February 2013

A goose in a group become geese and geese on ground is a gaggle. The collective noun gathers the singular feathered thing and it becomes something else altogether.

Observe the heron, elegantly skimming water surface to placidly survey a vast terrain. 

Put a few together and you suddenly have a seige. Compare with the crow, imposing as an independent, all black eyes and plume but a collective of crows is a murder. 

I like the idea of the penguin, dressed to go out, slipping and sliding on ice all alone. However, a parcel of penguins softens my thoughts and I smile at images of gift-wrapped flappers honking on ice rinks.

As for the parrot they are raucous and noisy but collectively are a most impressive pandemonium.

The lovely thing about a collective is that the individual is still heard in the flapping and ruffling and pecking.

Geese are still geese in a gaggle.

At some mysterious point in time though, the gaggle responds to an unseen call and something beautiful happens: together they soar as a skein.

From goose to gaggle to skein, the feathered creatures take flight; the form structured and smart as each one works together to fly in the same direction.

As we embrace each other, we become a gaggle, but as we fly together we become a skein soaring on thermals, flapping feathered wings sprung through hope in the dreaming.

January 2013

We scurry and we rush like creatures lost in memories in a labyrinth of time.  We are busy and are working and are trying and are planning. Even when we’re tired and exhausted, we are bravely coping and believing and still madly, madly chasing.

There are glimmers in the corners: tiny trinkets peeping through the hazy maze of pathways sometimes lit with choices. Yet a Sadness cloaks our waking and our sleeping with a weighty hopelessness and our rushing and our scurrying becomes a heavy, sad endeavour. 

We see the hidden bibelots, but are too tired: just too sad and tired and busy to stop and change direction.  They are hidden.  They are rare.  It takes effort to divert to chase a shiny thing and with the great deep Sadness comes great lethargy.

The heaviness of nameless grief grows like a weighted pack trekked through scrub for days; endless days.  We are exhausted from an instinctive resistance to the shadows that darken the pathways and so, slowly and steadily the great Sadness grows.

As holders of sorrow we become accustomed to the ache.  We take pride in the weight, dead as it is.

The tears dry up: withered salt basins replace tear ducts.  Headaches pulse across foreheads:  beat, thump and count the march of time in the labyrinthine mind.

Still there are glimmers in the corners: the promise of hope in the beauty of found things. There is rest in the stopping but Sadness has talons that grip, unrelenting.

I wish for this year an unsettling of weight in the soul madly chasing.  I hope that the yearning leads to confession of dead dreams and lost loves that let Sadness take hold.  I pray that we’d see the luminous blues of the face of compassion and reach for the glimmering, hidden and waiting.

Like a thread that unravels, I hope for discovery as we chase tumbling treasures and follow where they go.

Image taken by Katie Chown in Yangon, Myanmar, 2013, reprinted with permission

December 2012

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. G.K. Chesterton

I struggle to find words to frame the experiences of a life lived, but it seems my body does not.

I’m having a skin cancer removed from my neck next week. It’s not a big thing and I hope it won’t turn in to a big thing. The doctor cuts an ellipse around defective skin cells. Like an open eye, inked lines frame the raised basal cells, drawing attention to something grown large, discoloured and textured.

It seems my body has become an art gallery: home to stories now framed with odd growths, crinkled laughter and frown lines, stretched skin from having children and etchings on my right knee from an arthroscopy a few years ago.

The stories of my life have enriched and contributed to my embodied knowledge about making. My skin has become a moving, shifting frame for experiences explored through creative play.

Danced art work has left residual shapes in the cells of my body. My mind’s neural patterns have diversified through practice and exposure to other people’s created artworks: both the work of their hands and the work of their lives. The value of a performance could evaporate in a moment; dismissed as nothing but entertainment, but it doesn't. It doesn't, because the limitation of the body draws attention to something eternal created in the act of making.

So, I don’t mind that our bodies are limited. It’s interesting to me because the shape and substance of created stories give the gift of beauty to the frame. The artwork created during my life has left traces in my skin and anyone can see the spirit within, for it marks the frame without.

Increasingly, I am drawn to the artwork within the human form of others. Some people leave me hushed by exquisitely crafted beauty evident just under the surface of their skin. Others I delight to encounter for their souls are shiny new crayon drawings of sunshine and flowers and rockets shooting through stars.

I still love the created art work of the sculptor, the dancer, the musician, the writer. It is something I can almost see, touch, and hear: something to absorb in the frame of my very own being. After the curtain closes, the film credits roll, the musician puts away the instruments, I am changed. I have encountered something that challenges and enriches my own creative process and the artwork I then create will be deeper and richer for it.

Once I leave the doctor’s surgery next week, red and tender skin on my neck will be stitched with black twine; knotted and rough. Eventually the redness will fade; the eye will close over scar tissue and the framed picture of this latest story will be indelibly etched in the skin near my voice.

November 2012

I’ve been thinking lately about how we all have the same amount of time in a day. 

We all have limited energy levels.  We all need sleep and food and nourishment.  We need each other and have choices as to how we connect in the limited time we all share.

We have choices.   We can choose how we share our finite resources and time, as limited as that may feel.  We all have choices as to how we speak to other human beings.

We can choose to get up and walk with, or alongside others.  Or, we can choose to sit still and listen to someone else.  We can choose not to listen as well.

We can choose to smile. 

Somehow, we have in common those small, shy vulnerable moments in which we make choices to live.  We can choose to be open to love, unexpected and real - and we have the same amount of time in a day in which to choose.

I’ve also been thinking lately that we make choices without knowing what the consequences could possibly be.  We hope and dream and strive [and sometimes give up and shut down]… often before decisions are fully realised.

We don’t really know where we are going, or what the choice will lead to.  Maybe it’s going nowhere.  Maybe we don’t consciously choose, because we don’t feel we have any choices.  Our choice then is to react.

My favourite choices have been when I fall into step with others who are journeying.  I choose to walk alongside a while, and others choose to walk with  me also.  I like the swing of shared steps and the banter on the road.  I like how our bodies move in response to the landscape and weather; how we need at times to hold hands or share loads.

The choices at the beginning are simple: to start down the track and engage with what happens.  I like how we tell each other stories as we move together. I like that the choice becomes about whether we love, and live in love - and choose to respond to love.

I like that we don’t really know what is over the next hill, but that we have made a choice to trust and hope and believe.  For somehow, we have in common those small, shy vulnerable moments in which we make choices to live.

We can choose to be open to love, unexpected and real - and we have the same amount of time in a day in which to choose.

Image: Edward Monkton