Life on the Edge

Parts of a Rilke poem, translated by Coleman Barks, read:

“...whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your house which you know so well.....

... with your eyes slowly, slowly, lift one black tree up, so it stands against the sky: slender, alone…

...tenderly your eyes let it go...”

What Rilke is asking is for each of us to find the courage to leave the safety and comfort of our daily lives and begin the journey to connect to the whole of life.

In a translation by Joanna Macy/Anita Barrows there is the added line:

“Now the immense loneliness begins”

The people for whom I have the greatest admiration are those very people Rilke is imploring. It is never easy to move towards the light. Instead of unconditional support, parents, partners and society in general make this journey even more difficult. Instead of being the bow and releasing the pilgrim like an arrow into the world (Kahil Gibran’s analogy), they tend to impede and cling. What advice they offer is couched in fear.

Therefore, to those brave souls willing to seek answers beyond the known, I offer a gracious love to your well being in the coming New Year.

To those left behind tending the home fires, I offer a gracious support and will pray with you that those travelling on the great journey will be kept out of harm’s way.

To all pilgrims everywhere, if temporary refuge is needed, Windgrove is available.

In another translation of Rilke by Robert Bly, there is this poem:

“Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.”

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...”

Full moon tonight. Banjo frogs are trilling. The duck weed is layering pink over the pond.

All of this is a memory kick for a Mary Oliver poem that influenced me greatly into wanting to immerse myself into “the other”. Whether or not I succeed doesn’t really matter, for the journey has been and continues to be a real thrill.

Mud?  Love it.

Pink Moon—the Pond

You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by llittle the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do --
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting “come back”!
But your soul won’t listen;
in the distance it is unfolding
like a pair of wings, it is sparking
like hot wires.  So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees--
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones --
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water --
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are something else.
And that’s when it happens --
you see everything thru their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that’s when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It’s no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don’t fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a women’s body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it beats in it’s cage of water,
as it turns like a lovely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
Yes.

Mary Oliver

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.”

There was a little more traffic in the water this week that made my daily surf feel more like I was up at Bondi Beach in Sydney than here.

But, hey, I not complaining because it was all pretty exciting as the Australian national junior surf titles were being contested. For ten days 140 surfers, 14 to 18 years old, competed for team and individual honours. Aside from today when the waves were a bit small, the weather and swells were near perfect providing the boys and girls with some challenging and daunting conditions.

During the week several of the parents from the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia came by Windgrove for a walk at various times and all were astonished with how beautiful Roaring Beach was. “Such a secret”, they said. So, didn’t I feel proud to think how wonderful that Roaring Beach was chosen from all the other surf locations throughout Australia as this year’s site for a national championship.

I mean, really, look at this photo I took on opening day. Any wonder that Roaring Beach was chosen?