Life on the Edge

Love comes quietly
Finally
Drops around me
on me
in the old way.

What did I know
thinking myself
able
to go alone
all the way.

Robert Creeley

This week I reached 60 years of age. Wow. Who would have thought this would have ever happened? Especially, to “us”, the first of the generation of spoiled, baby boomers (1946 - 1960)? Crossing this threshold is, indeed, a momentuous event.

Lots of water under lots of bridges and plenty of upturned stones.

In Chinese Astrology this is one of the most significant years in anyone’s life in that it marks the end of one 60 year cycle and the beginning of another. I’m a Fire Dog.

In this birthday blog there are many things I could discuss and go into greath depth about as there is much to celebrate. But I would like to focus on just one significant aspect and that aspect is strongly hinted at in the above poem and birthday breakfast photo. Namely, two instead of one.  In the first 60 year cycle I mostly remained unattached and a monkish bachelor. The number of years living with a woman could be counted on one hand (minus a thumb and a finger). This 2nd cycle is to be in the company (and whole, healthy arms) of a partner, Sally, the artist and Chinese medicine practitioner.

Heaven help her. Fire dogs are ever cordial folk whose good manners issue directly from an honest sense of altruism and love of humanity. However.... their enemies are their boiling passion, their inability to control their reactions to what they think of as wrong-doing and their unfortunate tendency to sputter, bluster and grouch. People let them down. Lovers reject their romantic ideals. Dirty politics blind them with rage.

Despite these apparent difficulties, Sally (an Earth Goat) seems willing to push the wheel barrow of love and keep the fires of intimacy fuelled.

Her birthday present to me is this exquisite mandala painting. It is full of symbolism. On a scroll of parchment paper, Sally wrote this about the mandala’s layered meaning.

Ageless endless love

Past, present and future merge to form the entirety of existence. Our existence.

...So here’s to the sharing of our ageless, endless, absolute love.

Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arch
holding up the astounding bridges.

Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two
opposing poles. Because inside human beings
is where God learns.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)

Desi, Chris, Paul and Heidi came last weekend to Windgrove bearing the offer of work. They, like Rilke, know that the “vision” is just half the equation; the mundane, daily slog of washing windows, splitting wood, moping floors and chopping onions is the other half. They gave of their time freely, willingly and with gratitude (gratitude that Windgrove exists).

I offer back my gratitude for their two days of cheerful company. The house shines again.

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And, not to be outdone by any human endeavour, yesterday I went to the outdoor, composting toilet and found these little possum turds on top of one of the two holes.

I’m not sure if the possum was trying to keep the toilet area clean (only mistakenly pooing on top of the wrong toilet because its command of English is limited), or, probably more true to the point, its cheeky personality just wanted to remind me that cleanliness is a matter of degree.

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Speaking of cheeky, three other visitors came to Windgrove over the weekend from mainland Australia and wanted to baptise themselves in the frigid winter waters of Roaring Beach. One of these visitors is the great grandson of Charles Darwin, Chris Darwin. Can you spot any evolutionary similarities or some semblance of a divine intelligence?

I’m experiencing difficulties with uploading photos and have, therefore, been unable to do this week’s blog entry. Please bear with me as I hope to be online again soon. 

It never ceases to amaze me when I think about rainbows. They’ll only ever happen when there is both sun and rain. Such a great analogy for understanding how one’s life is most magical only when it has both sunny days and stormy days.

People who prefer to have the nightly weather forecast read “Fine and sunny for tomorrow and for the rest of the week” just haven’t a clue to the importance of a bit of turbulence. And, I bet their lives remain, for the most part, passionless.

The term “fine and perfect” when describing the weather should actually mean “a bit of sun, a bit of rain, a bit of wind, a bit of heat, even a bit of hail thrown in for good measure”.

Come to think of it, this is exactly how the weather has been around here this past week: fine and perfect.

(And speaking of passion, my girlfriend arrives next week from Melbourne. We get along just fine and perfect.)

Each day a little closer.

The process to survey the two blocks of land I intend to sell for the further development of the Windgrove Artist-in-resident program was begun this week. An interesting process, indeed, as we walked and drove any number of kilometres just to do the preliminary work of establishing the north and east boundaries of Windgrove’s 100 acres. Next week the west and south boundaries. Only then, in the third week, will the boundary lines for the actual smaller 6 and 8 acre blocks being sold get established.

One might wonder why didn’t we just do the two small blocks and leave it at that? You know, find the stump with the 80 year old axe mark in it that farmer John used to initially clear this land and use this as a starting point and go from there. I mean, what’s a few meters or feet between good neighbours when we’re talking acres?

Good question, I thought, as I helped carry up some survey equipment to the top of a hill nearly a mile away from the blocks to be sold (and off my property, as well). But what is required by law is that our survey had to be accurate to within one mm or 1/16th of an inch. To pinpoint the corners of the existing Windgrove acreage to this degree of accuracy meant we had to start at a government established “trig” point; points located on certain hill tops around Tasmania consisting of a brass disk set into concrete.

From this brass disk, all other lines are drawn.

Hence, the need to climb the hill.

But, oh, was the view divine.

On my bookshelf there is a well read anthology of poems, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. In section #2 of this book, Fathers’ Prayers for Sons and Daughters, there is an excerpt from a poem by William Butler Yeats.

This poem seems apt for today’s blog because recently I have had several conversations with friends about the precariousness of watching their children, in today’s crazy world, grow from tiny bundles of joy into an adult mixture of seemingly contradictory dualisms.

Every parent wants their child to enter into the fullness of life with wisdom, courage, skill, compassion and grace. Most would want their child to have many friends and to choose a decent partner based on heart love. Most will fret for many years; possibly, many more years than at first seemed necessary.

How does the rainbow magic of a child’s presence stay whole through the storm?

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For a bit of clarification, near the end of his poem, Yeats writes about “Helen” and the “Great Queen”. These would be Helen of Troy, who chose to abandon her husband and child for an affair with Paris (resulting in the Trojan War), and, Aphrodite, who, although married to the great blacksmith/craftsman Hephaestus, had many, many lovers.

Interesting to note that the “bandy-legs” of Hephaestus were the result of his parents (Zeus and Hera) tossing him outside the family home because he was an ugly baby.

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from: A Prayer for my Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack— and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that Great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.