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.
..............................
The above was written as part of the self-published monograph, Earthlinks, 1997.
The photo is of a wedge tailed eagle,
What’s in a blank canvas? Potential, maybe. Pure potential. Certainly, some form of beginning.
Or perhaps, having noticed the cob web attached to the easel, the white canvas is symbolic of an inability to start; fear, in other words.
I am not saying anything new if I make the comment that for anyone participating in the arts, staring in front of a blank sheet of paper or blank canvas or lump of clay can be the most daunting and difficult portion of the creative process. Once the first line is written or drawn, however, the rest tends to follow more easily. Writer’s block, painter’s block. It has happened to every artist and there are many books written how various artists have dealt with “The Beginning”.
But today, I want to talk about what beginnings are like, not for the artist, but for the simple, human being (like myself) who wakes up nearly every single morning with the upcoming day seemingly as dauntingly blank as a white canvas. I want to talk about what it is like, upon blinking open the eyes to the first light, to see in the pillow or ceiling a total mystery; tabla rasa, a clean slate, a complete unknown.
Several of my friends wake up quite early in the morning all full of get up and go and charge into the day. However, my life most every day begins as a blank canvas with hardly a scribble on it as a clue of how the day will/should be drawn out. I have always envied my friends with their ability to know what is required and then have the boundless energy to engage in the doing. When I was younger, this uncertainty of purpose would scare me a little; make me feel I wasn’t contributing something, somehow, to something. But over the years I have learned to trust that as the day unfolds, little bit by little bit the blank canvas of the morning will, by night fall, be richly detailed and vibrant. It just takes a little initiative to engage with the awake world.
Daily I have to deal with cobwebs. And plenty of them at times. The discipline of getting out of bed and stumbling into the day with a short walk to the Peace Fire via the Peace Garden is like a big broom sweeping through my personal easel, thereby, allowing vision after vision to enter. While walking, the sounds within the air give one hint of possibility. A flash of feather against a backdrop of green moves another cog. Other ideas present themselves through clouds or distant waves or the dew on a bush. A scribble here, a dash there, a connecting line through the horizon and, lo and behold, I’m heading back to the house with a plan for the day. But not before toast and coffee.
Poet William Stafford describes this beautifully in the following poem.
Every morning all over again
Only the world guides me.
Weather pushes, or when it entices
I follow. Some kind of magnetism
turns me when I am walking
in the woods with no intentions.
There are leadings without any
reason, but they attract;
if I find there is nothing to gain
from them, I still follow—their power
is the power of the surrounding world.
But things that promise, or those
that will serve my purposes—they
interfere with the pure wind
from nowhere that sustains a kite,
or a gull, or a free spirit.
So, afloat again every morning,
I find the current: all the best
rivers have secret channels that
you have to find by whispering
like this, and then hear them and follow.
Posted by Peter Adams at 05:46 PM.
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I have lost track of how many times I get asked, “Living as you do, where you do, are you happy?”
The inference is that by living alone on 100 acres of land in a, sometimes, harsh environment, and by living away from the city lights of cafes, theatres, pubs and daily social interaction, I have brought upon myself an existence where aloneness, being such a constant companion, pushes away any possibility for true happiness. I might be a man of the trees, but can I be a smiling man of the trees? The implication is “no, you cannot”.
Friends and visitors mean well when they ask such a question, because they would want for me what even I would wish for them. However, I have no real answer to their question other than to say, “Is the rainbow but one colour?
Although important, happiness is a secondary consideration to how I am living my life.
Read the following poem by Mary Oliver and then consider whether it is worth asking her if she is happy or not.
Lead
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one
of nothing we could see.
A friend told
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the strong, elegant beak
and cried out
in the long, sweet, savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon—speckled,
irredescent, with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake --
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart --
by which I mean only
that it breaks open, and never closes again,
to the rest of the world.
Posted by Peter Adams at 10:11 PM.
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“....I am suddenly the skinny boy I was
splashing in the sandy shallows at the lake,
tossing water by the handscoop at my sister
sunning on the dock....”
American poet John Caddy wrote the above after having seen a goldfinch bathing in a spray of splashing water.
Triggered memories.
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. Swiftly flow the days.
Last week the air was bitterly cold with snow almost to sea level. A week later I am walking through the sweet scented air of a blossoming coastal wattle bush profusely announcing its determination to bring spring into being.
Was it just seven days ago that winter was here? It doesn’t seem possible.
Was it forty seven years ago that I, like John Caddy, was in the sandy shallows of Indian Lake in northern Michigan splashing water at my brothers and sister? It doesn’t seem possible.
Half a world away and half a century in time distant from my childhood, I can both picture and feel myself fearlessly jumping three feet off the dock, inner tube beneath my butt, and triumphantly landing in the water. Brave.
“Look, mom!” “Look, dad!” “Watch me!”
Such an innocent time. For three months each summer, my mother made sure we kids left the city of Detroit and felt the pleasures (and importance) of a cabin in the forest at the edge of a lake. For three months each summer we swam daily, hiked daily and fished daily with bamboo poles and night crawlers (rowing out in the evening to our favourite fishing holes, mosquito chasers burning fore and aft). After dark, because the cabin had no TV, radio or telephone, we played cards or board games or hide-and-go-seek. One summer we learned how to crochet rugs.
If, as kids usually do, we asked for an outboard motor for the boat, my mother would simply say: “Why? You’ll see and hear more if you go slowly through the water by rowing. Besides, the noise will disturb the fish and birds.”
My mother took me deer hunting with bow and arrow. She taught me how to tell “north” by placing sticks in the ground and watching the sun’s shadow trace a directional path (just, in case, I ever got lost). She took me to secret groves in the forest and exclaimed how old and beautiful they were; lucky that the loggers had missed them.
She loved the natural environment and passed this love on to me.
Posted by Peter Adams at 09:32 AM.
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Ah, the delights of living alone.
After two months of steady visitors, this week has been quiet; especially the house at night when the only sound track playing is the soft, repetitive murmuring of Roaring Beach.
Like a bear retreating to his den, I have sought out the house’s inner sanctum for time alone. No guests or resident artist means no hosting responsibilities, no extra dishes to wash, no extra food to cook, no children to put to bed, no engaging conversation, no nothing.
“No life!”, some friends would say. But the stillness of silence suits me in a way few people living the urban life or being in relationship could ever understand. For the past five evenings I have dwelled in the company of just myself and found it very satisfying and very nourishing. Unlike the bear, I have not slumbered when sitting by the fire; rather, my mind and senses are alert and sharp. I look around the room and focus upon object after object. The clarity within me is as crisp as the night air outside. The whole place is alive.
And, if I choose to do so, I am not without a pleasurable activity or two.
The Scrabble board comes out, places are set, score card is at the ready and letters are drawn. I (Pete) play against myself (Repete).
House rules:
“Floating” blanks are allowed (they can be replaced with the actual letter and reused).
Dictionaries are permitted to be used at any time (what better way to learn new words).
Combined higher scores are preferred over defensive lower scores.
Whenever three of the same letters are drawn, one can automatically be redrawn without losing a turn.
Cookies, chocolate and tea must be available to all.
Last night, however, instead of playing “against myself”, I thought it would be interesting to see how high a score “my partner” and I could achieve, thereby necessitating playing “with myself”.
No cheating was permitted, but each of us helped the other by opening up the triple word score, positioning words for the other person to take advantage of and, most importantly, agreeing (between us) to keep throwing in letters until we got the ones we needed (this meant losing a lot of turns, but since both of us were doing it, the advantage seesawed back and forth).
It was fierce and it took a lot of strategy on both our parts, but by putting our heads together we got to the final tally of 1153 points. Six times all the letters were used (worth 300 points in itself). Each of us had one score each of 212 points ("watching" and “requital"). Thanks to the free use of the dictionary, the two most interesting words were “jugum” (a pair of the opposite leaflets of a pinnate leaf) and “poxing” (infecting with syphilis).
Officially, Repete won with 600 points with Pete coming in second with 553, but who’s counting winners or losers?
I went to bed exhausted from all the excitement.
Posted by Peter Adams at 10:06 AM.
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