Life on the Edge

Beautiful

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes you will
That you’re beautiful as you feel

Carole King came to Hobart last night and gave all of us “oldies” a thrilling concert. (Of the 4,000 people swaying and singing nostalgically in their chairs, maybe 50 were under 40.)

A true elder, she carries her message of love for each other and for this earth to many appreciative people. She reminds us that there is no age where one retires from activism or gives up on trying. And the words from her many songs that held us together in the 70’s are just as relevant today.

Obviously, the above photo is made up people who are not in my generational age group. These are some of the 31 fifteen year old Steiner school students from the mainland who were waiting for me this morning when I arrived back from my overnight trip to Hobart.

I greeted them with:  “You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart.”

Beyond that, my close aboriginal friend, Harri, led the students in a day long ritual of talking up mother earth and finding the specialness and beauty that was unique to each one of them. They were sent out in search of seven objects representing: “who they were, happiness, sadness, love, fear, peace and conflict”.  Then, using jute, string and other fasteners, they bound the seven gathered objects together into single talisman.

Simple, yet powerful and meaningful. Just like Carole King’s music.

At one point we gathered around the Peace Fire and, just like last night, we raised our hands to the sky in appreciation for the love that surrounds us constantly. The words spoken and sung by Harri might have been different from those of Carol King, but the message was universal.

Harri spoke about what the Earth sings to us each and every day.  Let me try to translate:

When you’re down and troubled
And you need some loving care
And nothing, nothing is going right
Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest night

You just call out my name
And you know wherever I am
I’ll come running to see you again
winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there
You’ve got a friend

Carole King— You’ve Got A Friend

This is a great story. A story that supports and gives hope to the many individuals in the world seeking change, but who sometimes, like myself, wonder and doubt that their work is having any affect; especially, on those hugh and seemingly immovable government or corporate bodies. 

On Monday, as I sat in the bull’s eye middle of the large pastured circle on the Windgrove headland (whose circumference is marked by 300 she-oak trees), I took a mirror and, using the sun’s rays, flashed an ocean going cruise liner some 20 kilometres/15 miles away.

It turned and headed straight towards me.

Wow!!  A tiny beam of light was powerful enough to have a 200 meter/ 650 foot, 14 stories tall passenger ship change directions. It took me completely by surprise.

Half an hour later the ship came as close as it could to Windgrove without running into Wedge Island; its massive size an impressive sight as it sailed past. Before turning and heading back out to sea, with three long blasts from the ship’s horn followed by one short, the captain signalled a “thank you and good-bye”.

(I later found out that for the captain to alter his planned course to New Zealand he had to get special permission from the Hobart Port Authority.)

Needless to say, I felt elated. As though the mouse was able to bring the elephant to his doorstep. As though the mountain had been moved with just a thought.

And, I also felt that a significant, if not profound, connection had been made between myself and a few of the people on board The World. 

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Let’s unwind the story a bit.

At 44,000 tons, The World is the largest, privately owned cruise liner circling the globe. It’s passengers purchase apartments on the ship complete with kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms similar to any land based condominium arrangement with the major difference being that the view out the ship’s “picture” windows constantly change. Obviously, the people on board The World are enormously wealthy. Being multinational, multicultural and highly educated, they are also enormously aware of the world’s problems and more than willing and capable of helping others. (One of the apartment owners is the Iranian-American woman, Anousheh Ansari, who just spent $20 million to be the first woman tourist and the first Muslim to fly into space.)

Last week, two Americans from the ship, Lincoln and Suzy Boehm, came out to Windgrove for a visit. They did so because years earlier they had been made aware of Windgrove’s focus on peace and the environment (as well as my individual studio sculpture work) while viewing the SBS Global Village documentary on Windgrove.

We walked the Peace Path. We talked about art, the environment and politics. We made a connection. Hours later, they left excited, not solely because they had fallen in love with one of my sculptures, but because they had sensed and were moved by all that comprises Windgrove.  From the landscape, to the eternal flame, to the wind, to the towering Spiral, to the benches, to the floating eagles, to the piercing light breaking through clouds, to the home brewed coffee, to the 6,000 planted trees and to the messy, somewhat disorganised studio I work in, Lincoln and Suzy had experienced the magic of a place where art and ecology, Chinese medicine and Buddhist philosophy come together in a dialogue for peace.

After giving an impressive tour of their “home”, over dinner the next night the Boehms mentioned that the ship would be sailing out of Hobart at noon on Monday. When Monday rolled around, I sent an email to them writing that, even though they might not see me, I would be in the middle of the circle waving good-bye.

Unbeknownst to me, Lincoln and Suzy on Monday morning had carried my sculpture to the bridge of the boat and, with several fellow passengers gathered around, they explained to them and to the captain what Windgrove was all about and how the two people living there were devoting their lives, in their own individual small ways, to world peace. All eyes scanned the coastline looking for the circle.

Sitting on the “dashboard” of the captain’s bridge, the spiral sculpture must have beamed a talisman’s energy for when the little light from the circle at Windgrove flickered across the expanse of Storm Bay and into the ship’s bridge something happened to those who witnessed it for, as I was told later, a great cheer went up from the boat.

What else would have caused this ship to change course if not the coming together of several hearts and minds all yearning for peace to prevail on this earth?

And herein lies the meaning of this story.  With all their global travels and certain knowledge and grasp of the complex inner workings of the political and corporate landscape, it is impressive that a simple concept like Windgrove can move and excite such people.

And perhaps motivate?

Who knows? Perhaps the whole direction of their lives might have been altered by a simple flame emanating from a single, small source. Perhaps the eternal flame that burns at Windgrove caused something that was lying dormant to be rekindled in these talented people and will motivate them to be of even greater service to the world’s poor, to the world’s environment and to seek change for a better, more just world. I’m certain Suzy and Lincoln will continue their good work.

**********

That Monday afternoon I stood in the middle of the circle and waved my own “thank you and good-bye”.  I felt terribly proud of living in Tasmania and being one of the creators here at Windgrove. I also felt, in no small way, linked to the rest of the world with its global network of activists and philanthropic supporters. Such a family. Such awesome power.

What a day.

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.

************

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.

**************

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?

Geoffrey Lea is a Tasmanian environmental activist whose tool of choice is his camera. Recently, he was named Canon/ Landscape Photographer of the Year 2006 and deservedly so. The stunning photo below, of sea breaking over rocks taken at Port Davey in Tasmania’s southwest, gained a gold distinction and was ranked in the top ten across all categories (more than 1,500 images).

A few years ago, Geoffrey came to Windgrove with a commission to photograph the land and my sculptural benches for inclusion in a book on Australian Gardens (The Open Garden/Allen&Unwin publishers). The day was overcast and bleak and I fretted that the dark, ominous clouds would hamper his efforts to get even one decent photograph, let alone the three needed. Well, his mastery of light and dark, of clouds and contrasts resulted in the publishers using two of the images for double page spreads. Wasn’t I fortunate that this master of the dark cloud happened by on this particular day?

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For several weeks now I have been looking at the Port Davey photograph and am still awed by its sheer beauty and chaotic power. 

I have looked around where I live and have tried to imagine capturing such an image.

What is there around here, I have asked, that speaks of something: overwhelmingly daunting, beyond control, needing courage to tackle, seemingly impossible to fathom, an overpowering sense of helplessness, or, where even the gods fear to tread?

For days I have stalked this land waiting for just the right moment, just the right combination of events to give me what I wanted. But to no avail. In the end I would come home empty handed.

And then I saw it. Right in front of my eyes. What I had been waiting for. The image that would capture all the meaning…

of fear,

of dread,

of wildness untamed,

of despair and foreboding.

.

Just after 8 AM. My walk to the Peace Fire to replenish the eternal flame and shake out my bones to wake up sleepy muscles has been done. I now sit in one corner of the house in my favourite cushioned breakfast seat quietly munching toast. To my left are French doors that open to the wide outside, but my focus is not there just yet.

Inside, directly across, over the top of the dining table, a dramatic shaft of light points to, highlights and entices my gaze to rest upon my “wall friends”, Melanie, Paulus and Louise. These (and others) are people outside of Tasmania taking up residence here in the form of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints and bowls.

“Good morning”, I say to them and my heart bounces up with the joy of knowing them and having their goodness in my life.

On one hand, they are sentries. They guard this house from the demons of loneliness that, if allowed, would come marching through, whenever. On the other hand, they are jovial sprites bouncing around the room dancing jigs of merriment.

Today, especially today, like little laughing Buddha’s, they make me smile.

So, to them and to all the other “house friends” hanging about, I want to share a William Stafford poem written as a dedication to a book of his poems.

Smoke Signals

There are people on a parallel way. We do not
see them often, or even think of them often,
but it is precious to us that they are sharing
the world. Something about how they have accepted
their lives, or how the sunlight happens to them,
helps us to hold the strange, enigmatic days
in line for our own living. It is important
that these people know this recognition, but
it is also important that no purpose or obligation
related to this be intruded into their lives.

This book intends to be for anyone, but especially
for those on that parallel way:  here is a smoke
signal, unmistakable but unobtrusive—we are
following what comes, going through the world,
knowing each other, building our little fires. 

A whisper of hair across a pensive look whilst a whisp of wind guides tomorrow through the air.

Long time friend and colleague, Alexandra deBlas, has just resigned from her job as an environmental journalist with the ABC. And, no wonder. A few months earlier “the board” axed her highly rated and highly successful Earth Beat program; a program that she had presented for over seven years. (With a conservative government in power it seems that environmental news and reporting is not deemed a worthwhile subject for the public to have any intelligent awareness about.) Not wanting to keep her talents on the back burner until there was a shift in priorities at the ABC, when the Australian Bush Heritage Fund approached Ali to become their communications strategist, she accepted.

All of us who have ever made major changes in our lives, would understand the feelings of butterflies in the stomach and the middle-of-the night questions of indecision that come to anyone about to embark on a new career. Winds of Change always come with a little something extra, it seems.

As we sat in a little sheltered rock garden at the Point looking out over the vastness of the sea and pondering many of life’s questions, Ali quietly recited portions of a David Whyte poem. The full poem reads:

Song For the Salmon

For too many days now I have not written of the sea,
nor the rivers, nor the shifting currents
we find between the islands

For too many nights now I have not imagined the salmon
threading the dark streams of reflected stars,
nor have I dreamt of his longing
nor the lithe swing of his tail toward dawn

I have not given myself to the depth to which he goes,
to the cargoes of crystal water, cold with salt,
nor the enormous plains of ocean swaying beneath the moon.

I have not felt the lifted arms of the ocean
opening its white hands on the seashore,
nor the salted wind, whole and healthy
filling the chest with living air.

I have not heard those waves
fallen out of heaven onto earth,
nor the tumult of sound and the satisfaction
of a thousand miles of ocean
giving up its strength on the sand.

But now I have spoken of that great sea,
the ocean of longing shifts through me,
the blessed inner star of navigation
moves in the dark sky above
and I am ready like the young salmon
to leave his river, blessed with hunger
for a great journey on the drawing tide.

And, may Ali be blessed on this, her new great journey.

On the Monday morning of last week as I was driving off the Tasman Peninsula taking resident artist, Melanie, to the airport to fly back to the other side of the world (and over hurricane Katrina), our dear Margaret Scott departed as well; aged 71. Not, however, to another world. Her spirit and body will remain here, in and of this earth. It was only a few months ago that I presented Margaret with her portion of the Windgrove Peace Mandala and officially dubbed her a Windgrove Laureate (by kissing her twice on each marvelous cheek).

On a hillside cemetery near her home yesterday, son Marcus and daughter Sarah met with a Tasman Council officer to discuss her burial. I was present because the family had asked me to design a memorial—something subtle, something subversive—and I wanted to get a feel of where her physical remains would rest for the next long while, undisturbed except by time itself. 

The design will come. The task now is to plant thoughts and ideas like seeds into my heart and mind and allow them to do their thing and blossom when ready. Part of this preparation has been to go back through some of Margaret’s books of prose and poetry and re-familarize myself with her work.

Out of these readings I am particularily drawn to this poem Margaret wrote for her beloved second husband Michael Scott when he died.

“Elegies M.F.C.S.  1928 -1984”

1
At ten to twelve by the grandfather clock
in the hall you stopped breathing in your sleep.
I put down the telephone and came back
to the study door—as I’d come for years
with questions, news and jokes --
meaning, I think, to tell you you were dead,
but the light of the lamp beat down
on the arm and seat of your chair
and the darkness filled with glimmering books
reeled and shook with your absence as though
from the long stroke of a black bell.
The cat was mewing, mewing down in the kitchen
and I went as on ordinary nights to open a door
but this was the first meeting with life
from the new world in which no search
could find you, so I watched wary of strangeness
as the pleased arch of its back wound round
my legs, and it strolled, taking breath for granted,
down the path. There was no wind.
Nothing but garden trees rising against
the glow of Saturday night and the pulse of silence.

2.
Friends who mean to be kind speak of a happy release
and it’s true that in the week before you died
you couldn’t eat or walk, your mind was going.
You spoke of prisons and woke at night from
tormenting dreams of actions for negligence.
Between sips of Sustagen made at three in the
morning you called for documents, gave contrary
directions concerning capital trials and execution.
On the day of your death, your compassionate
philosopher’s face broke in chaotic fragments --
a nose sharp as a fin, a flake of dark moustache,
ulcers, a tooth, a harsh bubbling snore.
But time like your bones collapsed in on itself.
Your waking eyes were blue. You said, ‘Dear love,
dear love’ as tenderly as on that summer night
in the dunes beyond the yacht club.
Holding your hand, I remembered how you sat
by my bed on the day our child was born and,
to take my mind off the pain, gave a most lucid elegant
disquisition on contingent and necessary statements.
The hearing’s over now, the case is lost,
our past locked up beyond the reach of proof.

----- from “The Black Swans”; published 1988

----- portrait photo of Margaret Scott by Alan Moyle for the book “Margaret Scott: a little more”

Sitting for a group photo this week are long time friends, Roger Ash-Wheeler on the left and Paulus Berensohn in the middle. The average of our three ages is exactly 60 years; enough to entitle us to wear these "Old Growth" tee shirts. Both men are recipients of one of the eight Peace Mandala stones. (see Archives/January 18) In Tasmania, wearing such a slogan would be the equivalent of walking down the streets in Washington D.C. with a tee shirt that read "Bush is an asshole". Yes, there are those good folk that agree with the idea of saving ancient rain forests, but because being a "spokesperson" for change generally pits one up against the current majority political view (even if corrupt), it takes a consistent will to maintain one's commitment to change. And change is what my two friends are about. And why I admire them. Roger, when fresh out of university, lived as a Tibetan Buddhist monk for ten years until he met his wife, Clair, who lovingly persuaded him to disrobe. Still an agent for spiritual change in a largely consumerist society, he and Clair run a non-profit yoga and retreat center on their beautiful property at Chagford, England. At "The Barn", besides teaching yoga, Roger also lectures on Buddhist philosophy. Paulus, a fairy godfather to twenty lucky souls, is best known for his book, "Finding One's Way With Clay". As a craft educator, his overriding concern has always been to get people to listen to and experience the transformative powers of the materials of this world. "Whatever we touch is touching us: craft art and a deeper sense of ecology" is his latest monograph and can be purchased through Haystack Monograph Series () Needless to say, without these two men in my life, Windgrove would not be what it is today. My gratitude runs deep. However...... every friendship has its share of challenges. In one day I almost caused Roger a painful bounce in a rock pool and he almost caused me a painful bounce down a steep hillside. Both unintentional, but potentially full of danger. The first "friendly encounter" was when we dropped down to look at several rock pools and the marvellous aquatic gardens within each of them. Knowing how the waves break here, I should have been more attentive, but I wasn't. Too late to move when one rumbled in, all I could see was the tumbling white wash hit Roger from the waist down. He was quick enough to cover his camera (sort of), but any bigger and the wave would have thrown Roger against the barnacle encrusted rocks and, at the least, he would have come away with shredded arms. As it was, it was just an adrenaline rush plus soggy pants. An hour or so later, after a sun drying stay at a pebble beach beneath some sloping cliffs, Roger suggested we take the short way home.... in other words, straight up. I knew that because the 100 foot cliff gradually got steeper as one ascended, much like walking up the side of a mixing bowl, what looked easy at the bottom would get very tricky at the top. Since Roger seemed determined to go despite my misgivings, I finally said: "Okay, but you lead."

The photo was taken the next day when we went back to the scene of the crime and it shows Roger standing at the top of the cliff trying to "fish" out the belt that came off his pants; pants that he had taken off to use as a rope to help me up a section when my extra weight just constantly spilled rocks away from the loose soil and my hands constantly ripped out the poa grasses with their shallow roots. The pants started to rip during my first pull up, so we abandoned them and decided to use his wool sweater instead. With rocks falling away from me, I knew there was no going back the way I had come. With Roger gripping firmly his end of the sweater, I knew I had only one chance to pull myself up level to him and then, using my momentum, carry myself spider like up the remaining ten feet to the top of the cliff. It took awhile for our hearts to regain a more steady pace. Looking out from this cliff top down to the rocks 100 feet below and knowing that there was a good dose of luck twice that morning, this journal's title of "Life at the Edge" took on a new dimension. Friendships, it seems, are about growing old together.