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Open letter to Gary Hirsch

This is me with my new piece of art at Gary's 'Cocreation Lab.'

This is me with my new piece of art at Gary’s ‘Cocreation Lab.’

Dear Gary,

I loved your world domination summit workshop. I’ve been reading the book you gave us (Everything’s an offer) and I think it was very wise to give us the book with your art. For me it has been something of an instruction manual.

The piece of art I picked out on the day was not my first choice. I couldn’t see how it related to the kinds of things I want to write about. As a poet my inspiration has always come from being present to the deepest parts of myself. I couldn’t quite see how to bring that to your drawing. But I read the book and I was so impressed by your generosity that I wanted to rise to the challenge. You embody the kind of world I want to live in so I am very motivated to accept your offer.

Last night a friend stood me up for dinner so I read some more of the book, and turned my attention to your drawing. It still didn’t speak to me but I figured the least I could do was colour it in. I like flowers so I started with them. He seemed like a nerdy guy so I went on and gave him a brown cardigan. Then it started to feel like a routine, I could see where it was heading. I wanted to mix it up and I didn’t have a pink pencil for his skin, so I made him green and that’s when the magic happened.

A new beginning, Gary's picture coloured in and a story snippet.

A new beginning, Gary’s picture coloured in and a story snippet.

A green man gives rise to a whole lot of questions. By the time I finished colouring I had some words, a snippet of story. I wrote what I had across the top of the page and tweeted it. I wanted you to know straight away that I was on board. What’s more the story that emerged is entirely connected to the issues and themes that interest me but in an entirely unexpected way.

I feel like I’ve learned a heap of things from this process:

  • That letting go can sometimes return you to yourself from a new direction.
  • That you don’t have to know what the outcome will be and you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to accept the offer as best you can in that moment. I felt like sending you a colourful version of your drawing would have been a lame response to the task but I had to do something and that was all I could see.
  • That stepping into the unknown is possible, you don’t have to feel inspired to be engaged.

Thank you again for your generosity, I also used your three favourites activity at work, it went down a treat.

Yours sincerely,
Kiri
Melbourne, Australia

Note: for more details on the workshop go read Gary’s blog post.

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Tributaries

I haven’t written for a little while because I’ve been busy planning an adventure. Ruth over at Inscendence put out a call for women to join a wild nature retreat and vision quest and, since I was looking to justify a trip to Portland a week later for World Domination Summit, I said ‘I’m in.’ I was hoping to make the Back Creek Project happen as soon as I get back but that doesn’t feel very sensible now. I’ve had some good discussions with a few people at council, the local friends group and the Wurundjeri Council but I think it’s worth letting it gestate a little.

In the meantime here are some photos from a bit of reconnaisance I did with a friend of the Denman St portion of the creek:

Back Creek heading into a tunnel IMAG0830

I’ve also been thinking about some of the ideas that precipitated this project, apart from Maya’s beautiful book and wanted to share some with you.

Firstly the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations, traditional owners of the land on which I live and work. I have participated in Indigenous history walks in the Botanical Gardens and along the Yarra (covered elsewhere also). Both taught me to see the living history beneath the concrete (as Tiddas so eloquently put it). This insight continues to shape the way I see and relate to the land I pass through every day and forms the backbone of a project like this.
When I was doing my Masters I came across Freya Mathews, her books Reinhabiting Reality and For love of matter challenged me to think differently about where I live. She set a powerful example of living locally and reinscribing urban environments with the sacred.
Dr Peter Cock of Moora Moora taught Social and Sacred Ecology at Monash University. I went on an overnight solo and my spirit animal was a leech. It seemed pretty mundane at the time but when I returned to the city it was wild to think that I had made a blood sacrifice to the bush.
My gratitude must also go to the Grandmother Gum, musk lorikeets, tawny frogmouth, magpies and ravens, ring tail possums, hardenbergia violacea, all these creatures taught me to open my heart, to love the more-than-human. The small, every day visitations that act as a gateway to the enormous reality of our interdependence.
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Ode to rubbish

Rubbish bins or sacred crucibles?(Dedicated to The Order of the Rubbish)

Garbage men are magicians
They take our waste to the mythical realm ‘Away’
We take sacred matter and make it profane
We remove it from the cycle of life, death and rebirth
We call it ‘rubbish’ we call it ‘waste’
Then we give it to the garbage men
And they bury our shame.

This is how the archaeologists of the future will know us
By the buried remnants of our fear of death
A fear that may yet kill us.

The oceans are full of plastic
The ground is desecrated by our waste
Our obsession with immortality has broken the very thing we long for.

In my future, garbage men are shamans
Mystical midwives of matter
They speed it on it’s journey from one form to the next
Reuse, repair, repurpose, recycle
In nature the waste of one is nourishment to another
This is alchemy
This is eternity
Let go your fleeting form and become.

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Introducing Back Creek

About seven years ago now I discovered that I have lived by a creek for most of my life. Back Creek is a tributary of Gardiner’s Creek (formerly Kooyongkoot Creek) which is a tributary of the Yarra River (also known as Birrarung).

1871 Map of Boroondara Shire with Back Creek highlighted

This map of the Shire of Boroondara circa 1871 confirms the original path of the creek (and a number of others besides). The green line is Kooyongkoot/Gardiner’s Creek, the light blue is Back Creek and the purple lines are Canterbury, Riversdale and Toorak Roads (from top to bottom), they should help to orient you if you live locally.

In environmental circles it’s widely recognised that connecting with ‘nature’ is important. Most people tend to think that the only way to do this is to go out into the wilderness where the human is dwarfed by the more-than-human. But what if it’s not?

The environmental crisis requires us to live more efficiently, with smaller footprints. It doesn’t make sense for all of us to go and live in the wilderness so we can stay mindful of our true place “in the family of things.” We need to look with new eyes, to see the wildness in our own backyards, our cities and suburbs, to see that we are part of a greater whole no matter where we are.

To this end I am planning a walk along the length of Back Creek. This journey is significant because the reason I didn’t know I lived near a creek is that it mostly runs underground in barrel drains. I’m not sure what it will be like to walk it, whether the land still gives clues as to the creek’s location.

Much of its length is now parkland and walking trails, a few short sections are open to the sky. It is cared for by council staff and ‘friends’ groups made up of local residents. I am in the process of collecting stories and information, if you have any to share please get in touch.

I invite you to join me on an adventure, on Sunday 27 July 2014, into the history of land, people and home. Come see the wildness in our streets. The creek may be covered but traces remain for those with eyes and heart to see.

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Mum

KK11_1343

It was over two weeks ago but the memory still rings with warmth, softness and love. I stood and read a story at Mother Tongue about my mother and about grief. Mum was in the audience at my invitation and when I started to cry she came and stood with me. I clearly remember the gentle clicking of support from the audience that bore me up as I stood, too overcome with emotion to speak.

I was terrified before hand. Sitting in the audience while other women bared their souls, I told the persistent nag in the back of my brain that we weren’t going through with it. When my turn came I calmly rose and took the stage. My mother, the family historian, proudly introduced me with six generations of matrilineal ancestors, all the way back to Brigid who got on a boat in Ireland. I was and am so pleased at her joy in that moment, sharing a knowledge that is seldom appreciated.

The story I read was about me and mum and grief and a hug that was 45 years late but no less meaningful for all that. It’s a precious moment and the sharing of it has only extended and expanded the gift. The next day Mum said “Your story has deepened the experience for me. I had told myself that it was mostly about you, that hug. Reading your story I realised how important it was for me.”

All night people approached us to thank us for sharing it and to share their own stories. “You are not alone, you are not alone, you are not alone.” they said, each in their own way. I’m so glad Mum was there to receive that with me, to know that her experience has echoes in other people’s livess. It felt so right to be sharing the story together, even though I wrote it, it belongs to us both.

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To be seen

image

When I was a child I did everything I could to get into my mother’s photographs. She’s one of those people who takes photos of churches, architecture and scenic views. I longed for her to take photos of me, longed to see myself through her lens, to know myself and to know her eyes were on me.

When I was 4 we lived in a weatherboard in Mitcham. The kitchen had a lime green breakfast bar with a great big mirror so you could see who you were talking to you. I was fascinated by my own image, thoughts of beauty never entered my mind. I longed to see myself as others see me, to see myself strange and alien and candid, to see myself as I truly was. The family joke went that Kiri just likes to talk to herself, it’s one of those stories that’s been told about me over and over.

Later I came to interpret these things as vanity, and I learned to feel ashamed. My longing to be seen, to know myself was somehow wrong, I’m not allowed to want to be seen, I don’t deserve to be seen, I can’t ask for it or expect it. Over time I learned to hustle, to try and get the attention I craved without anyone knowing.

But people always know.

People know and they are irritated by it. The fear in me triggers the fear in them, the fear leads to comparison and judgement “Oh my god, I can’t believe she’s hustling for approval again. My hustle’s so much better than her hustle. If only she stopped she’d be so much more likeable.” Inferiority triggers superiority, two sides of the same coin. 

I have to find the middle path, this is what people mean when they say “Just be yourself” but words don’t work. The dance is within us, buried deep, the habit of a lifetime.

Humans are fickle shysters caught up in their own games, surely only spiritual masters are free of it. (Not being a spiritual master I’m not actually sure what it’s like for them, perhaps they are not free of the game but comfortable with their humanity.)

I have found trees to be particularly helpful as exemplars of being. They are generous to a fault, utterly present and free of pretense. However my heart longs for human community interwoven with the more-than-human world. Perhaps that’s the middle path the reweaving of the human being within the more-than-human Being.

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Pondering proliferation

Mushroom in a forest

Groups are proliferating like mushroom caps pushing their way out of the mycelium net
Svasti, Evolver, Deep Ecology Network, Mother Tongue, Sisters for sisters, Wild Mind, Open Communities, 5rhythms, Dancing Freedom,
So many interesting people and things that I want to support
That I want to be supported by
How to find one’s place amongst all this juicy goodness?

In the language of competition, the world of separation, diversity is bad
But in the language of compassion, the world of connection, diversity is good
In time they will come to occupy their own niches
They will serve the needs of a variety of groups
They will ease the transition from the old story to the new.

So gather good people, recognise the universe in each other, honour our mutual beauty
Support it all because who knows what’s needed
Who knows the value of heeding the call of our hearts?
Some things are worth doing even if you fail
Please yourself, but not by halves, go all the way to the bottom of your heart and let those yearnings guide your actions.

As for me, I’m quite happy to wander around, doing what I please
If others begin to do what I do then I shall leave them to it and wander some other way
Or not
After all my expression, my networks, my calling are my own, unique
Who can say what the outcome might be?

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Grief and gratitude

I seem to be pulled toward grief and gratitude at the moment. On the face of it, according to common understanding, it seems incongruous like being pulled in different directions. From the inside though the connection is seamless, grief and gratitude entwine each other, the latter is a balm for the former.

Earlier this year my 4 year old moved up to the kinder room and was quite sad about the loss of his beloved child care room. I mentioned this to a colleague at work who responded with enthusiasm. “That’s great, he must have felt really loved where he was.” Her response shifted my thinking and inspired me to tell Mr A “I know you feel sad and that’s okay. That sadness tells us that we loved something so what we can do is be grateful and say thank you. Thank you child care room, thank you toys, thank you carers.”

Some weeks later I cradled Archie, my beloved dog of ten years, as he lay on the threshold of death. I was moved in that moment of letting go to give thanks for the life we had shared and wrote the below poem in his honour.

Poem of gratitude to my dog

At the Wild Mind Gathering I offered a ritual of grief and later a song of gratitude. The song was inspired by the joy of finding community but the grief of separation was just around the corner. I knew everyone would share my pain at leaving such a beautiful space of connection and sharing, so I offered my thanks for what we had created together.

Joanna Macy says that gratitude is a revolutionary act. Gratitude says “I am enough. I have enough.” The danger in grief is that the pain will lead us down the path of fear and scarcity, closing us off to love. Gratitude stops the descent and holds us in grief as a pure expression of love.

Grief is becoming a friend to me. It shows me that I’m alive, that I am capable of love and that I am engaged in the world. I am learning to be grateful for the pain of grief and finding that the more I embrace it, the more it sets me free and the more open I am to embracing the love that comes my way. I am grateful for all the people, things and moments that I have loved and lost for helping me learn this lesson.

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Wild Mind Gathering

I have just had the most incredible weekend. My heart feels full and open, my body is tingling with joy. I am back in the city now but I feel the ancient forest so strongly it’s as if the cicadas, birds and cars are conspiring in an impromptu jam session. How to capture the magnificence of the weekend?

Kiri and Joe singing up a storm of gratitude at the final lunch time queue.

Photo by Ivan Kramer

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