September 2012

“Who has not at some time or other in his life, watched the comings and goings of an ant, slipped straws into a yellow slug’s one breathing-hole, studied the vagaries of a slender dragon-fly, pondered admiringly over the countless veins in an oak-leaf, that ring the colours of a rose window in some Gothic cathedral into contrast with the reddish background? Who has not looked long in delight at the effects of sun and rain on a roof of brown tiles, at the dewdrops, or at the variously shaped petals of the flower-cups? Who has not sunk into these idle, absorbing meditations on things without, that have no conscious end, yet lead to some definite thought at last” (1).

Drink the dew.

“..at present my concern is to find things. My globe of memory is in free spin, with no obscure side, and although at times in its swelling and spinning it offers the queer suggestion that imagination is only memory at one, or two, or twenty, removes, my interest now is in repudiating, or in trying to repudiate, those removes, even if it ends by my finding something only as small as a stone lying on pale grass...” (2).

Drink the dew.

“O happy living things! no tongue/ Their beauty might declare:/ A spring of love gushed from my heart,/ And I blessed them unaware:/ Sure my kind saint took pity on me,/ And I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray;/ And from my neck so free/ The Albatross fell off, and sank/ Like lead into the sea..

..The silly buckets on the deck,/ That had so long remained,/ I dreamt that they were filled with dew;/ And when I awoke, it rained" (3).

Drink the dew. 

Photography by Lucinda Coleman, reprinted with permission.

References:

 1) Honore de Balzac The Magic Skin p.137 from La Comedie humanine

2) Jessica Anderson 1978 Tirra LIrra by the River Penguin, Australia p.140

3) Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner lines 282-291; 297-300

August 2012

My family and I have spent the last few weeks traversing the Kimberley: a vast area in the North West of Australia. Here you'll find cattle stations, national parks and aboriginal communities, the members of whom have come to uneasy agreements with private and government corporations concerning the care and conservation of this untamed land.It's difficult to get here, live here and for some, even more difficult to understand it here.

We spend a few days at Punamii-unpuu (Mitchell Falls) where the campsite has hybrid toilets (fancy drop toilets) and no showers. We spend a day exploring.

"Watch out for killer-waller-drop-bears", my husband cheerfully announces.

"Are they in the boabs, Dad, or the other trees?"

"Yes" he calls over his shoulder, striding ahead through scrub and savannah bushland, then rock formations where ancient story lines are grooved in surfaces orange and black.

We stand in awe of aboriginal rock paintings with their red ochre markings carved so deeply they are part of a landscape quivering with song, sung thousands of years ago.

We swim in the waterfalls although the red dirt doesn't wash off: it has seeped into our skin and stained the cells under the surface.

The evenings are cool. The sound of bat wings slap in the night sprinkled with light from the stars and moon.

"What's that sound, Dad?"

"Oh, that's the killer-waller-foxes".

We are dirty and smelly; our skin is dry and cracked. The dust gets in to everything and I can't get the dirt out from under my nails.

We spend more days 4 wheel driving; corrugated roads jolting our exhausted and weary bodies. We hear stories of broken axles; trailers destroyed. Our sub-tank gets damaged and starts leaking fuel. We find someone who spends his days welding back tanks and trailers and axles on vehicles braving the roads.

There is no internet access, no mobile phones, no television, no air-conditioning. There is limited water and food: we carry all we need with us.

We begin to adjust to the rhythm of the earth. We cook as the sun hits the horizon. We go to bed when it's dark. We get up at first light, strike camp and walk in the cool of the morning. We sing as we walk; we tell stories around the camp fire.

I miss my comfortable home and conversations with friends. I miss being clean. My preoccupation is utterly physical: the next meal, clean water, enough rest, changing clothes, finding shade. My hair is dirty, my legs are hairy; my clothes are stained red and orange and brown.

I'm intimidated by the silence of space. I avoid the fresh water crocs, watch out for snakes, and then look up to see eagles. I wish I could fly.

We are in the Patrol again: we see three dingoes and not much else. It's another day of bumpy dirt track to get to Kalumburu; a small aboriginal township located slightly inland from a beach at the very top of the Kimberley.

"Why Kalumburu?" I ask my happily, scruffily bearded husband.

"It's at the end of the track" he says, bemused by the question.

We fall out of the car, stretching muscles tense and aching from the endless jolting.

Small houses nestle together in the dust and heat. An old monastery sits to one side; a monument to the Mission days when the aboriginal people thought the white skinned apparitions were ghosts or had just spent too much time living in caves.

We're immediately drawn to the locals sitting in the sun outside the one store in town. A young man bends over an elder, respectfully touching his shoulder, seeing if he is ok. Children with large brown eyes smile shyly at my own children. My youngest daughter trips and the wrinkles of an old man deepen like the gorges of his very own land as he laughs at her clumsiness.

We all smile and feel unexpected joy. At the top end of the continent where the locals are closer to Indonesia than they are to most cities in Australia, we are simply human forms grown out of the very dirt we stand on: reflections of beauty so easily misunderstood.

We head to the ocean's edge to put up the tent. After cold showers (there are no hot taps in the caravan park) we stand together to watch the sun shift towards the horizon.

"You have grey in your beard" I say to my husband.

"You have grey in your hair" he smiles in response.

"Watch out for the killer-waller-salties" he adds to the children dancing on the water's edge.

They back away and we huddle together as the sun's last rays burn like bush fire along the dark blue-grey of the Timor Sea.

July 2012

I was born on the first of July, one minute past midnight in a grass hut in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. I was my mother's first child and the first 'pink' baby the local villagers had ever seen. I took my first steps at nine months of age, my first real word was 'star' and I first tried to grasp light from the candle on the cake made to celebrate my first birthday.

As I grew older, I wanted to come first in school running races, be the first to climb mountains when bush-walking and be the first in my ballet class to master the perfect triple piourette.

I had a voracious appetite for life: the first sight, first taste, first touch of something new seduced me to push boundaries, try new things; to seek out the firsts.

I danced with a ballet company, jumped out of a plane, went white water rafting, wrote songs on my grandmother's piano, travelled to exotic countires, got married, lived in a remote Australian mining town, studied English literature, became a dance-maker, had three children. And I noticed I began to feel tired.

To my horror I discovered there were firsts that exhausted and frightened me: the first serious argument with my husband, my first real labour pains, and the first death in my family.

The first phone call from my mother saying her cancer had metastasized started the first contractions that led to the birth of my first and only son. Five months later, her dead body, the first I ever saw, left me waiting for others to make the decisions: to say the first words. I was the first to place my hand on her chest to check for movement, that's true. But there was none, so I snatched my hand away. The others were the first to understand.

I shunned the firsts. There was nothing new under the sun. I had tried a lot, felt a lot, seen a lot. None of it was new, so why bother? I drew aside: so much safer. Better to wait for someone else to suggest a new adventure, take the first risk: be the first to cross the finish line.

It was easier to defer to others, to silence my thoughts, to look after my children and to teach others to embrace the firsts. I genuinely delighted in the first steps of my friends, my students, my children. They had things to say, places to go: experiences to share.

I used to have this tradition: each year, on the first of July at one minute past midnight, I would stop and seek out a star and listen. I'd look up, grateful for the lights that sparkled in the Milky Way, and just listen.

The first time I neglected to do that, I discovered I was still pursuing firsts.

The first refusal to speak truth when it needed to be spoken, the first hesitation in advocating for someone less capable, less fortunate, the first time I stopped writing and making and creating: these too were firsts.

My first breath of courage fuelled me to look out. My acceptance of grace in the midst of fear steadied my heart beat. My letting go of achieving, knowing or 'making it' somewhere, somehow, gave space for the first series of new stories to tell.

On the first of July this year, at one minute past midnight I was in an aeroplane flying back from the first ever Remnant Dance international dance tour. It was the first time I had friends sing me happy birthday among the stars. And I realised this also marked the first official year of life for our fledgling collective of innovative performing artists.

I'm looking forward to seeking new firsts.

Photography by Ellen Avery, reprinted with permission.

June 2012

si monumentum requiris was inscribed on the Fremantle library plaque. We almost didn’t see it. It’s funny how we don’t often see what’s right in front of us.

My youngest daughter had dropped her newly borrowed fairy books as we left the library. It could have been the loose shoelaces or the hair in her eyes that tripped her up or perhaps it really was the stack of books she insisted she could carry by herself.

As her older brother and sister helped her collect her scattered treasures, I read the dedication to the man who campaigned for the first public library to be built in Western Australia. I traced my fingers across the raised font, murmuring si monumentum requiris as though utterance would help with translation.

“What’s that mean?” asked my son.

“Is it Latin?” my eldest daughter interjected.

“Yes- what do you think it means? Our language comes from Latin.. so you can almost guess the meaning of some words..”

“I don’t know” came the chimed response. “Is it about a monument?”

“Can we get the donuts now?” asked the bundle of books, stray hair and shoelaces still undone.

We ducked out in to rainy drizzle, glad of wet weather in a state dry and hot for most of the year. A polish man had parked his bright yellow caravan in the middle of the square, near the library and the sounds of Celine Dion drifted across the cobbled paving stones.

He smiled at us as we ducked under his awning, drawn by the allure of hot donuts made the traditional Polish way on a rainy Friday afternoon.

While we waited I suggested to the children that we google the Latin inscription and see what we could find out.

si monumentum requiris, circumspice lept on to the small screen of my phone and we huddled round, cold and curious.

“If you seek his monument, look around” I translated. “Oh, and it’s part of the epitaph of the architect Sir Christopher Wren who built St Paul’s Cathedral”.

“Is that in England?“ asked my first-born; brown eyes thoughtful as new ideas sparked.

“Are the donuts nearly ready?” asked the littlest one. How does so little hair get so dishevelled?

Ignoring them both, my son’s question came rapid-fire: “but what’s it mean?” The girls' attention captured, three pairs of eyes looked up; expectant, vulnerable, inquisitive.

The old library stretched and trees dipped with rain, sweet and fresh as the smell mingled with the sizzling aroma of sugar and cinnamon. I glanced from my children’s faces to the drift of grey clouds and the hint of rainbows in puddles we would later jump in and I thought to myself: it’s an epitaph for the Artist.