Woven Poem (extended)
Stone beneath sand,
Tree holding skin and flesh,
Strength and softness.
The morning announced by radiant sun and the butcherbird's warbling melody
Kookaburra orchestra and spring splendour.
And the delicate brushstrokes that make their way across this canvas—
The stirring of soft feathers.
Little brown antennae, poised and trembling.
Baby's cry.
To the Woven family—
Thank you for sharing with us the world you want to live in. For your strength in forging it, gathering community and resources together, but also the tenderness with which you have nurtured your vision, filling every little crack with care and love. For holding space like a warrior mother.
I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with Jahra Wasala, one of my favourite artists on this planet and a beautiful soul. They talked to me about their practice of world-building. They told me that, to build the world you want to live in, you must live as though you are already in that world. Begin with your relationships, because all things are in relationship to another. Your connection to others, to parts of yourself, to the sun, the sky, the earth, to a movement practice, to an idea, to a colour, to the lighting manager you are working with or the cook who nourishes your belly. We are all part of the same web.
There is something so beautiful and revolutionary about this practice, this way of life. I experienced this at Woven. Time expanded. Connection was always around the corner. Fear and pain and suffering was held, nurtured, acknowledged. We were woven into a fabric of love and care. Although I didn't immerse myself in this as fully as I did last year, being confronted with—as H put it—more critical versions of myself, I was a witness to the magic of what happens when you embody the world you wish to live in. I saw that it was possible.
In stillness we find the perpetual motion of being alive,
the small dance between our feet and the floor
the quiver of dewy webs
a sand crystal cascading in the periphery
stars journeying across the sky,
as slow and imperceptible as time itself.
Isn't this what I wanted? Isn't this the person I had hoped to become, all those years ago, when they spit in my water and made me drink it? When they pranked me endlessly, preying on my naivete, my gullible joyful innocence, my purity. When they left me in the dark and gossiped behind my back. Unbeknownst to myself, I vowed to never to be ignorant again. To seek answers, to know the world, to know myself, step into my own power. To understand suffering, the darkness of the human soul. To know the world, and its people, as it is.
And now that I have, I grieve. I grieve for that same innocence I strove so hard to shed, that childlike immaturity which excluded me from belonging and shut me into small, dark spaces. The curiosity that was mistaken for stupidity. If only someone, anyone, had celebrated my aliveness with me. Had joined me in my hours of watching ants, rejoicing in sunsets, painting mythical beings.
I still carried that innocence with me last year at Woven. This year, I truly felt its loss. I asked few questions and spoke little. I did not join the jams. I battled my cynical thoughts and could barely hold my attachment wounds shut. Is this what it means to mature? Surely not. I still have hope there is more to it. The beautiful community I witnessed was proof of that.
I cannot hide from your touch,
from the story of your body as it pours weight into my bones
and opens up my old wounds.
"It is easy to trust a tree, and hard to trust a human."
Yet, do we not all deserve love? And kindness? And reciprocity?
Perhaps
I don't have to get along with you
to love you.\
The last of my grief trickles out,
like oozing amber sap,
leaving behind a constellation of stars.
Between tobacco and grass-tree stalk
and ember is born
fed by ash and bulrush and living breath.
The bouquet of bush-fluff, bundled in soft paperbark, alights into existence.
Fire-baby crackles with delightful flames
which dance and laugh and play with shadow
as though only returning
as though it has done this before
and will do forevermore.