Mycelium 2023 #48 #Pilgrimage

When I did the Camino five years ago I promised myself I would do the Kumano Kodo sometime and I have just finished that pilgrimage. I managed to do most of it on foot and a little on bus and train. After the injuries earlier in the year I am grateful I was able to make the moves to climb the “stairway to heaven”.

Lessons on the Kumano Kodo will continue to unfold and the inevitable and timeless advice of life having ups and downs proved truer in the golden shadows of afternoon light with a laughing Buddha.

Laughter is the best medicine another message from the walk. There were many moments when a chuckle helped and aided in the ascent or descent. The universal connection a smile and some joy brings is a gateway to our common humanity, mycelium that transcends age, language, culture.

Following signs and being able to discern what they mean has been a bit easier this time. It’s been an age since I’ve been on the road in a country whose language and customs are new to me. Innovations like Google translate and Google lens have opened up possibilities usually hidden to me. Some of the poem monument translations were hilarious, so as we do more intercountry travel in post COVID times the machine learning will no doubt get better and better.

I’ve been faithful to my practice of writing a haiku a day and when the whole trip is done will transfer them into a beautifully crafted book made for goshins that I bought at the Hongu shrine. Another lesson in the thresholds we pass through as we are never the same person we were before we stepped through.

Life is ephemeral and every time we do anything at all, we are doing it for the first time. (I’m writing this on my phone on the train to Osaka heading down from the mountains – that won’t ever happen again!).

Part of the beauty of the forest has been the silence. The music provided by the breezes through the valleys or on the tree tops. Percussion under foot with autumn leaves in red, gold and the brown and green fronds of ferns and cedars.

The respect for the aged and the ancient – traditions, people, places and trees is universal in this country. The 800 year old camphor tree at the final Grand Shrine of the pilgrimage a deep lesson in preservation, humility and legacy.

Next stops are Hiroshima and finally Tokyo. The mycelium of Japan oozing its way into me. Leonard Cohen’s Anthem is in my head most days:

Ring the bells …

Forget your perfect offering …

There is a crack in everything

That’s where the light gets in.

Mycelium 2023 #47 #Haiku

On the road and today will travel from Osaka to the mountains to continue on life’s pilgrimage. The Kumano Kodo is twinned with the road to Santiago de Compostela and so I am keeping a promise I made to myself that I would take the path known as ‘stairway to heaven’ some day and now that day has arrived. The inner and outer metaphor and metaphysical elements of walking through life as a pilgrim.

Entry into this landscape at Osaka and after the walk, I will take some other steps and see what awaits me in those places too.

The rituals of going through customs set the conditions for patient travelling, taking five, seven, five steps while watching the peoplescape of humans of all shapes and sizes move through the stages of being inducted into intercountry transfer. Some had mastery others were beginners. I was a little rusty but there was enough muscle memory to make it with ease.

I want to write a haiku or two a day and while I know they will need refining over time and space, I am hoping the discipline will bring a little more of Japan into an embodied experience. There is the food, the feast for the senses on the streets and of course the walking to do that as well.

I’m noticing haiku patterns, looking for the rhythm and natural light and beauty to guide me. There is plenty in the landscape dressed for autumn. I sense a crisp concern in the air for more respect and appreciation of nature. My mind had gone to the Kyoto protocols more than once. In a village out of Kyoto many young men and women are dressed in traditional kimono and the signs of reverence for ancient wisdom and practices are evident.

Haiku to date

Sweet awakening
Tiny toes squirming now
Boarding bells start to ring.

Swap papers for pass
Lights, camera, action
Tempura awaits.

Castle to protect poetry
Matcha tea for two
Peace on golden ginkgo grove.

Each transfer a gate
Gods exhale into bamboo
Stepping out of time.

No stone left unturned
Snowdrops caress maple leaves
Rising mountains call

Wabi sabi being explained in the context of a tea ceremony brought it to life. This concept is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. So in tune with the seasons and a reminder of the ephemeral nature of all things. The concept appreciates imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete beauty. The spaces revealing as much as what is seen, just like in music where silence is in the composition too. When I saw these fallen ginkgo leaves I thought – wabi sabi. Falling brings its own reverence – taking that thought with me as I begin my walk.

2023 Mycelium #46 #mayoring

I am on the eve of a year being a mayor, which is cause for reflection and while I want to look back and look forward, I am also looking up and down. To the skies always to keep humble in this vast and extraordinary infinite universe and to beneath to be enchanted by all the life that connects and reconnects and brings forth more life and beauty for us to see.  Stairs are a great way to do both. I have been climbing a few lately and there are more on the horizon both metaphorically and in reality.

The mycelium of my life, all that I have learnt, heard, see, played with, seems to being put to good use in this role. It is a kind of harvest, gathering up the threads of my past lives and deploying them, finding new ways in which fragments of one skill and a memory, or an idea or a person can be fused to set up another pathway to bring clarity and potential. The role opens up possibilities and is deeply located in place. I have always loved ‘match making’, connecting people to other people, networks and ideas fed into systems, so to be able to do this at scale and to drive opportunities is an honour. 

Finding threads that need pulling, and others that might need sewing back, and some that perhaps need to be trimmed and closed off, is all part of the work too. It goes beyond being a network junkie. I have always held the view that change is possible only at the speed of trust and so rebuilding trust has been central to my leadership style. Building trust in communities and cities only happens by involving citizens and the systems they interact with. This means understanding their needs, preferences, expectations, asking for input not just feedback and enlisting them into decision-making, shaping and holding each other accountable.

Trust building happens through being transparent, helping citizens understand and know how their data, their views and experiences are valued, used and included.  The sheer volume of ambient data that is collected and used in decision making is quite confronting now that machine learning is embedded in so much we touch, see and do. Quality of life, efficiency and sustainability are excellent outcomes of applying data to city- scale decision-making, but nothing makes up for the human API who can put people together and bring something new from that combination.  

I am sure that is why I have always identified more in the midwifery than the palliative care space as a community builder. I have done a fair bit of palliation though too – closing down organisations, saying goodbye to systems that were failing or had their days numbered, helping groups take their last breaths and celebrating their achievements before scattering their ashes into the wind.  I take note in this type of activity that I am making humus, fodder for new things to grow.  My happy place though is in bringing forth what is emerging and inevitably that involves helping some things decay.  

As this first year comes to an end, I am getting into the groove and am so grateful for this opportunity to serve in this way. There is a lot to reflect on and plenty of material for a Netflix series, and as season one comes to a close, I am going to take a break to refresh and get ready for the next year.  As usual I am embarking on my break as a pilgrim, coming as I am, sore knee and all, to take a walk in a foreign land, to take the signs along the way to guide me, hold me and remind me with no clear knowledge of what is ahead and the path I am walking is already waiting for me to arrive. 

2023 Mycelium #45 #look and listen

In a week where a woman is charged with murder for cooking up mushrooms as a last supper, I am worried that fungus reputation is at risk. The little Gippsland community is reeling, three deaths in a small town means everyone has a connection to the story, to the experience and to people involved, from police officers to cooks, hotel staff to foragers. The mycelium of this story translates to so many other examples of toxicity when we are fed fuel designed to kill and divide us. The referendum result is still raw.

The headlines of how Australia is being viewed internationally post referendum are shameful for this global citizen. I am beginning to see signs and experience in my own life so much generosity from First Nations and others as we seek our way into next steps.

Pat Anderson’s statement is part of the prescription for every penitent. I was sitting in a GP waiting room this week (yes another medical check up) and while waiting I began to construct two prescriptions – one to inoculate the nation from further outbreaks of hate and fear funded political campaigns and the other for individualized well-being. By the time I left the waiting room I had come to the conclusion we need a public health and publicly funded health campaign to deal with the human rights issue that is at the heart of the Uluru Statement. I am sure our chief public health officials would be interested as they too are dealing with the same roots in the anti-vax movement and the electoral commissioners around the country, and other democracy enthusiasts need to be equipped with the analysis, tools and resources to protect and mend this insidious and deep, deep gaps widening based on algorithms shaping our narrative and decisions. And under the algorithms of information and disinformation is a bedrock of values, educational levels and old fashioned literacy.  So let’s add a national education campaign and upskilling of our classroom teachers, address the laws to bring truth into political advertising. 

We have a little opportunity for this in South Australia with reforms being considered for local government elections.  If you are in SA please take some time to have a read and add your thoughts into the discussion.  There are a set of questions you are asked to consider in relation to engagement: 

• What requirements should be set for councils’ community engagement for what decisions? 
• What should be included in the Charter and what should be left for councils’ own community engagement policies? 
• Should councils have the capacity to determine how they will engage with their communities, or should the Charter be more directive in its approach? 
• What other ideas do you have for councils’ community engagement?
•  How would you like to see councils engage with you? 
• What are the types of information you would like to see councils include when they engage with you? 

I’ve got some ideas! Engagement methodologies are so much reliant on the skills and capacities and imagination of those doing the design. A very first and fundamental step in my view is to go back to the old fashioned scientific method of observation and listen deeply to what is already going on, do the analysis of the facebook groups, of the organized and check in with the not-so-usual suspects who by their absence from the formal systems are still expressing a view. I wring my hands and shake my head when I hear engagement staff from councils tell me but they don’t turn up … I say you don’t turn up to them. You need to go where they are! 

I want to be heard and understood, I want those doing the examination to hold back on their bias in their questions, design and approach. People complain to me – “so and so don’t read their emails”  and I have to say I ask this most weeks too. The evidence is in though that email readership is declining and so when engagement is dependent on those kinds of platforms it is unlikely to get the levels of traction required.  Anyway I am meandering with my thoughts, but they are all connected!  If we want to deal with the toxicity of misinformation and rebuild trust in Beef Wellingtons and democratic engagement, then forensic analysis is necessary.  It starts like all analysis with looking and listening. We have more of that to do as we gather the evidence of what we need to do next.

June 2020 – some everyday consultation from my field work