Not Mine

I walk on my land

Not my land

I walk on not my land

The sky above not my land is washed out blue

Not my land sucks me in

Colours me brown

I swim in my ocean

Not my ocean

I swim in not my ocean

The sand floor below not my ocean is teeming

Not my ocean swallows me

Stills my breath

Solace is mine on not my land

If i want it

Joy is mine in not my ocean

If i take it

Wisdom is mine

If i hear it

Feather Basket

I am only doing this for her.

            The last thing I need is another creative outlet. I make practical necessities all the time—garments, blankets, baskets, preserves, meals, potions, and pots.

            She grieves her husband’s death and, casting about for distraction, She finds a Zoom course on weaving. The teacher is an indigenous woman with a generous, patient nature.

            With every raffia twist She accepts, a little, that her husband won’t be coming back. Today her fledgling basket won’t behave, her frustration turns to hopelessness, then tears.

            But this is the way of grief, isn’t it? One lonely step at a time.

            She and I go way back. She lived next door when I came home from the hospital. We are yin and yang, Pisces and Taurus, water and earth. She is large-bodied, large-spirited, kind and generous. Her highs and lows are in vivid Technicolour. I am quiet, studious, earnest, sometimes stubborn, a shy and steadfast friend.

            I envy, always have, her openness, the way She cuts through the crap to the feeling. I don’t envy her constant companion—the dark cloud that dogs her. She thinks herself clumsy and not smart. ‘You’re the smart one’, She says. And it’s true, I negotiate some parts of the world for her. She makes sure I don’t get too pompous.

            There have been rifts and difficulties, times when we drifted. But I am tenacious. I don’t let her get away for long. I claimed her, all those years ago, and She claimed me.

            Our friendship is our unbreakable thread. Sharing the creative life enriches it. She began in Art school at 16, with no doubts about who She was. It took me 41 years to get started. At least my IT life got us up and running in Zoom.

            She says we are ‘makers’. I love this description. We believe in starting where you are, use what you have, do what you can. It fits us. With him gone, this is what She needs.

            These days there is no pretence, no condescension. Only kindness.

We are often apart, but entwined, forever connected.

            I can feel her chagrin. The ease with which my basket progresses is a pain in the arse for her. I know why She struggles. She will make a beautiful basket, but the pull to return to the bedcovers turns her fingers into sausages, and her brain to mush.

            We use garishly coloured raffia from China, not local reeds and grasses, but the weaving and talking and weaving and talking, somehow, renders it beautiful.

She calls me late in the afternoon. No words just choking sadness.

            ‘Will I come over? I’m coming over.’

            It is not far from my bush block to her house. A blessing, after decades in different states. 

            I make crumpets with vegemite. We drink tea in bed. I lie on his side. The electric blanket is set permanently low—as if it could be a replacement.

            She talks between silences. Of when they were young and beautiful, when all was wonderful until it wasn’t. Of the last days, when bullying pain ran the show.

            I listen. Add my recollections. She remembers things differently. Doesn’t matter, the point is the talk.

            The sodden sadness moves. She gets up. Gets out of that room for a while.

They say grieving moves through defined stages, but really it is messier and more random. Days or weeks of despair and devastation, interspersed with days of feeling ok, even good. Not tidy and linear. More like the Buddhist idea of ‘no time’. Past, present, and future all in this moment. I watch for the black dog’s vicious return.

The weaving goes better in the second session. More yarning. A woman tells the story of weaving in the desert with a mob of aunties. She shows us fabulous pieces collected from indigenous artisans around the world. We hold up our work in front of the camera and marvel at the differences—since we all began with the same materials, followed the same instructions.

            We discuss different materials we can use; the grasses, vines, wools, fabrics, twine, ropes, hairs; the feathers, beads, stones, shells which can embellish them, and we look at stunning examples. She becomes her old ‘over-the-top’ self, amassing a ‘bits-and-pieces’ collection for her basket, undoing mistakes with equanimity.

I arrive home to find her in the spare room, in her pyjamas, bra-less. Wailing, utterly bereft.

            ‘Where IS he?’ ‘I don’t know where he is’.

I watch with trepidation. I am useless before her intense anguish. And slightly repelled, though I wish I could voice my own grief that way. I make tea, and rub her back.

            She regains some balance. We smile, we giggle. We laugh hysterically at her state of undress. What if She had an accident on the way home? Every mother’s worst nightmare! In the midst of this loud, messy situation, She says, ‘It feels like something has shifted’.

            Then a knock at the door. Unexpected. Two old friends arrive a week early for dinner. She creeps out to her car and drives off.

            The next day, She clears away the sympathy cards, the dried flowers, the favourite photos, She keeps enough for solace.

We wander through the trees at my place. She stands with her face lifted, and a single feather floats down. ‘It’s him’ She says. A prolific vinous weed grows here. It spreads like wildfire. Wraps itself around everything. Impossible to eradicate.

She and I call it Covid.

            We have decided to weave with it. It’s bloody awful. It snaps easily, and smells. She turns up every so often, drives into the bush, and backs out with a huge swirling unruly bunch of the stuff. I expect her to get bogged or run into a tree, but She doesn’t.

            She loves the bush. She was once my intrepid leader, tramping for miles, sharing her knowledge of plants and a thermos of tea. I hope She will reconnect now, let the power of it seep back into her.

            We sit and strip leaves, cut Covid into manageable pieces before wrangling it into some useful woven thing. It occupies time.

            I will weave the feather into this, She says.

They say time heals grief, but time simply fuzzes things over. Together, we will weave her into a new life.

Layla

Time:

Samsara           (Greenwich mean time+11 hours) 9am

Nirvana           one time

I step into my studio pants and slip on my studio sandals, and scan Spotify for something to fire me up and bolster my grim determination to stay till the job is done. I choose Bob Dylan, old friend, Thunder on the Mountain. There is no housework; there are no friends in my life today. No shops, no café meet-ups, no garden, no pets. No writing. What there is, is an idea. She is about 15 inches tall, slim with small breasts, an adolescent girl-creature on the cusp of sexual discovery, and her name is Layla.

I recently met up with my friend Dave, also an artist. He sensed that I was in the creative wastelands, the cold winds of doubt whistling around me. ‘You should enter the Biblio Art Prize’ he said. ‘You are allocated a book and you make an artwork to respond to that book’. I expressed reluctance; I’m not a fan of making art to a theme dictated from elsewhere.

‘Trust me, you’ll really enjoy it’, Dave said.

I do trust him, so here I am.

‘The Girl She Was’ by Rebecca Freeborn explores power and its’ abuse, in the context of a ‘me too’ story, introducing us to Layla the girl, Layla the woman and to the damage done.

I don’t know too much about my Layla yet. I think her face will be obscured somehow and she will hold a mask.

My gaze drifts over the worktable piled with mounds of assorted materials, and lands on the raffia.  A long thick plait.

Hand-dyed indigo fabric that has been loitering in the studio for a couple of years waiting for its purpose. It is thick, dark, and deliciously tactile. Perhaps, there will be a dress or some kind of garment from this.

I try to free myself from too much solidity just yet; I try to let go of preconceptions and fixed ideas. This, letting go, has been a theme of my last 10 days, spent Zooming into a Buddhist retreat.

Let go of anger

Let go of attachment

Let go of the idea of PastPresentFuture

Time:

Samsara           10.25am

Nirvana           No time

She is made first from malleable wire, like chicken wire, around which I am winding strips of PVC-soaked fabric. Bob is singing Highlands now; Spotify is choosing for me. He could be in the café where Layla works after school, ‘she’s got a pretty face and long white shiny legs’. This wire is not as harsh as chicken wire but I still have a number of pinpricks on my fingers. I suck the blood so it won’t get on Layla.

PVC-soaked fabric sounds benign, but it has a wicked sticky desire to flap and adhere to all the extraneous bits and pieces on my worktable. Stopping, I regroup, get band-aids and tidy up.

I think how it might have been a good idea to be more exact about her measurements before I started, but I like to work organically, get into trouble, and then solve the problem I have created for myself. It strikes me that this sounds like life, that samsara circle going round and round. My choice, again and again.

She is bandaged from head to toe, which is relevant because the story on which she is based is about sexual exploitation of a teenage girl by an older man. Not that much older, but married with a family, and her boss at her part-time job. Familiar anyone? I remember being eighteen and pinned to a wall by a heavy, drunk older man. I was the babysitter, he was the dad. So, being bandaged, bound, seems appropriate. I am still deciding whether I will leave some of this layer exposed, her tender young skin holding her together.

I have a heightened awareness of time courtesy of the Zoom retreat; time is an illusion, time is an ocean, time is a construct of the mind. But also, time waits for no man, the tyranny of time, and I think of Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit “I’m late, I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say ‘hello, goodbye,’ I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”.

I have only a couple of days left to bring Layla to ‘life’, partly because I have been retreating for 10 days, and partly because I am a bit of a tail-dragger. She could have been started weeks ago. Tic Toc. But, let it go, let it go.

I am moving around in time with her, between then, when Layla was a child-woman and now, when she is married with children and carrying a backpack of guilt, self-doubt and secrets. There is something to be revealed, keeping the reader on board to the end of the book.

Layla is flattered and excited by his attention, her abuser/boss. She is at the age where she is ready for the experience of sex but tenderly, expectantly vulnerable. No street smarts and an all-too-obvious choice for someone with exploitation in mind. She thinks she is the one making a conquest; in reality, she is the conquest.

Time:

Samsara           Midday

Nirvana           Before time

She is coming along. She needs another layer over this ‘skin’.

My eyes light on the Japanese paper, delicate sheer earthy colours, indigo, stone, terracotta, perfect.

A cup of tea slides onto the corner of the table, with a Tim Tam garnish.

I knew there was a reason we’re still together.

On my studio wall, some pictures. I am inspired by the amazing sculptures of Linde Ivimey, which feature a wonderful collection of bones, clay, cloth and wire. If I had more time, there would definitely be bones, but they need preparation. Sorry Layla.

A disturbing soft fabric sculpture by Louise Borgeois, female form splayed and suspended, mouth an ‘o’ of surprise/anguish/ecstasy?

Edgar Degas’ ‘The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen’. Marie van Goethem, a ‘little rat’ (girls in training for the corps de ballet) at the Paris Opera, working a second job as an artists’ model. The pittance provided for being part of the corps de ballet did not provide enough. I hope Edgar was generous and kind, but who knows? Perhaps Marie suffered exploitation too. She looks stoic, resigned (bored?) but plucky, like a girl that knows her own mind, unlike Layla, at least in the beginning. Towards the end of her story, we see the young Layla develop some gumption, and I am trying to get that later feeling into her posture. Her feet are planted firmly with legs apart, and her spine straight and chin lifted.

Cutting the rice paper into strips, my scissors slide smoothly. Gradually I bind her in different tones, indigo legs, terracotta feet, stone and grey for her arms. The paper wrinkles and twists often, but this only adds to the textural qualities. Or, as the bringer of tea and biscuits’ stock answer, if asked to comment on any artwork, ‘the “texturality” is excellent’.

Time:

Samsara           Early afternoon

Nirvana           Beyond time

I have been pushing away one problem, a smallish roundish problem; Layla needs a head. Trawling through the house and garden, I consider and reject many contenders. I am excited to discover a clutch of boab nuts collected some time ago. Surely one of these will be perfect, but alas, unlike Goldilocks finding one that was ‘just right’, they are all either too big or too small. I scrunch and mould wire, play dough and cloth; no go. Finally I dig up a soft round ball from the toy box, drill a hole for a length of dowel and cover it with a layer of wire that I can manipulate into a semblance of a face.  Once covered in its layer of rice paper, it looks just how I wanted. Smudged out, devoid of features, hidden.

As I weave raffia into a thick long plait, I remember plaiting my children’s hair, and before that, my mother plaiting mine.

Time:

Samsara           Dusk

Nirvana           Time out of mind

Outside my studio, I can hear the birds beginning to settle into the trees. My mind is calm, empty of thoughts, peaceful. I am in the flow; that treasured time when time is gone. Slowly Layla turns before me, a pirouette from the little dancer. She is incomplete in the here and now, but in another time she is perfectly ready to face the world, her long raffia plait hanging down her back, a painted mask held before her face, and a match in her hand, ready to light the fire which sets her free in the dying chapters of the book.

We shared a moment
The fox and I

This is how it was

She looked up and knew me
We made a deal:

You draw me and I’ll teach you

How to be silent, to step lightly
How the earth smells
The taste of blood
The scent of a chicken
Soft skin of a lamb
What it means to be small and hungry

What is carried on the wind
What is danger, what is not

How to wear a fur coat
As if it belongs

9H

Hard pencils scratch at my paper
9H the ultimate brutality
Mocking the futility
Of trying to erase
The indentation forever there
Small pits and raised tears
Crying out for a different ending
As if it wasn’t hard enough
9H stands in my pencil jar
Tall, Sharp and Tough.

Faith

At the monastery, I was stung by bees.

As soon as I saw that bulbous buzzing mass I knew it was only a matter of time before they came for me. Every time I stepped outside and started across the courtyard, my gaze was drawn, my ears would fill with their hum as if it was the only sound possible. I would hurry past, breathing fast, chiding myself for being afraid, the sense of foreboding increasing as I passed underneath, the skin on my neck and scalp prickling. I imagined myself a giant pulsating beacon, attracting their beady eyes or whatever malevolent sense they used to home in on a likely victim. Had I squashed too many of their brothers and sisters in my pre-buddhist heathen days? Was this instant karma coming to get me? Or did I believe my new-found knowledge of long-term karmic debts, a bee sting perhaps payback for an earlier bee life where I impaled some innocent child with my pointy proboscis.

It was in the dining hall where they finally cornered me. Others were also stung, in a feeble attempt to deny their true purpose. Two stings to the face, bee stigmata.

At the monastery I was stung by bees, and, in a moment so fleeting I have come to question it, by clarity.

Affirmation

He hovered just above the earth
In silent contemplation,
He thinks he was not made to die
Resisting divination.

His wish to fly, a fervent hope
Against all induration
Time sows and reaps, then whispers soft
An earthly aspiration.

He circles back, an acrobat
With cunning deformation
And finds a path he hoped was true;
The artists’ affirmation.

Road Trip

Day One
Euphoria

The sun has never shone before
so bright,
flashing off metal, leaf, plastic,
melting tar.
Big Sky country shimmers to the jangle of Hindi music.
At the lake of the heart
we scatter like thrown marbles,
each of us a receptacle for salty musings.

Day Two
Contemplation

Caterpillar train smooths out the curves,
our railed twin.
Hearts are laid bare today,
the Kiwi sees
everything new, and
epic photos pin us, like specimen bugs, to the land.
Each breath tied to place and time,
exhaled, left behind.

Day Three
The land bites back

Spooning up lukewarm spaghetti in the dark,
we contemplate omissions.
Our very own banquet of consequences, as
the French ones’ fury slices into our brains.
Stupefied with tiredness
we wait, clod-like,
for this long black ribbon of a day
to be done.

Day Four
Enlightenment

One with the dust and flies,
a bunch of cut snakes
circumnavigating through mind-numbing heat.
Our soundtrack today
dry leaf crack, footfall on red dust.
We lay in the shade of the rock,
a moment of truth,
before returning to the beat of our own hearts.

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