Life on the Edge

One can never know for certain that the blessedness felt today will be upon us tomorrow. So, how do we survive the change, the ebbing tide? And what sustains us when the moon of our being moves into those voids of the unknown, totally lost? Who or what can pull us out?

It is April 1996, the last Sunday. Morning has such a serene sweetness to it that I can be seen in my studio, not hunched over the work at hand, but looking out over the she-oak and sagg pastured landscape so absorbed into it that I just stand there doing nothing. It is a delicious meditation. Early afternoon and I am on the beach idly poking around rocks and tidal pools with a tranquility that borders on sleep.

Then the helicopters start to fly past, low and directly overhead. From Hobart towards, I guess, Port Arthur. And then back again. Then again, and again like something out of Vietnam. Not having a telephone, I walk to my nearest neighbour’s house out of curiosity. No one at home. Nor at another neighbour’s house. Roaring Beach Road, normally busy on a warm, Sunday afternoon, has absolutely no traffic on it. Back home I do the very unusual and listen to the 6 o’clock news on the truck radio.

My world in an instant unravels; its goodness vanquished by the murders of 35 people. Amongst people I know—three dead and one seriously wounded. And, as if to make the darkness darker, the next day I learn of the suicide of a friend.

A long, very long month later I wake up early, before dawn, with the full moon slapping me on the face. Knowing that I will not get back to sleep, I dress warmly and climb to the top of the hill back of the bus and out to a cliff edge that rises 200 metres above the waters of Storm Bay and the Southern Ocean. I say a prayer for the Port Arthur victims. Sitting down, I watch the yellow-orange moon with its watery shaft slowly descend way to the south-west behind Bruny Island. In the pregnant half hour of half light before the full dawn, I continue to remain motionless, content to watch the landscape and seascape and sky-scape awake to a new day and allow myself the pleasure of immersion into its beauty. Deep within, the beginnings of a heart purr are felt.

Then… right at eye level just a few metres out in front of me on its early morning breakfast run, a white breasted sea eagle ever so majestically floats past on grand, outstretched wings.

For an instant and in that moment only, the “I” and “Thou” merge and I have the sensation that I am observing myself. Myself the hungry eagle and the thunderous cloud; the fruiting tree, the sea’s water. All is One. The awesome beauty and pain of life becomes inextricably linked and all seems just. Those nights that I woke up crying after Port Arthur were as much a part of life as this beautiful dawn. The great Wheel contains it all and I am intimately fused onto it.

Within a few seconds I lose the ability to hold onto this truth, but I feel, none the less, blest. On this particular Sunday morning, nature has given me a sermon on the mount. I have tasted of the sacrament and it is good. With the sun beginning to warm up my backside, I understand that a new day has begun; that a hearty breakfast waits for me, too; that there is honest work to be done in the healing of this planet, friends to gather round and play to be had.

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The above was written as part of the self-published monograph, Earthlinks, 1997.
The photo is of a wedge tailed eagle,

There is always a bit a solid wisdom coming from the cartoon character Hobbes. Yes, happiness can be found in a sun drenched field.

So why do we keep forgetting this?

This morning was sunny, but it was also a cold day with a stiff breeze blowing in from the southwest. While out and about enjoying its crispness, I came across this Bennett’s wallaby obviously agreeing with Hobbes about where to find happiness. With her back side protected from the wind by the dense foliage of a coastal wattle shrub, she seemed to be definitely enjoying soaking up the warmth of the sun. For long minutes we just shared the same space, happy in the moment, unconcerned about mortgages, car payments, financial success or power positioning.

And, back at the house, guess who I found trapped in the sink again all shivering and cold unable to climb up, out and over the steep stainless steel walls? Must be the tenth time I’ve rescued this tiny Little Pygmy-possum.

Acting like a big, sunny field, the warmth of my stomach and cupped hands provided this happy creature with a few minutes of solid contentment before she decided to scurry home under the stove where, no doubt, a few tasty crumbs awaited her. 

A figure floating across sky.
A Good Friday figure floating across sky?
Falling or rising? Descent or resurrection?

From Pattiann Rogers:

If Dying Means Becoming Pure Spirit

Then I think it must be like falling,
that giving-up of the body.
Who wouldn’t try to catch hold
of something fast, jerk forward, reaching
with the fingers spread, before the hands
were gone, before the arms
disappeared?

I could never willingly withdraw
from my ribs, pull out of the good bars
and cage, leave the marrow, the temple
of salt, of welling and subsiding, abandon
complacently the swallow, the tongue, the voice.

How could I regard a crab apple
flustered with long-stalked blossoms
or a sycamore hung with nutlets and tufts,
with no face to catch the shadow-splatter
of their limbs and leaves? How could I apprehend
mixed fields of cordgrasses and barleys,
with no breath to detect the scent
of their sedges and clefts?

Even though it’s said the spirit
is weightless, still, I think it must be
like falling a terrible fall,
to leave the body, to speed away
backwards, cut off from the humming
a cappella of pines, the skeltered
burring of grasshoppers, from the fragrances
of low wood fires beside a river, clean
ice on stalks of cattail and rye, lost
to the purple spice of scattered
thunders, no belly left to feel
the wide, easy range of the earth.

I admit to being angry
and frightened tonight at the thought
of such a plummeting.

A little orange fire in the ground reaching out to the larger world as reflected in the orange cloud in western sky. The dawn greeted me thus this morning at first light. Fire. Water. Air. Earth. They were all sharply present.

I was up early tossing sprigs of eucalypt, banksia, she-oak, tea-tree, blackwood, coastal wattle and other fragrant leaves onto this fire as a simple honouring of the specialness of today; a day that marks the anniversary of the lighting of the eternal Peace Fire flame four years ago on April 6, 2002

It began as a request from an aboriginal woman to create a healing fire for peace between blacks and whites, peace between men and women, peace between all peoples, and, peace between humanity and the natural world. For four years this fire has been smouldering along acting as smoke signal to a confused world announcing daily that there are yet beacons acting as still small voices promoting the message of peace; that there are people still willing to commit to the maintenance of this peace; that fire and smoke, in this instance, rises from the earth, not as an after-effect of a rocket attack on a defenceless home nor the burning off of ancient forests, but as a potent symbol of hope.

For the most part, I have stacked and then carried piece by piece, log by log, 50 tons of firewood and placed them into the now, deeply blackened rock lined pit that is the home of this eternal flame. During all this time of nearly 1,500 continuous days, wisps of smoke and burning embers have worked to keep fear and hatred in balance with love and trust. By any stretch of the imagination, I big task (not for me, but for the fire).

Has it been worth it?

On the down side, surely, one has to question the burning of this much firewood; the burning of which has neither warmed a home nor sizzled a sausage.

To defend the use of this much wood in a “rational and scientific” manner, there are two replies. Firstly, as the stated intention of the Peace Fire is to keep the flame burning for 600 years, if all the tonnage burned was added up over this 600 year period, it would equal what Forestry Tasmania and Gunns cut down in the first three hours of every 24 hour day. In effect, if in 600 years this Peace Fire can slow down the madness currently destroying Tasmania’s forests by just three hours, than the carbon trade off is balanced out. In other words, even at 12 tons per year, this amount doesn’t rate a blip on anyone’s radar. 

Secondly, and more quick to the point, the wood has come from a plantation clear fell and was going to be burnt anyway.

On the up side, however, there is no question that this Peace Fire has worked magic. More than 3000 people from all over the world have stopped, smelled and been witness to this eternal flame. Most have been inspired by what it represents. Most have gone back to their homeland a tiny bit more joyful, hopeful and uplifted in spirit. Most saw this tiny fire as an important component to the global peace movement. Most admired the commitment to start something that won’t be completed for several generations. Most found a new courage to keep walking the path of peace.

I say “most” because some of my closest friends still think this eternal flame is a daft idea. They’re celebrating with me today, though, not because of the fire, but in spite of it. To them, they have honoured and maintained a friendship with me for four years despite my “silly, sometimes incredulous ways”.

The world spins. Let’s all dance.

Meanwhile, a little flame in a remote part of Tasmania does its bit to foster peace throughout the land.

The birth of Venus, as delicately painted by Botticelli over five hundred years ago, portrays the myth of how Beauty “supposedly” came into the world. Beauty, in this instance, being portrayed as a woman.

But aren’t we short changing nature’s role in all this? By making humans the symbol (albeit a good looking one), isn’t this “a maiming of beauty when it is made personal” (to paraphrase D.H. Lawrence)? 

Let’s correct this anthropocentric error. Since the human has emerged from the sea on a vessel of the sea, let’s dedicate and delegate the sea shell as the most potent symbol to represent beauty. Marvellous idea, yes?

The important next question is: Where are sea shells born?

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the shells found at Roaring Beach seem to be born on the backs of the rare bull kelp species, kelpus submarinphilia elongi gigantica.

A few years ago active volcanic sea mounts were discovered off the coast of Tasmania. This year advanced scientific research voyages by CISRO accurately identified and mapped tall, undulating forests of the above rare kelp along the warming ridges of the volcano’s vents. What is most exciting, however, is that they found hidden throughout these dense kelp forests many hundreds of sea shell nurseries with the most common shell being the screw shell. The odd, fascinating twist in all this is that it appears that a fish is necessary for the propagation of the shell. For screw shells to come into existence, screw fish are required. And, as mysterious as what drives the salmon and eels, screw fish from the north Atlantic are guided through the oceans by an ancient homing device to find their way to these forests of kelp in the Southern Ocean. Once into the forest, the undulating kelp acts like multiple oiled hands and excites the swimming screw fish. Eventually, the movings and the rubbings bring forth a release of seed that is deposited along the slippery, fingering kelp.

How long the gestation period is, is still open to conjecture, but eventually bulges begin to form beneath the skin of the kelp. Shortly after this, the taut, bulbous top skin of the kelp bursts open and the fully sized, spiralling sea shell floats away to find its way to a Tasmanian beach.

Isn’t the world of nature a totally amazing, wow place?

Here at Roaring Beach screw shells are found in abundance, but occasionally, the more rare remnant of the shell’s afterbirth washes ashore. This week, I found one. And, as luck would have it, I was able to match it up with a screw shell that had arrived on the beach months earlier.

Speaking of month, what is today’s date?  Gosh, another April Fool’s Day.