2024 Stars – Mothering Aurora

Been hard to get to the keyboard this weekend to write and reflect on what starry moments are inviting me to contemplate.  I have been considering dark spaces that make the stars seem brighter and found myself wallowing in some of that darkness. A perverse inversion of light is haunting. With mother’s day in the mix, it was inevitable I would be thinking about the ones I have mothered and mother, where they are, how they have received, rejected, welcomed, ran away from, invited in, asked for guidance, had intentional and unintentional recipients of laughter, trauma and joy.  It is a vexed role being a mother. The generations of mothers who have come before me have done the best they could as I know I have too.  

I have been reading about the sky show of the Aurora and it being due to the sun throwing out, pouring out, multiple blobs of material from its surface into space and in this interaction with our atmosphere resulting in geomagnetic storms. I think this phenomenon is a bit like motherhood. Like the sun, mothers throw out their best blobs of love and light to their children, and the electromagnetic power of attraction or its opposite, repulsion, may cause technicolour storms visible to the human eye and, silent. 

I am missing my kids who aren’t here. I am loving up the one who is and her little ones. I still have my mother earthside which is its own blessing. I think of the relationship that brought me to motherhood, the waiting and the false starts before forty-four years ago becoming a mother for the first time and the incredible joy of that role being added to my identity. There are no gold stars for motherhood. Doing your best really is all that there is. 

Prof Brian Cox reflected on the Aurora and his message on X last night has been with me all day. The invitation from Nature to remind us how lucky we are, to be in this cosmos, to have a magnetic field protecting us, a motherlode of magnetic love, that keeps us safe, that enables particles charged up and travelling at warp speed to greet us, that reminds us we too are particles of light, star dust, precious and hopefully grown up enough to take responsibility for our shared future. Maybe I am hearing an Ode from the Cosmos to all the earthlings, fostered by Mother Earth? She must feel a little lost and abandoned too, forlorn and sometimes forgotten by her children. These wild nights of colour and contrasts of shadow and light, the swale of motherhood in the ridges of the sky.

@ProfBrianCox

As you watch the Aurora this evening, it’s worth reflecting that you’re getting a rare direct glimpse of the power of Nature. Those charged particles causing the atmosphere to glow came from a sunspot complex 17 times the diameter of Earth and traveled across 90 million miles at a million miles an hour. Without our magnetic field to protect us, our atmosphere would have been lost to space long ago. Those colours in the sky are Nature reminding us that we’re very lucky to be here amidst the violence. And perhaps therefore also reminding us not to shite it all up 🙂

Stars 2024 – Throw Your Arms Around Me

Went to a stellar performance under a rotating mirror ball in a shed under the palm trees, a room full of people who were looking forward to hearing some of the songs that were the backing tracks for winning football games, remembering industrial accidents, making love. No one was disappointed and the aphrodisiac cocktail of fame, music, wine and nostalgia wove its way around the venue. Liberties were taken, with a couple of fans throwing their arms around the headliner, extra smooches and moves were in liberal dollops of the couples on the dance floor. 

I was transported to the first time I heard Throw Your Arms Around Me, which actually wasn’t by the band the Hunters and Collectors, but an acapella version by a comedy trio known as The Doug Anthony Allstars. They performed it with such beauty and intimacy on a national comedy show on the national broadcaster.  They recreated a few times over the years and it still gives me goosebumps when I watch it online.  But when the first notes find their way across the strings of the guitar, and the raw voice who has sung it for decades and the word squeeze sounds like a real squeeze, the romance of the stars, moon and the twinkling of those small transparent pieces of aluminum rotating above the audience we are all transported to our own version of what it means to travel in space and time.  

Music is one of the gifts that continues to give to me. I have been so fortunate to have been in audiences with stellar performances from famous, infamous, known and unknown artists.

Each note has the capacity to shine and constellations, indeed a whole galaxy appears in the night sky as the clouds of the week roll away and reveal the expanse and beauty of story in sound and movement. I noticed myself swaying before the end of the first stanza.  More than one time zone is operating in the room – memories being made in real time and nostalgia settling in too.  

At one point very early in the set, a man brushed passed me making his way to the front of the stage to be with his partner. He was carrying a couple of drinks to add to the many that had  been consumed previously.  I moved out of his way so he could get to where he was going without a spill. He thanked me, which I wasn’t expecting, maybe a sign of a non-teenage audience, and then whispered into my ear, “I hope you hear a song tonight that has a special meaning for you”.  This level of intimacy and license he took with me felt like a message from the universe. An invitation to remember and to relax into the evening.  As I reflect on it now, I hear it as a shooting star, a memorandum from the Muses, those goddesses of music, song, dance and sources of inspiration to poets. One of the qualities of the Muses is they were also the goddesses of knowledge, who remembered all things that had come to pass. 

To be raised from your sleep, to be squeezed, to be kissed in four places, to have your name shouted to a blue summer sky, these are things I would want for anyone I loved. The joy of a line or a whole song, coming to you once again has a Lazarus quality attached to it. It calls some life out of a tomb of memories and coming into the light of the mirror balled room, causes the body to move from the healing power of music.

A song written in intimacy, transmitted and transformed by all those who perform it, hear it, find it embedded in the hippocampus of a room full of strangers, must be an incredible gift to the composer.  The collective memory that then has a room full of people singing in unison must be really something to savour.  And on this night, the one who had hunted down a ticket, made their mark on each other as a one-off unique set of never to be repeated moments imprinted another stellar stamp on my musical moments collection.   Always grateful for the music and the music makers.

Mark Seymour and the Undertow, The Big Easy, 3 May 2024

2024 – Stars – Attraction

What makes something or someone a star attraction?  I have been thinking about this after listening to Billie-Jean King being interviewed by Julia Louis Dreyfus – which is an interview I highly recommend.  Billie-Jean has lots of insights from her career in tennis, philanthropy, advocate and as a feminist icon.  She says in the interview leaders don’t choose followers, followers choose leaders. People are attracted to stars like her. They want to be in the orbit of such a star, and there is a gravitational pull that draws them in. There is responsibility in leadership to use that heaviness, perhaps it is the gravity or gravity itself that leaders need to hold steady so as not to cause a riot … unless of course that is their intention! 

Producers, directors, marketing, promotional peeps all derive their meaning from the stars they can hurl into the universe and then it is their job to keep them there. And the stars job to keep putting out their magnetism and the “look at me” factor.  I am watching this in popular culture unfold with the release of a new album, new book, new movie, new series. Those who have stood the test of time are very comfortable in their own skin, enjoying the limelight, and playfully exploit the moments offered up to enhance their backers. Sometimes newbies over stretch their new star status and slip up a bit before they find the orbit or lane they need to stick too.

It’s true in politics as well where star power attracts more followers and there is responsibility attached to that part of leadership and used unwisely, own goals inevitably come next. These baby stars demonstrate their immaturity and crash and burn dazzling disintegration in the skies can be a sight to behold. Gravitational collapse is the phenomena of contraction which draws matter towards its centre, and in leadership those who are more about me, me, me and lack generosity, find their lack of humility leads to implosion. It is a good reminder of the shadow side of star attraction.

The dual capacity of gravity to attract and collapse under your own weight is an invitation to humility and reflection. To consider how your actions as a leader expand and include others.

I was listening to Jack Carty sing a song about his love for his child last night at Loren Kate‘s Cooee Fest (surely an expression of an expanding universe!) I’ve heard him sing it before, and I think once again love is at the centre of all star attraction. I’ve popped the lyrics below. He explains that he now knows how the universe expands.  If we act out of love there is expansion. Love of ourselves, of others, the place where we live, the planet and universe itself.

Love has an intimacy all of its own, to deepen an understanding, by getting to know what’s under the surface, some of the invisible features, to look closely at the finer points. When I hear Sir David Attenborough describe a creature, his passion and knowledge transmits love. When I see a First Nations person greet the land with familial attachment I recognise love. When I see a mother notice a shift in breathing in her sick infant, her love instantly calls her to action.  Billie-Jean in her interview showed so much respect to her followers as a tennis giant, she turned into being a performer and wanting to give people a great show in return. I was struck by this same phenomena when I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert years ago. He felt everyone in the stadium had worked hard all year to save up to see him and the E Street band and so they had an obligation to be their best, to give value for money, to be worthy of the applause, to be grateful to throng of fans for enabling him and his band to do what they love to do. 

That is not just why the universe expands, I think it is how it expands. With love, respect and desire for intimacy in the gravitational dance that comes with star attraction.  May we all experience and know we are stars in someone’s galaxy.

I think I found the reason why the universe expands

I was standing in the kitchen when it fell into my lap

I outdid all those physicists with their particles and maths

And I think I found the reason why the universe expands

See the galaxies are spreading out

We know that much is true

‘Cause their light it shifts from blue to red

‘Cause it is spreading too

But no one knew just why they move

As quickly as they do

Though the galaxies are spreading out

And we know that much is true

Your mum and I have waited

For you to join us here

We’re gonna care for you and do the best we can

And I think I found the reason why the universe expands

I’ve loved you since I found out

You were there inside that womb

And you’ve been busy growing

And my love’s been growing too

It covers every particle on every distant land

And in order to contain it all the universe expands

Your mum and I have waited

For you to join us here

I’m gonna love you and I’ll do the best I can

And I figured out the reason why the universe expands

Yeah I think I found the reason why the universe expands

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: John Patrick Carty

Why The Universe Expands lyrics © Embassy Music Publishing Pty Ltd

Grateful to the expanding universe of love at the Willunga Farmers Market being gifted these beautiful flowers by Jake from Sunny Bunch Co

2024 – Stars – Pelicans

As I came down the highway where the river starts to be visible, above a flock of pelicans went into a star formation. They look so elegant in flight. Yaltu is their Kaurna name. Pelicans feature in plenty of dreamtime stories. 

One of the most beloved South Australian stories by author Colin Thiele, Storm Boy starred a pelican called Mr Percival. Often I think of that story, the Coorong and Colin Thiele when I see pelicans. I love seeing them following the river banks in flight, coming into land on the water with olympian precision, or scooping up a bill full of fish at the end of a dive from a great height. There seems to be a fair bit of teamwork going on as they enjoy the thermals and then share a meal together. With an abundance of wetlands, coast, a river and seasonal lagoons near me, I see pelicans often and I never tire of seeing them. I think of them as part of my community, connecting water and sky. 

Being able to soar, ride the thermals and see from on high is extraordinary. What a legacy from the dinosaurs that us bi-ped mammals did not inherit.  As a child, and I expect like most children, I wondered what it would be like to fly. Borrowing the wings of a machine to get a simulated version of the experience is still a thrill, even after thousands of hours in the air. Pelicans get to do a lot more than take off and land and despite their ungainly design seem to have no trouble deftly getting what they need and want from air and water. 

Water takes on the shape of its container and air is much the same, a wind sock can tell us which way the wind is blowing, or indeed the pelicans in flight by how they glide.  The movement of the wind caused by air pressure, moisture and temperature changes far above or even close to the ground, reflections of a great conversation between the poles and our spinning planet.  The pelicans are like ballerinas in this cosmic atmospheric dance in the sky. 

Resting on the muddy embankments of the river, the big billed creatures find a moment to sojourn. Chatting amongst themselves about the conditions above seems like an instruction for my species, to be paying attention to one another’s noticings about what is in the atmosphere and how we might best navigate it together.  This kind of biomimicry wouldn’t go astray in some of the turbulence in the skies over Ukraine or Gaza or Iran or where-ever the strong man narrative dominance destroys the futures of generations. I want teachings from Storm Boy and Mr Percival to be available to everyone. Surely that is what wisdom cultures have to offer and how we tap into that rich vein for guidance is an invitation yet to be accepted by so many. 

While visiting a health professional this week, he said: well the way things are going we could all be up in smoke in three months. While I found this hard to hear, it was said without despair, more a statement of being a realist than stoicism. Turning to face the light, to look at the stars, to feel the gentle warmth of the early autumn wind in the late afternoon, before it turns to a chill when the sun goes down, to notice the pelicans flying in star formation, these are acts of defiance and resistance to the drums of war. The pelicans offer us a way forward, a way of being, instruction for flight and diving, community and how to journey for food and friendship.

On top of all this, it would be remiss not to include the well known pelican inspired limerick by Dixon Lanier Merritt written in 1910: 

A wonderful bird is the pelican. 

His bill will hold more than his belican. 

He can take in his beak, 

Food enough for a week, 

I’m damned if I know how the hell he can!”

“to the stars” is the mantra of this extraordinary woman – Flavia Tata Nardini Photo taken at American River, Kangaroo Island – June 2021 where we were together on a Entrepreneurship Advisory Board meeting tour. Flavia is a rocket scientist and entrepreneur, co-founder of Fleet Space

2024 – Stars – Waiting

One by one, and then in little clusters, the stars arrived last night as friends new and old gathered around a fire. The oceanic views of Gulf St Vincent from the cliff tops at Marino Rocks on this early autumn evening are lit by the moon casting her shadow as light onto the stillness of the water. For eons others would have done the same from this vantage point, my breath, my body being added to the litany of others who have looked to the horizon for inspiration and to the skies for guidance. 

We are a long way from frontlines in Gaza or Ukraine, a long way from the inner demons or whatever drove the frenetic deadly behaviour of the man in Bondi, a long way from the place that aches from the depths of trauma hidden in the epigenetics of DNA responses.  Somehow these situations all align in my head, under these stars as we talk about disinformation.  Each of us has a trajectory into this conversation, vectors that now collide over tacos and strudel. I feel the wild love of stars twinkling above witnessing and burning to eavesdrop and I even wonder at one point whether one of them will fall closer to earth to hear a little bit more.

Perhaps this is a human version of the big bang – floods of matter, generations in the making, now arriving at a single point slowing down enough to be heard and seen and then mysteriously and magically spinning out again expanding and expansive.  My mind is blown and I am bestowing on the hostess the role of goddess who invited us to the table.  Maybe this is the relationship of the cosmos after all, the big bang being an invitation to come and play, to listen and learn from all the atoms?

Having an emergent practice is a hopeful act, it is a practice of expectation of being able to sit in the not-yet, in the maybe, in the what-if, in the where else, in different perspectives. I notice to myself for the first time around this table, under these stars that emergent and emergency come from the same place. To bring into the light, to arise, unforeseen, and so from what might gently appear under the stars and the moon as more light arrives, inside, I am stirred once again to act urgently. Maybe this is exactly how disinformation works too ? Starting slowly and then before we know we are in serious danger.

At one point in the evening I offer a poetry prescription to the person sitting to my right.  I suggest she reads Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte as a response to some thinking she is doing in relation to her workplace’s curious reconfiguring.  When I offer this up, I am recalling to myself a few of the lines that evoke the ordinary opening to something yet to emerge.  When I get home I read the whole poem and feel the choice, prescient. 

So here is that poem because the stars are always waiting for you, alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity, the good in you is seen, and everything, everything, everything is always, always, waiting, for you, for you, you, you you.

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone.

As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions.

To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice.

You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation.

The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last.

All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves.

Everything is waiting for you.

David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You

2024 – Stars – Punch in the head

This year’s theme is stars and there were a few moments this week when my inner frustrated self wanted to throw a punch and cause a sensation of seeing stars!  This outburst that didn’t come to fruition, except in my imaginings, was the result of a cascade of mansplaining and inability to answer what I considered simple and straightforward questions.

The experience of seeing stars from a blow to the head is described by those who have had this happen to them, describing it as brief flashes of lights or spots in front of their eyes. Apparently this is caused by a disruption to the visual system causing a perception change. Finding that out, made me wonder if a shake would do the same trick, or even clearing out their ears would help!  

My tension started when I asked a question that was responded to in a rambling way that told me what had been done, and not what the future held, which was the essence of my question.  Now I know as well as anyone who has been in leadership and recruitment selection that past performance predicts future performance, but I was asking how the past would inform the future, not to get a history lesson.  The next person who spoke (a male) added to my question and got the answer straight away … although he too did take up a fair bit of air time to make sure he was seen to be the one asking an intelligent and vital question. My grumpiness doubled in response.

Next came an off hand remark that could be brushed away as ignorance or at worst bad manners. Racism though is racism so I walked out of the room instead of giving the teller an audience. 

Then within a few minutes I was once again being talked at, not alone, in a group and when an answer to my question took up another five minutes and the answer bore no resemblance to the question I had asked I could feel my patience draining further and further from me. To top it all off later in the same event, the senior person (a woman) of a presenter, asked the presenter to move on and he (yes, a he) declined the invitation and just kept on trucking until he was done.  By the end of what, in total, had only been a few hours, in four different settings, I was wondering why the desire to punch the patriarchy so it would see stars, was so high on my agenda.

Oh Patriarchy. Let me count the ways. 

Why do I put up with this kind of behaviour? I think I am tired and so much of my time these days is not spent dismantling a system that doesn’t work for women and in fact for most men either. I also prefer to be a metaphoric midwife than a palliative care nurse – bringing in new life, potential, possibilities, instead of smoothing the pillow and administering pain relief.

My patriarchal tolerance threshold feels like it has slipped down a few notches since being in local government. As Mayor I find myself tolerating behaviours I would not if I was a CEO, Chair of a Board or a senior executive. I think my frustration this week was a wake up call from my better self that I am in imminent danger of being a drowning frog in hot water. 

I am giving myself a good talking to and looking to those Seven Sisters in the sky who take to the skies every night to run from their pursuer. Those stars are a better inspiration for me, than a punch I might want to land! 

“ Hi I’m Tom and I’m a recovering patriarch”  has a lovely ring to it. Imagine then working on the 12 steps in a peer group with support and kindness through the healing.

1. I admit I am powerless over patriarchy— my life has become unmanageable.
2. I am coming to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care and practice of greater good
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to the universe, to myself and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to work on myself with others to remove all these defects of character.
7. I am humbly working on my shortcomings.
8. I am making a list of all persons I harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
9. I am making direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I will continue to take personal inventory and when wrong promptly admit it.
11. Through prayer and meditation I will improve my conscious contact with goodness in the world
12. Have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will try to carry this message to others with an addiction to patriarchy, and to practice these principles as I make my way in the world.

Maybe now I am seeing stars?

I’ve had enough punches from patriarchy to last me till my dying day. Taking a deep breath to get back into the ring.

2024 – Stars – Moon and St Christopher

Wandering home after a very indulgent evening of fine food and wine, the Easter moon was resting on the horizon in all her splendour, flirtatiously, not quite revealing all of herself. I was reminded on the value of keeping a bit of yourself to yourself. The tease of not quite giving over all, the memory of a friend who used to say about performance to leave while they were still applauding, the anticipation of knowing that in time all would actually be revealed. 

The beauty of the moon always holds me and I sometimes hear in Mary Black singing The Moon and St Christopher encouraging this pilgrim to see with a woman’s eyes, to have heart and nerve and reliance on the moon and St Christopher for guidance. Relying on the ever present satellite and the patron saint of travellers is an exquisite coupling. Bringing together guides for eternity, wayfinders in the dark is an idea I love. 

As we travel on our little blue dot around the sun each year, our solar return on this Easter morning invites me to a little Alleluia.  There is the joy of the birds in the trees greeting the day, the sound of the waves in the distance, the giggles from a pram as it goes past.  It is a blessing every day to see the sun rise. The star that disappeared and we descended into the dead of night and come bouncing back into the light again the next day – an everyday resurrection.  

To bring your heart and nerve to each day with the kind of stubbornness Mary Black sings of is a directive to wholeness and confidence that the day will be there once you follow the guidance in the dark. You will be ready to face the day and what is revealed in the light is rarely as scary as what you might have been afraid of in the dark.  

I have a two-year old grandson who looks at the evening sky as dusk is falling and is convinced the dark clouds are rain forming and he yells at them with the nursery rhyme  – rain, rain go away! His commands can’t hold back the sky and soon night always descends and he has to find his way to sleep to arrive into the new day refreshed and renewed. I know how he feels, when he doesn’t want to face the darkness and is not yet confident the sun will shine the next day. You can’t put off sleep forever though! You do need to find your way in the dark and come out the other side.  His mother, father and big brother often need to share the load to be the midwives to sleep. I do not underestimate the midwifery needed for many of us to transition through the dark to the dawn.

Relying on the moon is a ballast, she is always there, her shadow, her shine, her waxing and waning, her full frontal appearance when we get in the middle of the Sun and Moon lights up our way.  

Happy Easter, the first Sunday after the full moon after the equinox.

When I was young I spoke like a child, And I saw with a childs eyes

And an open door was to a girl, Like the stars are to the skies

It’s funny how the world lives up to all your expectations

With adventures for the stout of heart, And the lure of the open spaces

There’s two lanes running down this road, And whichever side you are on

Accounts for where you want to go, And what you are running from

Back when darkness overtook me, On a blindman’s curve

CHORUS:

I relied upon the moon, I relied upon the moon

I relied upon the moon and St. Christopher

Now I’ve paid my dues ’cause I have owed them, But I’ve paid a price sometimes

For being such a stubborn woman, In such stubborn times

I have run from the arms of lovers, I have run from the eyes of friends

I have run from the hands of kindness, I have run just because I can

Now I’ve grown and I speak like a woman, And I see with a woman’s eyes

And an open door is to me now, Like the saddest of goodbyes

Well it’s too late for turning back, And I pray for the heart and nerve

.

CHORUS: (repeat chorus)

I relied upon the moon, I relied upon the moon

I relied upon the moon and St. Christopher to be my guide

Moon and St Christopher by Mary Black

Moon over St Jospeh’s Willunga, June 2013

2024 – Stars – Flags

I am finding this year’s blog theme of stars very curious about where it leads my thoughts when I come to write on a Sunday morning. This week it is flags with stars on them that have nudged some thinking.

Driving around the suburbs this week I saw the famous stars and stripes flag flying in the front yard of a home in Morphett Vale. It seemed so out of place to me.  I wondered who lived there, why the flag was important to them, and what the neighbours and others like me driving past made of it. It is such a well known flag with its thirteen horizontal stripes and the fifty stars.  I only learnt recently that the 13 stripes represent the 13 British colonies that declared their independence from England when they were victorious during the American revolution. Each star on this flag has five points, apparently because the seamstress Betsy Rose found cutting a five pointed star easier than cutting a six pointed one which was the original commission. I like the pragmatism of a woman who is said to have presented the first flag with the circle of stars to George Washington. 

Stars on flags seem to be pretty common, maybe we like to have a connection with the cosmic, or some kind of aiming for the stars as flags get raised. I am not a huge fan of flags, I don’t like the nod to their original purpose of leading troops into battle and they niggle at me as to staking a claim on a territory, which is why seeing a foreign flag in a local suburb probably jarred with me. I always feel moved when a flag is lowered, or put at half mast, it is a collective act of respect and unites people in a meditative acknowledgement of a person or sometimes a group of people who have served their fellow citizens. The stars fall and crumple as the flag lowers, a bow from the cosmos, the heavens to earth.

When Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG, Yankunytjatjara woman, died peacefully aged 91 on 4 February 2024, the Australian flag was flown at half mast on the day of her State funeral. The Aboriginal flag was too and I thought it was the first time I had seen these two flags in a duet of sorrow. Her service to her people and to all of us were honoured with the weeping felled flags. She was a star, shining in the dark and pointing us to our better selves. 

I long for the day when our national flag takes its next step in development. I love the stars of the Southern Cross on the flag. For me it is reminding us we are all united under the same sky, and encourages us to look up and out into an expanse beyond borders, beyond ourselves and links to the line in our national anthem “beneath our radiant Southern Cross”. There are elements of the flag that trouble my heart and I look forward to the day when we take another step in our national story and become a republic. 

Coming back to the Star Spangled banner flying in a southern suburb, I wonder if it is their own declaration of sovereignty on the land they are claiming as their own? Or an act of disrespect to the country they are living in, an act of hope for their preferred US Presidential candidate?  I have no idea, but it did make me uneasy and cause me to think about my national flag. 

I love how the stars on the Aussie flag give it a universal quality, equally accessible to everyone who looks up, a compass for anyone in the southern hemisphere, an invitation to appreciate all the stories that are associated with that constellation from wherever on earth our ancestry heralds. 

Wide field image of the Southern Cross, credit: Wikimedia Commons/Naskies (CC BY-SA 3.0)

2024 – Stars – Riffing off Grief

The dark reveals stars. Wandering around the neighbourhood just after dusk, looking up to see a slip of the moon, the first twinkling was arriving. Always there regardless of whether I can see them or not, the balls of gas whizzing around us are there. I got to thinking about all the other things I don’t see even though they are there all the time, the things that only become visible in the dark.  Those moments of grief and despair where you discover friendship in a stranger, the chance sighting of a rare flower in bloom as you look down, unable to raise your head any higher, the gentle smile in exchange for a sausage roll.

Grief is tidal, it comes in waves. A few times a year you might get a king tide where the gravitational pull is enormous, the earth, the sun and the moon are all aligned. The calendar might read, anniversary or birthday, or maybe something less familiar and because the body does keep the score, you have to go searching in your memories to discover what the new or full moon has unleashed. The moon has twice the effect of the sun. 

We have a phenomenon on our South Australian coast we call dodge tide. A dodge tide is when there is very little tidal movement for a few days.  Apparently it is due to the symmetry of the oceans and how the tidal waves respond, where the Sun and the Moon cancel each other out because they are about equal.  A dodge tide can go on for a day or two. Grief has its dodge tides too, when it hangs around, leaving you in a holding pattern, and just having to be in it. 

Several years ago my grief was stuck in a dodge tide, the cosmic elements insisting I stay in that place as a kind of instruction to stay in the funk before any re-wiring could take place.  It was a delayed after-shock from serial losses of deaths, children leaving the state, moving house, changing employment, closing a business, all in such close succession, I look back now and wonder how I actually kept breathing.

I’m listening to Nick Cave talk about his creative processes, his grief and the foundations of his personal and musical practices. I haven’t listened to much of his music, although I always held an appreciation of his artistry. I found his youthful anger inaccessible in my younger years. His descriptions of grief and the madness that comes in those times is a reassuring read. His talk of improvising and collaboration are familiar and my mind riffs with his responses to the conversation he is having with Seán O’Hagan. They come to dodge tide moments in their exchanges and hold me too at places in my experiences where all the elements are balanced, suspended even, for a short time before the Sun and Moon move again to influence the waves’ relentlessness. A brief moment of stillness that might be endowed with pain one time, and relief another. 

Loss is the Sun and grief is the moon. There are plenty of stars out there, some more furious and fuelled, some close and others very far away, and when they go out through death or are no longer in our orbit, there is loss. And when we realise they are not there any more is when the Moon’s dance pulls us in with the tide, the waves roll, the welling up of the crest of pain peaks, breaks and falls and starts all over again. 

Look into the vastness of the night sky, check out the stars, remember we can only see these beauties in the dark. 

Grief is tidal. In time, it can recede and leave us with feelings of peace and advancement, only for it to wash back in with all its crushing hopelessness and sorrow. Back and forth it goes, but with each retreating drift of despair, we are left a little stronger, more resilient, more essential and better at our new life. Nick Cave

Symmetry at Sellicks, July 2022

2024 Stars – Culture

The stillness of a heatwave in Adelaide is writ large when the famous flags at Womadelaide are barely moving in the wind.  Despite all the stars on the stages around the glory, that is Botanic Park, every place where shade can be found is occupied by generations of fans of this festival and newbies who have made the pilgrimage.  

I have long been a fan of the Planet Talks, a series of panels offering up activists, scientists, lovers of our planet to share their experiences, bring us knowledge, news from the front and offer us challenges and hope. They are like a compass to me each year, helping me navigate my way into the future, keeping me on track.  The great US evangelist Billy Graham used to say of his rally crowds, they were sinners coming to be washed. That thought flashed past my eyes while listening to the talks yesterday. We need to be reminded over and over again, hear the stories, find the inspiration, rest in the resistance, know we are not alone, be ready to act in the small life saving ways we can when the opportunity arises.  

I have had a week of being immersed in ideas, stories, humans and places, such as this annual feast of festivals in March in Adelaide. I have had the luxury of a couple of days at Writers Week, a fringe show, a festival show, SouthStart and now am in the thick of Womadelaide.  It feels like fuel for whatever is coming next, and given I am moving at a glacial pace (for me) due my ever annoying knee injury, I am wondering if this is a mixed message – fill up on ideas and as Teddy Roosevelt was claimed as saying Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.  This has long been a mantra of mine, backed up by one of Mother Teresa’s bloom where you’re planted. 

You don’t need a passport to cross the border into March in Adelaide. You can come with ideas, behaviours, words and songs that are uniquely your own, diversity is valued over conformity, mixed media valued over a single plane or from, curiosity is valued over judgement. 

Being nourished by a range of world views rooted in humanity is what Adelaide in March always gifts me, even in the times when I have only been able to get a waft of this season. I am so grateful for the times when the free events have sustained me in times when funds were low. I am grateful for the people the season brings to me from around the country and the world. Connections and friendships are made and recharged annually, new ones emerge and fit into the community infrastructure so easily because of the deep, strong foundations that they come into. This is one of the rituals of March. 

The morality of March turns up as being able to leave your rug and trolley in a public place knowing it will still be there at the end of a performance.  The variety of tastes in food and style are reflected in the menus of the stalls and trucks around all the venues, especially at Womadelaide where going with the flow is also a dress code on a hot, hot days. Popular culture is welcome as I overhear people talking about Taylor Swift or P!nk recent Australian tours and there are plenty of sequins and friendship bands visible. 

With all this beauty and ballast to hold me, there is the ache in the land and the hovering of the truth we are on stolen land, unceded territory, that we didn’t vote for a voice for First Nations to our national parliament and I can’t help to also survey the crowds to wonder who voted for what and why, who refused to accept the graceful invitation of Uluru. I always welcome the ritual of acknowledgement to country and celebrate the times we are privileged to accept the invitation of a welcome to country.  These cultural protocols keep me grounded, and I am grateful they continue to be visible and practiced in our festivals. 

We said a public good bye to one of the greatest stars in the constellation that taught my generation about protocols, justice and leadership,her legacy will help keep the compass pointing in the right direction.  A woman who was never afraid to speak and act, who consistently spoke the truth to power.  A bright shining star in the sky now for us to continue to look up to. Here is a statement from her family.  Vale Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG.  It is no wonder the flags at Womadelaide were still, refusing the move in the heat, standing strong in their power too.

Angus Watt flags at Womadelaide