Life on the Edge

Earlier in the week I had attempted to plant out some new seedlings near the cliff face, but the ground, after not having much rain going on near eight months, was bone dry. Not much chance of survival here for tiny roots. Determined to do something, the week was spent repairing the many seedling trees that had been planted in years past.

By being involved in the act of repairing, nurturing and promoting growth, this sharpened my sense of what it might mean to survive. By noticing the many trees withered and dead even within still standing protective plastic bags, this focused my attention on what (or who) continues through into maturity.

Low to the ground, solitary and scattered across the paddock are little clumps of “native cranberry bush”. Prickly to touch, the animals won’t eat them. The windward side displays the skeleton twigs of too much salt spray. To leeward, the green, lush leaves are remarkably healthy. In-between these two areas is the “orange belt”; the zone where life meets death within the one living organism.

Fascinating, I think, as I begin to wonder whether or not the human condition bears any resemblance to what I see on the native cranberry. What areas within me are now dead from too much of whatever? And, that beautiful orange complimenting the green; is that to be found somewhere as well? What keeps me flourishing? How do any of us survive?

Bombs drop in Lebanon. Depleted uranium floats in the dust in Iraq. Soldier-children bear arms. Mothers mourn in Israel, Gaza, Afghanistan, China, America.

Amnesty International runs a photo on the back of the Buddhist magazine, Tricycle, with the caption:

Sudan. 2004. A refugee who was shot and wounded while defending his daughters from armed militia members who tried to rape them.

I look in his face and wonder what is dead and what just might be green and moist; tender, loving, even hopeful. Perhaps?

Sometimes a little forethought can prevent larger problems. Therefore, several seedlings were planted out yesterday in the large circle as a test.

Next year I hope to establish in this 500 foot diameter circle a pentagram made up of 3000 Dagger Hakea and 300 White Flag Iris. As a lot of time will be saved if the seedlings don’t need protecting from the marauding wallabies, it is best to know now whether or not these particular plants are seen as delicious fodder for the wildlife or the equivalent of broccoli to children. Acting as sort of guinea pigs, if they get eaten I will have to erect a wallaby proof fence around the perimeter of the circle; a distance of around 1,500 feet or 500 meters. Not cheap. My fingers are crossed.

Looking at the above photo, it is obvious that I was not the one doing the digging. Because of my bad knee, I got to lie on the ground and bask in the sun. Mind you, watching someone else do all the work, is work in itself.

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A helping hand deserves a helping leg in return. Later in the day, I found myself lying down on the job again.

To practice the location of acupuncture points, Sally used me as a guinea pig, as well.

While lying in bed this morning, I looked out the window and saw “two lovers” floating in the branches of the eucalypt tree. From being horizontal myself, and from the perspective of the dreamy, newly awakened, this “couple” put a smile on my heart, charmed me into the day and helped heal the pain I was feeling after having slept alone in the window seat/bed while my lover slept in the bedroom.

No, we did not have a fight. We went to bed together (as one is wont to do in any healthy relationship), but early in the night, the aches in my legs and lower back made me squirm so much that I left the bedroom to protect the sleep of my partner, Sally.

It’s the knees. Despite the several, almost daily acupuncture treatments from Sally, a massage in Hobart on Wednesday and continuous heat treatments, the old bones are showing signs of wear and don’t respond so quickly anymore to anything but rest.

But, gosh, there is so much to do. As soon as the ground soften ups with winter rains, there are trees to plant and track maintenance work to be done. On a daily level, fire wood has to be split and wheelbarrowed to the house from the wood shed. The Peace Fire has to be tended to and the Peace Walk has to be walked. Windgrove’s one hundred acres of land have to be looked after and this requires lots of walking and functional knees.

More to the point, even if people came to do all the chores and manage the property, there is still the important act of me “looking at the property”, observing it and listening to it in all its many temperaments and moods. This, also, requires lots of walking and functional knees.

For instance, the photo below was taken yesterday during the running of a large swell. The salt spray moving into the hills was simply, softly beautiful, but to see this I had to walk out to the “Point”, even as my legs hurt, in order to photograph it. Who wants this sort of activity to be curtailed?

Last night, during a dark moment, I cursed at the frailty of my body and worried about the length of time left to be physically active on this earth. A time, possibly short, just when I have entered into the most loving and tender of relationships in my whole life. 

To this morning again.... Seeing “the couple” in the tree allowed me to hold to the thought that, even confined to a window seat, there is always a way to interact with nature and behold its wondrous qualities. As the morning light danced on the branches, I waited in quiet anticipation for the moment my lover would wake and come to join me.

In a recent interview, David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous, said this about the alphabet:

...I’m not trying to demonize the alphabet at all. I don’t think the alphabet is bad. What I’m trying to get people to realize is that it’s a very intense form of magic. ...I mean, it’s not by coincidence that the word “spell” has this double meaning—to arrange the letters in the right order to form a word, or to cast a magic. To spell a word, or to cast a magic spell. These two meanings were originally one and the same. In order to use this new technology, this new play of written shapes on the page, to learn to write and to read with the alphabet, was actually to learn a new form of magic, to excercise a new form of power in the world.

It’s outrageous: as soon as we look at these printed letters on the page we see what they say. They speak to us. That is not so different from a Hopi elder stepping out of her pueblo and focusing her eyes on a stone and hearing the stone speak. Or a Lakota man stepping out and seeing a spider crawling up a tree and focusing his eyes on that spider and hearing himself addressed by that spider. We do just the same thing, but we do it with our own written marks on the page. We look at them, and they speak to us. It’s an intensely concentrated form of animism. But it’s animism nonetheless, as outrageous as a talking stone.

Understanding our animistic past has always been of interest to me. Reading David’s description that our animistic connection can still be accessed via the alphabet is fascinating.

Ten years ago I wrote in a monograph about my work: Earth Link benches serve as a kind of Rosetta stone deciphering the forgotten past and reforging old links between culture and Nature; between its diverse peoples and the world they exist in. ...With a sculptor’s alphabet of sticks and stones, I hope to give shape to this felt connection.

Ever since moving to Windgrove I have endeavoured to see and hear the language of the trees and stones, birds and sky. Perhaps, by listening long enough, I might someday sculpt something worthy of its subject matter. Whether or not a boy from Detroit can become proficient in this in the way a Hopi or Lakota elder is proficient, remains to be seen. But, it’s been great fun trying.

Now, a new twist has been added to this quest. Knowing that I will be going to China later in the year (finances permitting), I have been seriously studying the Chinese language. The dining table is strewn with learning materials and my head is swimming with new sounds and enigmatic swirls of pictographic symbols.

When I look through the trees to the sea beyond, the abstract markings of the darkened branches seem not unlike the cursive markings of the Chinese characters I am studying. 

Should the branches start spelling out fu, shung, qu, guo, jiao, xiang or xian and truly begin speaking to me, I’ll celebrate quietly with a bottle of champagne (before checking myself into the nearest hospital).