Life on the Edge

The dogs of war might seem to be a dominant force in the world today, but here, two days ago among the sand dunes of Roaring Beach during a lull in the bombing rains, the angelic mark of peace became visible.

Windgrove's latest refugee-in-residence, Melanie Mowinski, flew in from Massachesetts last Wednesday evening for a short two week stay and was met with heavy downpours, constant overcast skies and howling gale force winds. This morning, Tuesday, the sun dramatically reappeared in a cloudless, windless sky.

Melanie writes in her journal:
"The stormy-blowing and rainy weather of my first five days forced me inside to listen to, not only nature’s music, but to the words that form within me. Listening: such the challenge for me. Being quiet. Holding still. Not doing. Being. Being present. Being grateful. Feeling blessed. Slowing down. Letting the earth speak to me, learning to feel more (to feel, period, and not always be in my head) and intellectualize less."

Julie-Anne is the second person to become a resident Windgrove refugee; a program that enables professional people a chance to be nutured at Windgrove for a period of two weeks to two months while they focus their attention on the healing of our human connection to this earth.

Julie-Anne Lacko can be seen sitting on the stairs to the “penthouse deck” above the Peace bus preparing a conference/workshop outline about the Australian coal industry. If we acknowledge that our society's reliance on coal is not going to disappear overnight, the question we might ask is how can we make the coal industry as sustainable as possible? The conference Julie is helping to organize will be looking at minimising the social impact of mining and the environmental effects of mining and processing coal which is used to make electricity and  steel. A big task.

The day before Jeannie Mooney left to return to America after staying at Windgrove for nearly six weeks as a visiting artist, she unwrapped the fabric that had been placed around a silver peppermint tree during her time here. The stains left on the cloth will give her a starting point at her studio at Cranbrook.

On the way to the airport I asked Jeannie to sum up her visit in one sentence: "Tasmania is now woven into the whole cloth of my 'understory' with the bittersweetness of her immense beauty and sadness."

Myself and all her new friends will miss Jeannie and her abundant enthusiasm to engage people with her deep love for this earth.

********************** Windgrove is known as a "Refuge for Learning". Currently in Australia there is much debate about refugees and our government's treating them as though they were criminals.

I offer the following poem by Marge Piercy as a way of looking at "the other" in order to gain some insight into the difficulties faced by refugees. Out of compassion we will be better able to create a peaceful world.


Maggid

The courage to let go of the door, the handle.
The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very
stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles
of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast,
a child's naughtiness, a loud blattering storm
that slapped the roof hard, pouring through.

The courage to abandon the graves dug into the hill,
the small bones of children and the brittle bones
of the old whose marrow hunger had stolen;
the courage to desert the tree planted and only
begun to bear; the riverside where promises were
shaped; the street where their empty pots were broken.

The courage to leave the place whose language you learned
as early as your own, whose customs however dangerous
or demeaning, bind you like a halter
you have learned to pull inside, to move your load;
the land fertile with the blood spilled on it;
the roads mapped and annotated for survival.

The courage to walk out of the pain that is known
into the pain that cannot be imagined,
mapless, walking into the wilderness, going
barefoot with a canteen into the desert;
stuffed in the stinking hold of a rotting ship
sailing off the map into dragons' mouths,

Cathay, India, Siberia, goldeneh medina,
leaving bodies by the way like abandoned treasure.
So they walked out of Egypt. So they bribed their way
out of Russia under loads of straw; so they steamed
out of the bloody smoking charnelhouse of Europe
on overloaded freighters forbidden all ports --

out of pain into death or freedom or a different
painful dignity, into squalor and politics.
We Jews are all born of wanderers, with shoes
under our pillows and a memory of blood that is ours
raining down. We honor only those Jews who changed
tonight, those who chose the desert over bondage
who walked into the strange and became strangers
and gave birth to children who could look down
on them standing on their shoulders for having
been slaves. We honor those who let go of every-
thing but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought,
who became other by saving themselves.

Tas/maine/ia

Have you fallen in love with me yet?
You will.

And after I've gone,
you will long
for days,
and nights,
without end.

Jeannie Mooney from Maine, USA, the first artist-in-residence at Windgrove arrived just a week ago on Christmas day for a six week stay. Jeannie uses cloth to record organic transformations. In the photo above she prepares silk to wrap around a silver peppermint tree to document whatever interactions take place between the silk and other environmenal factors (tree sap, rain, insects, wind, sun) over the next few weeks.

See more of her work here.