Life on the Edge

I ended my last blog entry (August 19) with the sentence: "There just might be a saint among the passengers". This was in reference to the boat people and refugees coming to Australia and how it behoves us to not cast prejudicial judgement upon these or any other people seeking a better life. Take a walk in their shoes for just a week. In a not too dissimilar vein, I maintain an open door policy here at Windgrove and allow the public to visit the grounds and gain access to my studio. A heavier than usual number of people (around 60) came this past weekend because of Tasmania's "Living Artists Week" being promoted.

There is certainly that part of me that prefers not to have to present myself to the public at large because of the physical and emotional energy it requires to have to constantly be welcoming and cheerful to strangers and to continually have to explain myself and my work over and over. But I also genuinely want to share the stories I have experienced here and the environmental reasons behind my sculpture. I do enjoy explaining the purpose behind the Windgrove Centre. And....there just "might be a saint among the visitors". Not that we are not all capable of being saints, but there are those special people out there who can grace one's life even if you only meet with them for a few minutes on a calm day at Roaring Beach. One such person was an elderly man, who, upon completing the two kilometre Peace Walk, came into my studio and said that the only word he could come up with to describe his experience at Windgrove was "votive". How poetic. How lovely. How apt. Votive: "Dedicated, consecrated, offered, erected, etc. in consequence of or in fulfilment of a vow." Then there was Bruce Wall who engaged me in conversation twice; before and after his walk around the property. How knowledgeable and "caring" he felt towards the timber in my studio and to the trees, forests and animals of Tasmania. It was only at the end of his visit did I find out that he works for Forestry Tasmania. Bruce's "ship" is the Forestry Tasmania office in Hobart. Who am I to question the heart politics of those individuals who work in a government enterprise that I have heavily criticised? It shows, yet again, the difficulties of arguing "one's case" when those "on the other side" are such good people. It is so much easier to demonise people; to imagine them as having thrown their children overboard. It points out the need for all sides to sit down and listen to the full story of each other's history. It also points out the need for governments to not purposely drive a wedge between its citizens in order to gain a few votes. Governments should think of "vote" as in "votive". And to use their legislative powers to bring all their citizens a deeper connection to this earth.

The icing on the cake? Yesterday was also the day 17 university students from Ithaca College, New York came for lunch and an afternoon of exploration. When I saw them all gathered in the house, later in the day when it was getting dark and colder outside, I felt a real tenderness toward them and hoping their futures held many moments of happiness. I was also grateful to be able to offer to these young, inquiring souls, a few hours of my time; an opportunity to share my quirky sense of the great mystery called life. As they drove off into the night, I wished them well upon their return to America; I wished them strength and courage to deal with what they will certainly encounter; I wished them compassion and tolerance in their quest to become our future leaders and eventual elders.

Twenty five Australian wood artists were invited to submit work for this year's 2004 Tweed Wood Biennial; the exhibition's brief being that the sculpture represent the artist's interpretation of the theme "Re:Cycle". The intention of the Tweed River Art Gallery was that the wood used for the sculpture should have already been used for another purpose. Simple enough. But...... once I started considering the etymology of the word "Re:Cycle", it became apparent that "Re" had more to do with signifying "in reference to" rather than "back again". The acceptance of the latter definition would have the exhibition spelled "Recycle" (without the colon); a word so recently coined (1934) that it can only be found in the appenda of the Oxford dictionary ("to convert waste into material that can be used again"). So...... with the more abstract former definition, I have given myself the liberty of referencing "Cycles"; in particular, the "cyclic" nature of stories and myths in our culture; looking at how stories of the past might be cycled back into contemporary usage; looking at the wisdom of yesterday and seeing how it might apply to today's world. Therefore...... my personal intention is to cycle back for consideration the story of Christ on the Sea of Galilee, the New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, and, the Biblical commands of "Love thy neighbour as thyself", "Do unto others as you would have them do onto you" and "Do not mistreat a foreigner, for you were once a foreigner". Why?...... because these offer us Australians guidance in the handling of today's boat people crisis; they help us empathise with the refugees' personal struggles, wants and needs. More importantly, they are a jabbing reminder to John Howard, Amanda Vanstone and other supposed "Christian" politicians, that they need to put into practice those stories they should have learned in Sunday School. Peering over the side of the boat that is the sculpture, "Who's On Board?", is it not possible to see in the hull twelve little stone people plus one captain? Is it not possible to identify these people as today's boat people; those desperate individuals attempting to reach the shores of Australia? This is not simply an exquisitely carved boat filled with some tiny stones. Instead, it is an opportunity to go beyond aesthetics, to go deeper and to imagine people tossed about in an uncertain, wild sea as they make their way towards...... Towards what, where? The boat is crowded, the boat is pitching up a giant wave and the destination unknown. Wherever these people are going, they are willing to risk all to get there. They are willing to enter the dark unknown; willing to gamble that the captain will take them safely through their wilderness experiences to the shores of some distant Promised Land. Those huddled below are seeking a better and safer life away from their tortured and traumatised countries of birth. Do we have any cultural stories to guide us in the handling of these refugees? Despite whether or not they are "legal" or illegal" immigrants, hopefully some spark of empathy will enter into the hearts of the gallery goers as they walk about the exhibition (dressed in their comfortable fineries) and pure compassion will enter their hearts as it once did for the Good Samaritan. The viewer might also see in this boat, not only people from Afghanistan or Iraq, but the twelve disciples of Christ as he preached to them and calmed the stormy waters as they crossed the Sea of Galilee. Is this not an apt comparison? Is there not a "cyclic" event here that constantly repeats how "searching" people in any age are willing to leave all behind to gain a better future? Who are we to question those who have sought refuge in Australia or elsewhere? Who are we to question whether or not today's refugees are criminals? Who are we to deny them healing, humanitarian aid? Who are we to lock away any human -- child or adult -- caught up in the terrorist activities of this world? Who are we to deny anyone safe passage? There just might be a saint among the passengers.

An Ending........ Continuing on with the discussion of "ancestors" begun in the last blog, it has occurred to me that after hundreds of thousands of biological transfers of coded DNA between "males" and "females" over the ages, I am, not only the most recent incarnation, but also the last living being on this particular long thread of existence. This is because of the two knives at work four years ago. One held by the surgeon performing the vasectomy; the other, by some haunting figure of time swinging a vapourous scythe, forever slamming the door shut on any future evolutionary perfecting. After all those generational preparations to create the genetically modified organism called me, I will not pass on any of this coded information to the future for the simple reason that I have never fathered, nor am capable of fathering, any child into this world. Stretching back to the dawn of time and winding its way to the present, one can only imagine the fascinating road my DNA has travelled. However, this particular evolutionary experiment stops with me. In short, I am a genetic dead end. I wish to thank all my forefathers and foremothers for their collective joinings and hope that they, in their ethereal knowing, look upon my physical presence and see a worthy "end result". It would be nice to make them proud.

A Continuation......... This past Sunday, three generations gathered at Windgrove to plant a tree in honour of the continuation of their family's genetic thread of existence. A flowering Pahutakawa tree was placed in the ground, along with the birth placenta, by several friends and maternal grandparents, Kathryn and Dennis, the father, Hape, and mother, Janine. The six day old baby, Arora-Nui (Australian aboriginal and New Zealand Maori for "Great Cockatoo") presided over the occasion. May Arora-Nui be "the One" to lead all of us out of the Wilderness. Or, as the father said, "May she be the one to lead us back into the wilderness". My deep appreciation for this past weekend is being a member in the birth celebrations of the great Family of Humankind. It gives me comfort to know that there are children physically linked, in this manner, to Windgrove. May the eleven trees already planted in their names be joined by many others. May they be fruitful and multiply.

Walking along the beach this week, I saw several "creatures" washed ashore. Looking into the eye of the squid, I couldn't help but see a portion of myself. Are we related? When we hear the word "ancestor", who does that bring to mind? It is easy enough to understand that one's grandparents or great, great grandparents are our ancestors. Go back ten, twenty and thirty generations and it is still easy to comprehend that those people born 1000 years ago are biologically linked to us. What gets increasingly more difficult to embody is the notion that our "ancestors" might not look like us in the slightest. I'm not talking about "Cro-Magnon" ancestors; I'm implying someone, something who was our forebear in the very, very, very distant past. Not in the Tertiary time period, nor the Cretaceous or Jurassic. Or even the Devonian. We're looking back 500 million years ago into the Cambrian when the earliest members of our family tree were floating about in sun warmed ponds. In this family, one brother swam off to the right, a sister swam off to the left and your great grandmother (to the 10th power) stayed put and married the boy next door.

The rest they say, is evolutionary history. The ancient brother's fate eventually led to today's Fairy penguin; his sister's fate the Squid; all of us reading this blog arrived as humans, and, somewhere in all this the sea gull flew in.

Bill Bryson, in "A Short History of Nearly Everything", say this: "The tiniest deviation" (i.e. swimming left or right) "and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walrus-like on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms." And, for a good reason to wake up with a smile every morning, consider this by Bryson, as well: "Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely -- make that miraculously -- fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you." Three cheers for our good fortune. May we do good with the time we have been given.