Life on the Edge

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.

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 windgrove”, 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 it. 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.

In imagination is the preservation of wilderness. By this I mean one of two things. The first is that even while living deep within the confines of a city a person can close their eyes and imagine—quite vividly—the smells, visual details and tactile qualities of the green earth that they have in the past experienced. To call this up in one’s mind through one’s imagination is a powerful tool, not only for its calming and healing potential, but also to sustain and remind the political/environmental activist (while biding their time in solitary confinement at the local jail) why they engage in civil disobedience when pursuing legislative or other changes to protect and preserve wilderness.

The second meaning when I write “In imagination is the preservation of wilderness” is that an artist, through his/her imagination, has the ability (and quite possibility the responsibility) to create works of art that are expressive of the natural world and convey a sense of its inherent beauty. By so doing, these imaginative artistic renderings of nature’s beauty will serve to motivate people to protect wilderness areas because they have fallen in love with these areas through the imagination of the artist. Think of wilderness photographers Ansel Adams (America) or Peter Dombrovskis (Australia). Think of the poet Mary Oliver. Or, the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. All focus their artistic efforts on the sublime beauty of nature. Their collective works are, indeed, iconic representations of the earth’s beauty.

Likewise for me.

Whenever I hold a sea shell in the palm of my hand I constantly marvel at the exquisite mathematical genius that is its beauty. In my studio I use my remembering of the shell at the beach—my imagination—to recall it into form. (Definition One above)

Outside my studio, my desire is that whoever views this sculpture will taste something of the sea in their handling of it and , thereby, fall a tiny bit in love with the natural world. (Definition Two above)

What I have carved can be simply described as a sea shell nestled into an organic kelp form. It can also be looked at (with a bit of imagination) as the billowing kelp giving birth to a sea shell.

Many religious traditions go to great lengths to explain their faith intellectually, but their real lure is in the beauty of their rites and images. When Gerard Manley Hopkins claims that “the World is charged with the grandeur of God,” I take it to mean that we can glimpse God in the electric beauty of nature and art.
.....Thomas Moore, The Soul’s Religion

Last year (1 April 2006) when writing about a sculpture similar to this one, I created a story about the birth of Beauty. As a starting point, I used the creation myth of the goddess Venus as portrayed by Botticelli’s painting “The birth of Venus”; sometimes referred to as “The birth of Beauty”. I proposed that if Venus came from a sea shell (the sea shell being symbolic of nature), just possibly the artistic portrayal of the birth of a sea shell could take us even closer to the source of all beauty—the electric beauty of nature Thomas Moore speaks about where we can glimpse God.

A bit convoluted I confess, but what the hell, even if my thinking process is a bit spirally, it is my own imaginative myth making, isn’t it? The story might fail on an intellectual level, but I do hope that there is a lure for the viewer in these photo images of the sea shell emerging swollen and smooth from the pregnant top side of a double layering of mating kelp. A lure both enticing and informative.

Now before my friends start bagging me for being either too religious or too blasphemous, let me just quote again from Thomas Moore: It is better to be on the cusp between religion and secularity than to fall into either category. For there is [a] paradox at work: the appearance of religiosity is often in inverse proportion to the quality of religious practice.

And, as beautiful as I think this new sculpture is, I am reminded of the humbling words of Rumi:

“So delicate yesterday, the nightsinging birds
by the creek. Their words were:

You may make a jewelry flower
out of gold and rubies and emeralds,
but it will have no fragrance.“

Length of “A Shell’s Birth”—5 feet / 1.5 meters

For a year I lived on a farm in Korea that was run by an in-house Catholic priest and frequented regularly by other priests from throughout the country. They were wonderfully warm hearted men doing what they thought best for those in their charge. On the surface their public persona was exemplary. Behind closed doors, however, I learned of their being all too human, all to susceptible to the complexities of being human and all to susceptible to the many human frailties including sexual misconduct. I was saddened and appalled and left Korea with a hugh dislike for those in power who not only abused their power, but couldn’t walk the talk they were so ardently preaching.

That was nearly 40 years ago. Today I only have to look at myself and my own long shadow to see that being human—that being part of the animal kingdom—is to be set up for disappointment, if total perfection is what one aims for. Wearing the robes of goodliness is never sufficient enough to disguise the earthly animal donning them.

Late on Sunday, when most churches were having evening services, I planted the last of this year’s seedling trees. I held it up to the setting sun, much like a priest holding aloft a chalice or holy book, and with a prayer that honoured the miracle of its young life, placed it into the ground.

When I first started planting trees on this land 16 years ago, I strove for a 100% success rate ardently wishing, more or less expecting, that with enough understanding and technical expertise, this could happen.

The intervening years have taught me, however, that nothing can guarantee protection against the vicissitudes of life. We can water, we can fence, we can pile branches waist high, we can lay down mulch mats, we can increase the size of the the U.V. bags and we can use ever taller and thicker bamboo stakes, but in the end, just like the good priest in Korea, being of this world means being caught up in the wheel of chance where justice and injustice, righteousness and immorality, life and death are interchangeable.

On Wednesday, I spent the day in gale force winds re-bagging and re-staking trees that had been planted two to three years ago and were still surviving; trees next to, but outside of the new protective fencing. I hammered over two hundred stakes into the ground and did my best to protect these struggling young trees from the wind and wallabies. Maybe all this work will be for naught. It could happen that this particular section of the cliff will remain barren despite all the many years of attention, discipline and dedication given to it.

Being human, though, it is in my/your nature to strive for perfection and to live in hope that growth—whether physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual—is an ever-present possibility.

Nine years ago I gave a speech at the Australian national Students and Sustainability Conference and my opening remarks were:

As you sit here now, charged in the belief that you can help sustain this world through your environmental activism, I want to ask you: What do you have in your personal belief systems that will guide you through the rest of your twenties, your thirties, forties and beyond? Life is easy, when it’s sunny. How will you pick yourself up, though, when the storms of life ravage your heart? Like the spider who daily mends her web, how will you mend your wounds? Eventually, your friends will move on, your lover will vanish, technology will make your job redundant, and you will be left with nothing but your fragile ego self to carry you forward. Can you do it? Can you do it alone? Can you do it without embodying the belief that the sustainability of self is intimately linked to a sacred Earth?

On Tuesday of this week, Allana Beltram—the Weld Angel in the above photo—came to Windgrove to walk the Peace Path and sit by the Peace Fire in meditation to seek inspiration, strength, hope and a way through some personally troubling times. It was bad enough when the Tasmania Police and Forestry Tasmania sued her this past month for her artistic civil disobedience action to protect the Weld Forest by sitting in a tripod dressed up as an angel. But this week she also found out that her partner, environmental activist Ben Morrow (who also happens to be one of the Gunns 20 people being sued), has been diagnosed with cancer. Thirty three year old Ben spent nearly a year in the threatened forests of Tasmania’s Styx Valley at the Global Rescue Station helping to raise awareness of the plight of Tasmania’s ancient forests.

So how will Allana deal with this double whammy? How will Ben heal himself? The questions I asked nine years ago still resonate for me because these eco-warriors who are there on the front line need to remain with us in this world in ways that are physically, emotionally and spiritually vigourous.

At the conference I ended the speech with: “In thirty years’ time, I want all of you back here for another conference, still active in the environment movement, still compassionate about the Earth, still in love with life, still living a life of integrity, courage, compassion and humour. Do what is necessary now to make sure you’ll be here in the year 2028. It will come.

Become one with nature. Embody this truth and it will sustain you. Even in your darkest hour, you are not alone. There is a great support network out there. Allow it to open you up to release the great shout of joy that resides in you and that has been waiting for years to come out.”

Beyond the support network of the natural world that I referred to in the conference speech, there is also the human support network. Allana and Ben need our help to both defend their separate court cases as well as to have money to give Ben the opportunity to seek specialist treatment. We need them.

Checks can be sent to:

The Ben Morrow Fund
C/O The Wilderness Society
130 Davey St,
Hobart Tas. 7000
Australia

Every sound
has a home
from which it has come
to us
and a door
through which it is going
again
out into the world
to make another home.
...........  David Whyte—from “The Winter of Listening”

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water
...........  Masuo Basho

Slowly, slowly over a period of three months, both outside in the weather and inside the warming house, the meticulous oil painting “Oasis” gradually emerged out of winter’s silent gestating darkness and into the world of Spring singing a vibrational tapestry of colour. Meditate on it long enough and one’s understanding of reality shifts into connective realms visible yet hidden; transitory, yet eternal where the sound of color resonates through one’s very soul.

During these same months, in the wee hours of the night while the oils were drying waiting for the next day’s thin layer, my partner Sally Horne also worked on setting up a web site. Today, with an excitement that goes with any creative unveiling, Sally launches her “Moonstone Mandala” into the public arena. For a more in-depth exploration—both visual and written—of “Oasis” and all the other mandalas painted here at Windgrove by Sally go to:
http://www.moonstonemandala.com

While there, discover how colour and pattern weave magic circles in sacred and profound ways; where every mandala has a home from which it has come to us and a door through which it is going again out into the world to make another home;

where Sally’s frog of emergence splashes into the age of the internet.

“As the Philosopher says,
He who contemplates a statue
Shares the thought of the artist;
The statue itself does not.
As the soul contemplates nature,
The spirit the light, and the mind
The stars, every eye sees into
The matrix from which it was born.”
Kenneth Rexroth

Wild Roaring Beach faces south towards the great Southern Ocean. If one walks north over the sand dunes and forested hills, one drops down about five miles later to the northern side of the Tasman Peninsula and the serene waters of Norfolk Bay. Surfers find this calm section of the peninsula dead boring, but kayaking across these waters over to the Forestier Peninsula is a sublime experience. Once there, it is only a couple of miles overland to the home of Jerzy Michalski, a painter of extraordinary skill and depth whose urban existential motifs contrast sharply with his studio nestled into the natural landscape.

Sally took one of her mandala paintings over to Jerry this past Sunday for some technical advice and, while seeing the two of them converse over some of the alchemical processes of painting, I was struck by the power of Jerry’s paintings—seen strewn about the walls of his studio in the above photo—to convey the utter desperate quality of the human experience when it is confined to the urban prison edifices of corporate temples of power. 

The matrix from which I was born allows me to empathise with the desperateness of Jerzy’s solitary male figures. This very personal matrix of mine, however, also allows me an “exit strategy”, so to speak, down the fire escape, out onto the road, out of the city and into the very real healing community of wild nature. From this vantage point, I am more likely to achieve a more capable compassion and touch the outskirts, at least, of poet Kenneth Rexroth’s other words:

“Ultimately the fulfillment
Of reality demands that
Each person in the universe
Realize every one of the
Others in the fullness of love.”

Both above quotes excerpted from the epic poem, The Dragon and the Unicorn. 

"We are travelers on a cosmic journey—stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. But the expressions of life are ephemeral, momentary, transient. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, once said,

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds.
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.

We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.”
Deepak Chopra

Deer live deep in the forest
surviving on water and grass
stretching out under trees to sleep
how wonderful having no cares
but tie them up in a fancy hall
and give them the richest of foods
they won’t eat a bite all day
and soon their loveliness fades
-- Chinese poet Han Shan c. 800 AD --

It might appear strange to couple the above poem and photo together, but there are two comparisons to be found: appropriate giving and the importance of nature on our emotional, physical and spiritual health.

The best gift we can give anyone, including ourselves, is a natural world left vibrant and healthy for all ages and all species. Whatever is lovely in our life fades a bit each time the earth’s natural heritage is diminished. Nothing can make up for this loss. No fancy home, no gourmet meals, no nothing. We, like the deer, do best in wild nature. Take us away from nature and we slowly, imperceptibly fade away, shopping mall by shopping mall.

Baby Tama is having a New Zealand flowering Pahutakawa planted in her honour with the baby’s placenta placed first in the hole. The little girl standing, Arora, had a similar tree planted just behind this one three years ago. These children are directly bearing witness to the supreme importance of making a physical and spiritual connection to the living earth.

Along with each tree’s special birth significance, the parents Janine and Hape wanted to plant these trees here at Windgrove because, for them, the land itself is special. And why is it so special? I strongly suspect that it is the many people over the years who have contributed in so many ways that have made Windgrove what it is today. The $1,000 that went into the fencing of last week’s blog was donation money from people in America, Australia and Korea. Other people have given of their time to help build gardens and maintain the grounds. Today, a visiting person left behind a candle and three of her chooks’ eggs. Delicious.

A greedy man who piles up wealth
is like an owl who loves her chicks
the chicks grow up and eat their mother
wealth eventually swallows its owner
spread it around and blessings grow
hoard it and disaster arises
no wealth no disaster
flap your wings in the blue
Han Shan (known as Cold Mountain)

Footnote to poem. The belief that owl chicks eat their mother is an ancient myth in China.