Too fast

Here is the first stanza from the poem, “In a Moment of Madness, A Dublin Poet Thinks of an Old Love”, by David Whyte:

“Twenty years since I knew her.
Wherever she is now, I will go to her.
I know you can never believe me
but her face is as fresh to me
as the winter day we parted.”

This week marked the 20th anniversary of my arrival in Tasmania 20 years ago. Having left my home of seven years in North Carolina on Valentine’s Day, 1985, I went through customs in Australia on the 16th fairly certain that the lover and loves I had left behind at Penland School would be only a temporary separation while I embarked on one last major adventure before returning home and settling down to marriage and a career.

Wrong. It did not turn out that way.

Today, twenty years on, the face of Linda is “as fresh to me as the winter day we parted”.

And not just Linda’s sweet face, but the faces of Jon and Becky, Bill and Billy Brown, Paulus, Linda and Terry, KD, Jane Hatcher, Jane Brown and Jane Pieser, Harold, Cynthia, Doug, Dan and Emily, Charlie, Jim and Debra, Tim, Evon, Tom, Douglass, Pearl and many, many others, not least of whom is Paula Garett who died this week of cancer.

At the time this was my family of friends, my tribe, my community.

To give all this up was a hugh sacrifice. The happiness, fun and exhilaration of being a part of such a large gathering of creative folk has never been repeated. However, the depth of my awakening into the powers and spirit of this world would never have happened in the protective, affluent womb of Penland and America. It was important that my life’s journey take me to Tasmania and keep me here.

It was hard to come up with a photograph that adequately captures the many aspects of where I am now twenty years later. The best I can offer is the photo I took yesterday while sitting on my favourite rock that overlooks Storm Bay and Wedge Island.

In many ways, I feel like an island adrift in a stormy sea of global political, social and environmental events, but above me there is always a patch of blue sky pouring in its light and offering the hope of clear days ahead.

The piercing beauty of it all….. the beauty that is always present……

Here is my refuge for love; that face of faces that comprises all my loves.