Life on the Edge

Most readers would be familiar with the story of the two people who are looking at a drinking glass that has been filled to the half way mark. One optimistically says, “It’s half full” while the other person says in a more pessimistic voice, “It’s half empty”.

Since writing last week’s blog entry about the young girl and her apparent happiness with a tiny jar of face cream, I have been pondering what it means for any of us to remain satisfied with what we have. My fear for the girl was that with the western world’s advertising pressures assailing her from all directions, her requirements to remain happy would be constantly rising. Today the tiny jar of face cream, tomorrow the red sports car or mansion on the Riviera. That day in the train her glass was “half full”; in a year’s time I imagined she would think it was “half empty”.

To live on a sustainable earth, resource depletion and human consumption—along with population growth and climate change—must be addressed. But how?

My simple answer is not so much how we interpret the level of wine (or other goodies) in our glass, but that we take whatever we do have and pour those items into a smaller “glass of expectations”. Then, without doubt, our cup will be full to the brim or even overflow.

It is not that any of us (certainly anyone reading this blog) don’t have enough material possessions to live comfortably.  Our problem is that the more we accumulate, the bigger our “glass of expectations” becomes. And the glass doesn’t get just big enough to accommodate what we have, it always grows to remain twice the size of our material wealth.  Even with the optimist exclaiming “It’s half full”, the optimist is only more certain than the pessimist that he/she can eventually fill the glass.  Which never happens.

The two glasses in the photo each hold an equal amount of wine. The one on the left holds its share of wine with much more elegance and is certainly more pleasing to the eye and connotes celebration. It behoves all of us to design a way of living that enhances rather than diminishes the fewer possessions we own. It is possible. And the earth will appreciate us for it.

A Christmas walk through the wet, eventually snowy, alpine rainforest of Mt. Field was a real holiday treat. To have opened up in front of our eyes the beauty of blossoming red waratah, wet barked snow gums, ancient pencil pines and numerous pandani in a dense carpet of understory was a gift wrapped present of pure Zen. Summer in Tasmania is certainly a wild mixture of weather.

Good cheers to All
May Peace prevail on Earth

The above “33 hearts mandala” was one of three mandalas gifted to me yesterday by Sally; a day that marked 22,280 days in procession that I have walked this earth—just over two thirds of the way to where I hope to end up having had a life of 33,000 days.

I like the number three.  Open on one side, yet protected on the other, there is a lovely give and take in its asymmetrical symmetry. Linear, yet bulbous, it is the most sensual of all the numbers. 

33 is the atomic number of arsenic, as well as, the ripe old age to which Alexander the Great and Jesus lived. It is also the number of the most professional baseball innings played. 

Being fascinated with this likeable number gave me the commitment to complete the 3 year, 3 month, 3 week, 3 day daily surf that I finished last year.

The two other mandalas from Sally were an oil painting on canvas and an acrylic painting on stone.  In the birthday card accompanying them, she wrote:

In honour of the ups and downs of love…

The Rocky Love Mandala represents the “downs” of love; love on the mundane earthly level. It is the stable force for when the road gets rocky. It signifies that aspect of love that stands through thick and thin. It is solid and grounded and strong.

Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

A vow is generally seen as a solemn undertaking to achieve something or to act in a certain way. In other words, a serious commitment.

Two people getting married take a vow to “love and cherish”.

Such as between Gav and Jo this past weekend at Windgrove where 80 adults and a scattering of children watched the ceremony within an encircled chapel of silver peppermint trees.

Looking closely at the feet of the bride and groom, one can only notice that despite all the fine fabric adorning their bodies, bare earth was making contact with bare feet. This simple act grounded their love for each other with a love for the earth. Their vows of love for each other were more real for the fact that they understood that if they were to have a happy and long life, a healthy planet was a prerequisite. And, a healthy planet, like healthy children, is only possible if it is loved.

The day after the wedding a different group of 13 women arrived at Windgrove ostensibly to learn basket weaving techniques from the aboriginal woman, Harry. With a workshop title of: “Sharing Care and Sharing Country”, however, it was understood that more would be on offer than just plaiting sagg grasses.

Like the wedding, the weavers heard, appreciated and acted upon the importance of “walking the talk” of a commitment to loving the earth in all its wild diversity. 

This is not New Age wank. For the earth to house six billion humans something has to give. We can begin to learn what this might be when we all take personal vows to cherish the air, water and soil that is our home.

There was a little more traffic in the water this week that made my daily surf feel more like I was up at Bondi Beach in Sydney than here.

But, hey, I not complaining because it was all pretty exciting as the Australian national junior surf titles were being contested. For ten days 140 surfers, 14 to 18 years old, competed for team and individual honours. Aside from today when the waves were a bit small, the weather and swells were near perfect providing the boys and girls with some challenging and daunting conditions.

During the week several of the parents from the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia came by Windgrove for a walk at various times and all were astonished with how beautiful Roaring Beach was. “Such a secret”, they said. So, didn’t I feel proud to think how wonderful that Roaring Beach was chosen from all the other surf locations throughout Australia as this year’s site for a national championship.

I mean, really, look at this photo I took on opening day. Any wonder that Roaring Beach was chosen?

A salute is an arm extended or a rigid military snap to the forehead.

A pledge of allegiance is the right hand over the heart.

An oath is the hand placed on a religious text.

A prayer, however, whether one is kneeling, standing, sitting, prostrate or lying on one’s back in the water, is one palm against the other and gently touching the lips.

Hands closed in prayer. Such a universally accepted symbol of peace and gratitude.

A fur seal last Sunday reminds me that today, Thursday, millions of families in America will be doing just this as thanks is given for the rich and bountiful harvest present at their Thanksgiving Day tables.

Let me also give thanks. And, by way of creating a framework to hang my reason for giving thanks, I offer first this poem from Robert Hayden.

Those Winter Sundays

“Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

Second, an excerpt from an email sent by my friend, Clare, after spending the weekend here with her daughters, Brook and Kate, and partner, Jeff:

“A few months ago Brook shared with me her deep fears for the world, for what the future would hold, would there be clean water, would bird flu kill us, if she was expected to be a decision maker of the future, what chance did she have if so much was destroyed.  As a mother I would love to make the world safe and nourishing for my children.  I am trying to seek out positive news, to show Brook people doing good work, to nurture hope and a feeling of safety and to do so I feel I need help from other adults who believe in goodness.  Thank you for being who you are, doing what you do, and being willing to have pesky visitors like us.”

The above poem and email might exhibit some disparity, but what I’m trying to explain is that any goodness coming from me is only because of the nurturing—and lack of it—surrounding my childhood.

Bless my parents. Both held down full time jobs to support a family of five children. Leaving early, coming home late, could there ever have been enough time for them to cuddle and soothe the fears of the crying child, the lonely child? Could there ever have been enough?

Whatever portion of my adult self still harbours a sense of abandonment, this same self is also capable of, yearns for and is skilled enough to create a place of refuge that offers up to today’s children a working reality of positiveness and caring.

I as “wounded healer” is too one sided an argument because, although not always felt or appreciated at the time, there was an abundant measure of love dished out by my parents.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am deeply grateful for the whole chaotic, touching, delicious mess that was my childhood. It has led me unwaveringly to the bounty that is today. For this, with palms touching and pressed against my lips, I thank my parents, Paul and Etheleen, for their struggles in juggling the lot of us.

Let me also give thanks to the young family of Clare, Jeff, Brook and Kate for cheerfully fixing up the garden domes this past weekend so that there will be wholesome veggies on the Windgrove table to share with all.