it. Jack Hirschy is still working on his ranch today at the age of 83, while his father Fred rode a horse on his 91st birthday.”

The clue that seems so obvious to me, but not to the younger people Diamond writes about, is that the farmers doing the hard, hazardous work are in their “80’s and older” and all the more happy for it. How many CEOs live this long?

Contentment and a long life do not always flow out of a cushioned life.

Let me add, however (before I scare off any future applicants to the artist-in-residence program), that along with the wonderfully hard work at Windgrove there are many options (and time) left open for play.

Look carefully at the above photo (especially the shadow area beneath the feet) and it appears that Melanie Mowinski is flying, paper in hand, going from tree to tree, drawing, drawing, drawing. Charcoal brought from America was soon used up. Charcoal from the Peace Fire, charcoal from elsewhere. Everywhere, broken, worn bits of charcoal littered the ground as Melanie tried to capture the essence of “tree” onto paper.

Urgency? 

You bet. And not just because Melanie only had a month at Windgrove as the resident artist. She, like all environmentally aware people intuitively knows that messing with the environment gets one into a mess of trouble.

Like hurricane Katrina.

Any mention of global warming behind the fate of New Orleans?

How many will suffer because of a lack of commitment to tackle this issue? Bush might continually state that “the American way of life is not negotiable”. He may live in denial about weather patterns changing because of America’s prodigious appetite to consume. But the handwriting is on more than one wall and what happened to New Orleans is about to happen more frequently and with more devastation to rich and poor alike regardless of Wall Street.

And this brings us back to Melanie climbing trees. She does so, not literally to escape the rising flood waters, but in a metaphoric way to search out, through drawings, how humans might connect with “tree”. In this way we humans can regard trees as our kin, if not our kind, and learn to live in a way that is protective, rather than destructive, not only of trees, but of all of life. Not to do so imperils the whole family tree.

Melanie, as a visual artist, wants all of us to look at trees the way the poet, William Stafford, did when he exclaimed: “Part of me.”

My advice.  Either start protecting the environment or install an inflatable raft in your attic. 

A quick postscript to the last blog entry.

I awoke yesterday morning to snow in the hills in the Roaring Beach water catchment area. Across Storm Bay, the distant hills to the west (photo) looked like a wintry Colorado scene. Walking to the beach for my surf, there were white pockets of hail scattered throughout the sand dunes. Brrrrr.

Normally, I would be ecstatic over such a dramatic climatic event, with snow not seen this close to sea level in 19 years. Yet, the host in me frets over the contentment of any of my guests and I tend to worry too much over whether or not they are comfortable. 

Kabir or, perhaps Rumi, would say something like:

“When the guest is happy,
I am delirious with joy.

When the guest is unsettled,
my mood goes dark with anxiety.”

Occasionally, wet snow flops out of the sky onto the ground and quickly melts. Earlier, the only saving grace of being for my daily surf was that the water was warmer than the air—10C/60F versus 3C/37F. I probably looked a strange sight bobbing in the sea as the coldest day of the winter whipped up frantic waves.

But from my vantage point, when Melanie Mowinski came jogging down the beach at the end of her morning 10K run, she was the one that looked slightly out of place in what could only be seen as a rather bleak setting. Between us, we couldn’t decide who was the crazier.

Melanie, arrived from the East coast of America at the tail end of a very hot July only to be hit with a blast of Antarctic air just as she was getting over jet lag. Pity.

However, as a Windgrove resident artist, she does have a heated studio, heated accommodation and a very hot shower to turn to for solace. Besides, this is a return visit after being here two years ago so she knew what to expect. From paper making to book making to water-colours, oils and wood cuts, Melanie uses the natural environment as both inspiration and contextual focus as she attempts, like many environmental artists, to help heal the human relationship to the natural world. I greatly admire her willingness to use her talents to seek transformation of the public’s perception of the environment rather than using her art as a path to fame and fortune.

Part of me would like the weather to be soft, windless and warm for the comfort of my guests and I, therefore, cringe a little bit each morning when the weather is a tad on the bone chilling wild side. Then again, I also know that whatever weather gets thrown at Melanie, it is a tool for learning. Set in this landscape, a very important tool, indeed.

I think she is loving living “at the edge”.

This week, when I was finally oiling the third and littlest of the “still lives”, I also happened to be reading an article in Resurgence magazine by Deepak Chopra that brought a new awareness to me about just what I was actually applying tung oil to.

“....It is possible today to compute the total number of atoms in the atmosphere on planet Earth. It’s possible to compute what you are inhaling and exhaling in one breath. With a little more calculation, we can show—beyond a shadow of doubt—that right this moment you have in your physical body at least a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, or the Buddha, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden, or George Bush. You have a million atoms right now that have been in the body of every single being that has existed since the dawn of creation. In just the last three weeks a quadrillion atoms (quadrillion means ten followed by fifteen zeros) have gone through your body and they have gone through the body of every other living species on this planet. So think of anything in the ecosystem right now—think of a tree in Africa, think of a squirrel in Siberia, think of a peasant in China, think of a taxi-driver in Calcutta, think of a small child in Afghanistan—and you have raw material in your body that was circulating there only three weeks ago. In less than one year you replace ninety-eight per cent of all the atoms in your body....”

“....At the atomic level you make a new liver every six weeks; a new skin once every five days; you replace your skeleton every three months; and you replace the raw material of your DNA every six weeks—it comes and goes like migratory birds....”

Awesome. 

I look out my window. There stands a native olive tree in a grove of silver peppermint trees. A wattle bird flits through; a wallaby chews on a spear of sagg grass. In the distance the ocean is calm where last week five humpback whales frolicked.

Oven on the dining room table the group of three “still lives” wait to be photographed.

I look at all of this and call out with William Stafford’s words and atoms literally coming from my mouth:  “Part of me.”.