Bower and Fountain (for the bees) ~ Pia Massie

Trying to turn my gaze towards beauty and occupy my hands with the practice of making, to still the rage that is lighting fires in my brain.  We all need to rest, to slow down, to enjoy our nights and days here on the blue green marble, to open ourselves up to these dazzling summer evenings and allow ourselves to fall in love with the whole world, every bit of it: the magic, the long light, the imperfections of ourselves and our friends and families.  If you would like to, please write your wish on one of the strips of paper and it will be woven in to one of the two installations.

The bowerbird builds elaborate nests, laced with trinkets and then courts its mate by dancing around the funny, gaudy, un-birdlike nest, saying, “Pick me! Pick me! Over here, Baby! Pick me!”

Familiar behaviour for us humans, unfortunately.  Working so hard to free myself from anxiety, from the despair of hungry ghosts, to not be swept up in the horror of the current ongoing cacophony of plunder.  Searching for the speck of humanity in each human, the imprisoned bit that loves someone / something / somewhere enough to leave themselves behind and connect to a larger whole.  Radical patience in a time of wildfires.  Calm, even amused, kindness as a response to belligerence and urgency.  Humor as the minimum required daily supplement.

This has been a year of death and dying of friends and relatives and also of long held belief systems — shibboleths of culture.  Speed is a disease to which we are all addicts.  It is strange that even when the clock is ticking down, many folks are too caught up to say goodbye, to listen to the wind in the trees or appreciate and give thanks to the rain.  Why isn’t learning bird song or studying cloud formation a full time major at university?  Who will carry all this knowledge, all this organic knowing and friendship to the future, life rafts and time capsules of truth for the time beyond this great unraveling?  These are not rhetorical questions for me, they are an attempt to articulate the mummers and whispers, some in dreams, some in daylight, that keep me moving forward with love.