Life on the Edge

Generally, when people visit Windgrove they usually arrive by car, truck, bus or walk up from the beach, although I have had the occassional horse rider. Two days ago, however, a Tasmanian emergency helicopter came in real low and circled the property three times. When they approached the Peace Garden they slowed rlght down, almost to a hover, then respectfully, almost quietly, flew on.

It intrigues me to think about what they thought they were seeing. Was the spiral poking up out of its stone well part of Australia's latest missle defense shield? And what was the smoking "tin can" over by the Peace Fire hiding?

The helicopter was in the area because of a bush fire that had been burning in the hills behind Nubeena (about five miles from Windgrove) for several days. My hope is that the crew flew around the Peace Garden and offered up prayers for an end to the fire and the drought gripping this area, an end to the fire bombing of clearfelled old growth forests by Forestry Tasmania, and, an end to the fire power of all weapons of every country.

Twelve years ago today on 25 February 2001, the house that I had designed and helped build burned to the ground in an arson lit bushfire with a total loss of everything; and I mean everything. One of the first friends on the scene was Robyn Eckersley (pictured in the background waving) who, along with two other friends, Lorne Kriwoken and Nel Smit, enclosed me with hugs and tears, joyful that I did not go up in smoke along with the house. Robyn's partner, Peter Christoff, stands beside a small grove of she-oaks that were planted out in 1992 after I purchased Windgrove with the insurance money. So far 3,600 trees have been put across the land. Instead of lamenting my loss back in 1991, today I celebrated the growing beauty of these new trees with a walking recitation of the following (slightly altered) poem from an unknown author: "Where the morning sees the shadows Of the she-oak grove, there was nothing eleven years ago. Where the dry wind sowed the salted cliff top We brought water, planted seedlings, now the she-oaks grow."

Julie-Anne is the second person to become a resident Windgrove refugee; a program that enables professional people a chance to be nutured at Windgrove for a period of two weeks to two months while they focus their attention on the healing of our human connection to this earth.

Julie-Anne Lacko can be seen sitting on the stairs to the “penthouse deck” above the Peace bus preparing a conference/workshop outline about the Australian coal industry. If we acknowledge that our society's reliance on coal is not going to disappear overnight, the question we might ask is how can we make the coal industry as sustainable as possible? The conference Julie is helping to organize will be looking at minimising the social impact of mining and the environmental effects of mining and processing coal which is used to make electricity and  steel. A big task.

I'm taking a short break from my studio work to send out this blog to express my thanks for being part of an upcoming exhibition in Hobart called Future Perfect. When I go to bed at night my fingers go numb and my back and neck hurt from the awkward contortions my body has to get into in order to carve, but I fall asleep with a smile and a deep sense of satisfaction that what we are doing as a group is vitally important for the arts in Tasmania, for Tasmania's future, and in no small way, for peace in our forests. Personally speaking, I like what I see emerging from my studio and this would never have happened if I had not been asked to collaborate with Barbie Kjar and Heather Rose. Just the simple task of talking through various options with these two artists opened my mind to new possibilities of work that most likely would have remained hidden from me. For this I am thankful. But what I am most thankful for is the opportunity we artists have been given to express our moral, spiritual and political beliefs about the direction Tasmania can take into its future. This has excited me from the beginning and I have felt better about participating in this one exhibition than any exhibition in my life, group or solo. My sell out show in Philadelphia means what it says: I sold out. I sold out to the wealthy and to a system that sees art only as decoration, status, a collectors item. Any depth of meaning was lost behind the "name" of the artist and collector. I took my money and went back into my comfortable American life of denial to create only more objects of desire. In preparing for Future Perfect, I have been buoyed by the heart swelling of intention that what we are presenting to the public will be powerfully beautiful. But beautiful because our groups' overriding concern about the future vibrancy and quality of life on this wondrous island will make it so. I, myself, have been partly driven to do good just to refute the notion that those artists who oppose Forestry Tasmania as a sponsor of the 1080 on the Island festival are nothing more than a "motley bunch of greenies with no standing outside of Tasmania". Most importantly, though, I have been inspired to work long hours for the simple fact that I am proud to be one of the members of a coalition of visual artists and writers who love their island and who are willing to devote their energies and talents to help direct the public towards a deeply imaginative vision for this state. The arts cannot serve a more noble purpose.

All Hearts Day. A time to express one's love to another. A time to affirm one's desire to be wholly present in the company of the adored. A time to linger in the sensuous meshing of two hearts pressing into one. With feet bare upon the sand, I slowly walked Roaring Beach this morning. I massaged, was massaged, and a tingling earthly eroticism moved through me. "What a privledge" I thought. "What a stunning blessing it is to wake up each morning to such changing beauty; to such deep beauty. Oh, how I will miss you!" Yes, how I will miss you. When I die, because of so many days of requited love, I will do so happily and will contentedly fall into the waiting arms of my beloved. Yet, when my spirt joins the ancestral realm and my body of bones and ash is scattered along this beach and the hills of Windgrove, I will miss the immersion of the human, Peter, into this earth's body. I will miss the tasty salt of my beloved in my mouth; the swelling wave moving under my belly; the pungent fragrance of her being in my nostrils. Where water meets sky and where flesh touches spirit, this is where I will long to be. This is living; this is life. This I will miss. Thank you earth. Thank you for birthing me. Thank you for giving me this chance to act out a precious and wild life. Thank you for loving me; thank you for allowing me to love.

I spent most of today, Sunday, in my bare earth studio sculpting a small altar piece for a single stone. In a few weeks I will show a photo of the finished piece and an explanation of what it is about. However, what I want to share now is a poem that came to mind while I was carving. And to thank Mr. Lax, who, forty five years ago in the sixth grade, inspired in me an awe for learning. Purple by Alexis Rotella In the first grade Mrs. Lohr said my purple teepee wasn't realistic enough, that purple was no color for a tent, that purple was a color for people who died, that my drawing wasn't good enough to hang with the others. I walked back to my seat counting the swish swish swishes of my baggy corduroy trousers. With a black crayon night fall came to my purple tent in the middle of an afternoon. In second grade Mr. Barta said draw anything; he didn't care what. I left my paper blank and when he came around to my desk my heart beat like a tom tom. He touched my head with his big hand and in a soft voice said the snowfall how clean and white and beautiful.

I went to my open air studio early this morning to continue carving a sculpture for an upcoming exhibition, but the mood of the flies (because of an impending rain) was so bad, their continual harassment of my face drove me back into the safety of the house. This turned out to be a good thing as two friends were in the meditation space softly singing and making my being inside quite enjoyable. Krista Bernard (with guitar) has recently completed a solo, four year bicycle journey from Indonesia to Egypt. Her intent was to travel inwardly as she moved through her outward experiences and changing landscapes. Her "Bi" or double travels are worthy of publication. Any publishers out there? Katie "Ginko" Stackhouse (on the floor making garments) is a legal guardian of Windgrove's future and visits often to replenish her soul. An excitable spokesperson for the earth, her youthful vitality and artistic talents (music, printmaking, cake baking and dance) always enliven and contribute to the healing atmosphere of this place.

The day before Jeannie Mooney left to return to America after staying at Windgrove for nearly six weeks as a visiting artist, she unwrapped the fabric that had been placed around a silver peppermint tree during her time here. The stains left on the cloth will give her a starting point at her studio at Cranbrook.

On the way to the airport I asked Jeannie to sum up her visit in one sentence: "Tasmania is now woven into the whole cloth of my 'understory' with the bittersweetness of her immense beauty and sadness."

Myself and all her new friends will miss Jeannie and her abundant enthusiasm to engage people with her deep love for this earth.

********************** Windgrove is known as a "Refuge for Learning". Currently in Australia there is much debate about refugees and our government's treating them as though they were criminals.

I offer the following poem by Marge Piercy as a way of looking at "the other" in order to gain some insight into the difficulties faced by refugees. Out of compassion we will be better able to create a peaceful world.


Maggid

The courage to let go of the door, the handle.
The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very
stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles
of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast,
a child's naughtiness, a loud blattering storm
that slapped the roof hard, pouring through.

The courage to abandon the graves dug into the hill,
the small bones of children and the brittle bones
of the old whose marrow hunger had stolen;
the courage to desert the tree planted and only
begun to bear; the riverside where promises were
shaped; the street where their empty pots were broken.

The courage to leave the place whose language you learned
as early as your own, whose customs however dangerous
or demeaning, bind you like a halter
you have learned to pull inside, to move your load;
the land fertile with the blood spilled on it;
the roads mapped and annotated for survival.

The courage to walk out of the pain that is known
into the pain that cannot be imagined,
mapless, walking into the wilderness, going
barefoot with a canteen into the desert;
stuffed in the stinking hold of a rotting ship
sailing off the map into dragons' mouths,

Cathay, India, Siberia, goldeneh medina,
leaving bodies by the way like abandoned treasure.
So they walked out of Egypt. So they bribed their way
out of Russia under loads of straw; so they steamed
out of the bloody smoking charnelhouse of Europe
on overloaded freighters forbidden all ports --

out of pain into death or freedom or a different
painful dignity, into squalor and politics.
We Jews are all born of wanderers, with shoes
under our pillows and a memory of blood that is ours
raining down. We honor only those Jews who changed
tonight, those who chose the desert over bondage
who walked into the strange and became strangers
and gave birth to children who could look down
on them standing on their shoulders for having
been slaves. We honor those who let go of every-
thing but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought,
who became other by saving themselves.