Labyrinths

In 2003, I was asked to create an outdoor labyrinth for Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA. While working on the design, I got an excited call from the curator: I think there’s a basket with a labyrinth design in the Native American collection.

I drove right over to see it. The design is what the Pima people of Arizona call Man in the Maze. A figure stands at the entrance about to enter the labyrinth. Tight concentric rows of light fibers radiate out from the center of the basket. Dark fibers delineate the walking path. This indeed is a true labyrinth. Mazes have dead ends, and the traveler must often retrace her steps and start over. A labyrinth is a continuous journey to the center and back out. But this continuous journey can turn you in unexpected directions. Labyrinths often lead you first almost to the center, and the mind can be fooled into thinking how easy the quest seems to be. But then the path takes you back out, around and around, then almost back to the beginning of your journey. Ironically, it’s at this point, when you might be tempted to give up, that you now make your last circumambulation and head straight to the center. If you put a finger on the little figure at the edge of the basket, you can trace the journey.

Pima Basket

Perfectly round and flat, this Pima basket in the museum’s collection might have once been once used in a sacred ceremony. I used the design to create the large outdoor labyrinth that was at Fruitlands from 2005 until 2015. 

Walking the Labyrinth at Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA in 2005

The story of the Minoan Labyrinth in Crete kindled my interest in labyrinths. It was built by the inventor, Daedalus, for King Minos to house the great Minotaur, a beast half human and half bull. Fourteen Athenian youths sailed to Crete annually as part of a sacrifice to feed the ravenous creature. Theseus, the prince, decided he would go, slay the minotaur, and end the sacrifice.  

When they arrived at the palace of King Minos, his daughter, Ariadne, met this handsome lad, and fell in love with him. In secret she gave him a red ball of string and a sword so he could slay the Minotaur, find his way back out, and take her away with him. All this came to be. He rescued her and off they sailed – away from her homeland, father, the patriarchy . . . 

The boat landed for a stop on the island of Naxos, but when it set sail again, Theseus was on board and Ariadne remained behind. Did he ‘dump’ her (in the common vernacular) after using her ingenuity to complete his quest? Most readings of the myth describe the distress of the abandoned Ariadne, and this seems quite plausible. But it is worth considering that maybe Ariadne used Theseus to orchestrate her own escape. Maybe she purposely missed the boat? Did she really want to exchange life in one palace, as the daughter of a king, for life in another, as daughter-in-law to another king? Perhaps she escaped from her own labyrinth and was able to choose a different path.

Theseus may have desperately looked for her, and when he couldn’t find her, had to choose between remaining behind searching or sailing off with his companions. The ending of the myth is Theseus’ sad return. In his distress, he forgot to lift a white sail to indicate to his father that he was returning alive. When King Aegeus saw the ship’s black sails, he threw himself over the parapet, thinking his son was dead. Maybe slaying the Minotaur is getting rid of the reigning patriarchy, whichever way we interpret the myth.

Myths serve the reader in offering multiple interpretations. Labyrinths instruct the walker as he or she practices concentration, letting go, perseverance, and trust. When Fruitlands pulled up the labyrinth a year ago, they asked if I wanted the stones and I said, yes. They arrived in a big dump truck, and the pile awaits. I understand why the Pima Indians put their labyrinths on baskets — much easier to transport — especially when you move with the seasons. Perhaps it’s time to put some order to the stone pile and build a labyrinth here. 

Repairing the Broken

 “The world breaks everyone, then some become strong in the broken places.”

                                                                           —Ernest Hemmingway

In the Japanese pottery world there is an old tradition, Kintsugi (golden joinery), of repairing a broken pot with gold. The pot might have been a prized tea ceremony bowl, revered with the eye and treasured with the hand. Instead of tossing the pot broken by some mishap into the rubbish pile, the pieces would be fitted back together and held by lacquer mixed with gold powder. Kintsugi became an art form. A newly repaired bowl with threads of gold has more appeal than the unbroken one.

Teabowl, Yamamoto Gempo (1866-1961) photo courtesy of Backmann Eckenstein Newsletter

Kintsugi is connected to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. Wabi might translate as loneliness or solitariness —the sight of a lone crow on a crooked branch or a plum blossom peeking through light snow. Sabi refers to objects that exude the well-worn, rustic patina of age.  Wabi-sabi informs the aesthetics of the traditional Japanese arts. An object doesn’t need to be discarded because it is worn and old. On the contrary, we treasure it even more.

I lived in Japan in my early twenties, and I consider wabi-sabi to be a strong influence on my own aesthetics. I love using old tools, worn objects, and wood in my art. Wood, its knots, rings, and branch collars, carries the history of the life of the tree. Similarly, pottery carries its past; the clay was created in the earth hundreds of years ago. We have an intuitive attraction to that which is old and from the earth. We trust its wisdom. Without knowing about Kintsugi, when I made my first large-scale outdoor sculpture using tree logs from a hundred-year-old maple that fell in a winter storm, I gold leafed its sawn surfaces to highlight its beauty and give it new life.

The repairs of Kintsugi draw our attention to the impermanence of life. In fact, it is emphasized and celebrated. The repairs to the bowl add to its beauty. How is it that our culture wants to deny this reality? From blemish-free apples to wrinkle-free faces to the ideal relationship, we are directed to strive for perfection as if it was attainable and permanent.

In the third stanza of Jane Hirshfield’s poem, For What Binds Us, she writes:

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

I can recall as a child sitting with friends as we showed off our scars and shared our battle stories.

I have a tea mug I use every day. It’s one that my son, Alex, a potter and the founder of East Fork Pottery, made over ten years ago when he was a freshman at Guilford College. It’s the only piece of pottery that still exists from that time. At home, we keep all of our mugs on two open shelves in the kitchen. When my beloved Alex mug is on the shelf and a houseguest decides to choose a cup, they infallibly choose this one. There is little about it that would make you prefer it from among the two shelves of mugs. Yet there must be something that communicates, whether it is our intuitive attraction to the patina of age or the subtle power of something treasured. No one seems to be concerned with the hairline crack down the inside of it. I care for this mug tenderly.

Mug, Alex Matisse, fourth from right on bottom shelf  

Eventually, my Alex mug will likely break. I will need to learn how to make a Kintsugi repair in preparation for that day. 

The gold we need for each repair is available in many forms — a hot bowl of soup, a knitted scarf, a poem, acts of courage, love and compassion — we can see them all as gold threads we offer to heal this earth and each other.

When You Are No More

When I read that the Norwegian poet, Olav Hauge (1908—1994), supported himself on sales from his small apple orchard, I immediately wanted to know more about him. I learned that his house was filled with wooden bowls, wooden utensils, wooden chairs, and poetry books from all over the world. Hauge taught himself French and English so he could read poets not translated into Norwegian, and translated Yeats, Holderlin, Rimbaud, and many other poets into Norwegian. Although there are several volumes of his poetry in English translation, he is rarely encountered. 

I See You've Learned

I like
how you
use
few words,
few words and
short sentences
that drift
in a fine rain
down the page
with light and air
between.
I see you've learned
to make
a woodpile in the forest,
good to stack it
tall
so it can dry;
build one too long and low,
the wood will just sit there and rot.

                         —Tr. by Robert Hedin

We know Hauge has built many woodpiles. It’s not a poetic image he’s conjuring with pretty words, but motion after motion, his hand grabbing a log and placing it just so, to build a solid stack.

His bookshelves included my own favorite studio companions, the Chinese Taoist poets. 

                       T’ao Ch’ien

If one day T’ao Ch’ien
came to visit me, I
would show him my cherry and apple trees,
and I’d prefer him to come in spring
when they’re in blossom. Then we’ll sit in the shade
with a glass of cider, perhaps I’ll show him
a poem — if I can find one he’d like.
The dragons that blaze across the sky trailing poison
and smoke
soared more quietly in his time, and more birds sang.
There’s nothing here he’d not understand.
More than ever he’d want to retire
to a little garden like this.
But I don’t know if he’d do so with a good conscience.

                                                         —Tr. Robin Fulton

The poet and translator, Robert Bly, wrote in his introduction to one of Hauge’s collections, The Dream We Carry,

If you have a tiny farm, you need to love poetry more than the farm. If you sell apples, you need to love poetry more than the apples. It’s good to settle down somewhere and love poetry more than either of them. 

Bly understands something about the life of the farmer with a small farm or the orchardist with a small orchard. It’s not going to make you rich or even feed you well, but if you love its rhythms, its textures, tastes, and smells, its tough bark, and delicate blossoms, the punctuation of the songbird, and alliteration of the wind, you can be content. Poetry helps the farmer make it through the years of crop failures. 

A simple life is not necessarily one without struggle and pain. Hauge had several stays in psychiatric hospitals and there is a knowing of darkness in his seemingly simple poems.

Let Me Be Like the Dung Beetle

Sorrow has settled over me
and weighs me down in a warm straw bed.
Let me at least move,
test my strength, lift this slab of sod —
let me be like the dung beetle
in spring when it digs itself out from the dung heap.

                                    —Tr. Robert Bly and Robert Hedin

However, when he was 65, he married a Norwegian artist he met at one of his rare poetry readings and she brought cheer into his life. After Hauge’s death, his diaries were found and eventually published in five volumes. 

In the days following the death of my friend, Sheila Carroll (1966—2016), I turned to the poetry of Hauge. I had sat vigil with her partner, Gabi White, and a few close friends as all air left Sheila’s body, as her hands turned ashen, as the early autumn night sounds came in the open window, and we knew she was not this body, but spirit transcending and becoming — wood pile, apple, dung beetle, loneliness, and beauty.

     Conch

You build a house for your soul,
and wander proudly
in starlight
with the house on your back,
like a snail.
When danger is near,
you crawl inside
and are safe
behind your hard
shell.

And when you are no more,
the house will
live on,
a testament
to your soul’s beauty.
And the sea of your loneliness
will sing deep
inside.

            —Tr. Robert Bly and Robert Hedin

Sheila often shared her passion for mountains, birds, and the deep woods with me. I miss this friendship and her ever present joy for the simple things that matter most. On a few occasions she helped me in the orchard, but on Sundays, she loved to share big pots of chili, watch her beloved Patriots, and then sit outdoors with close friends around a fire. We each leave a wake behind — our words, our wood pile, the gift of our struggles and passions, the cultivated row, ready for new seed. 

Stone Heart for Sheila, Photo:LH

Creation Rain

“The drought, now ‘extreme’ continues to plague Harvard and much of the state” is the headline this week in our local paper, the Harvard Press. Finally, after three months, we have rain — a long abiding rain. I check weather maps. It might clear for a few hours in the afternoon and I wonder if I should I keep the farm open today. But this lulling sound of rain, the drumming on the earth, soaks into my mind. I haven’t heard it for three months and I want it to continue.

It always gets this way during the harvest season. I go for too long without pausing. Even in this year without apples, there’s harvesting and canning, raspberry picking and jamming, touring the sculpture exhibit and entering into conversation with visitors. 

Alone time doesn’t happen, a time of calm abiding. Especially late in the season, I crave the sweetness of quiet. Calm abiding is the translation of the Sanskrit word, shamatha, a Buddhist meditation practice where we are just here, present, abiding, letting the peaceful true nature of our mind reveal itself. An often used metaphor is of a lake reflecting the mountains around it. When the water is calm, the mountains can be clearly seen as if the lake was a mirror. When our mind is agitated, the mountains appear unclear and misshapen; the mirror needs polishing. When I look into the lake, I don’t see misshapen mountains — I don’t even see their outline. I need this abiding rain to clear my mind.

The Buddha taught that our minds are agitated by the six senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and consciousness. Our minds are stimulated by these sensory inputs like winds that tease the surface of water. When the mind is quiet, we see clearly. As we look into the calm lake we can see fish, a turtle swimming, even the weeds; the murkiness has settled to the bottom.

Tillico Lake

In this high place
it is as simple as this,
Leave everything you know behind.

Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.

Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,

the true shape of your own face.        

—David Whyte

We have one more full weekend for the farm. There will be African Drumming, a Watercolor Workshop in the orchard, the last of the red raspberries for the hunter and gatherers, and a guided tour of the sculpture exhibit. In our pond, eight hearts are floating, a Jubilation of Hearts, a sculpture I created with Gabrielle White. When the sun shines they reflect intensified colors of the rainbow, and under cloudy skies, the muted tones of the blue and green spectrum.

A Jubilation of Hearts, Linda Hoffman and Gabrielle White  Photo:Bob Hesse

Barbara Andrus' suspended curly willow twigs dance in the wind almost touching the water below.

Branch Crossing, Barbara Andrus  Photo: Bob Hesse

And Paul Matisse’s Olympic Bell installed in a grove of pine trees and wildflowers awaits visitors to pull the black braid of rope. Its deep reverberation fills the body; its deep note enters your heart. When it was first rung, a beaver swam over clearly curious about the sound waves in the water.

The Olympic Bell, Paul Matisse  Photo: Bob Hesse

We all need to take a little time to listen to the drumming of rain, but it’s often hard to do this on our own. It’s hard to put down all the things we carry. I am grateful for this rain — for the thirsty plants and trees, for the parched earth, and for my own mind that needs this washing out.

Then, Bong.......ooonnngggg.......the beauty of this moment appears.