going beyond perception

chaos of closeness

This morning my sabre saw and I cut out 95% of a bohemia tree which has been growing in my parents back garden for a very, very long time. As is its want, the tree is strappy and seeks the company of other trees to help it grow up to the sky.  Over the past weeks they had cut a few branches that had begun to die but the living part was behind the cycad that is more than 45 years old and the other trees behind the fence.

As I pulled out each branch one by one it seemed like nothing left the tree’s canopy for the longest time. The branches all flexible and more than 4 metres long had grown through and over each other weaving a living mat that could only be removed one piece at a time. it wasn’t until I got near the end that I was able to see the efforts of my labours and the immense pile of pieces they are going to do their thing with over the next week. I had to leave them something to do……

Somehow that was paired with a conversation about remembering and forgetting over a cup of tea at the end. According to the sisters Hilde and Ylva Ostby in their book, Diving for Seahorse, we are biologically designed to forget a lot and remember some of what happens to us over the course of a life time, the things we need. Relevant to my morning as my parents qualify as senior citizens now and it is always interesting what they remember and what triggers the memories.

Relevant to the tree because it mirrored idea threads that course through memories and become entwined in ways we don’t expect. It is only as begin to sit with remembered moments and allow them to turn up as they do, outside of the space of fear that I can see where they have grown and what they have become for me. So it is that changing some of the memories will help, cutting some off and simply removing the food source that triggers them all together may change things as they are.

Changing means that I am moving forward not back. I will never be who I was, but I am not the person I was 20 years ago or as a child. Part of those forms of me linger within but they are not who now me is or who I will become. I drew that story throughout the past years. The first version was published as Journey To Beautiful (a book published by Booloorong Press in Brisbane QLD). It was a book of pictures that you could colour….that was how the publisher saw it. It was in fact my journey away for who I was to allow who I am to appear.

I’ve draw more to it in the white on black pictures illustrating this page. I like the thought of an environment beyond gravity that lets the momentum of the moment propel itself onward piercing the perceived boundaries and finding distance. Distance allows perspective and definition to be seen in the impressions of a scene.

Happy Day

sandy