The stormwater drains have failed in our apartment block. I was unaware. We are just tenants here, have been for nigh on twenty years so perhaps we don't notice such things. We did notice when the sewerage pipes were blocked, that sort of thing is attention seeking, but the stormwater drains, well not so much... Blocked stormwater drains cause the gutters to overflow producing waterfalls, the sound of waterfalls in downpours, or more modest dripping sounds in drizzle. The tick tocks of drip drops. The sound of water falling evokes memory, deep memory as in water falling from the forest canopy, water falling from wet leaves, evolutionary memory, drip, drop. Tarkovsky often uses dripping water in his films to locate us in the moment, to direct us to the ever pregnant, ever present, history laden now. Time pauses between the drops, time is quantised, time suspends, drip … memory ... drop. I have no problem with overflowing gutters, with falling water, with the sound of dripping, I welcome it. Oh Noah, praise be to Noah! I am grateful, grateful for nature's dispensation, grateful for nature's wisdom. The body corporate wants to fix the pipes and gutters, to constrain and control the flow of water, to stop the drops.
On the very day that our family was thrown into chaos, on the actual day that the dams burst in our relationships (not to labour the metaphor, I am averse to melodrama, truly!) we came home to find a hole dug outside our bedroom window exposing the blocked pipes in our lives. The storm water pipes were infested with the roots of our family tree and seeing the pipes exposed, the roots winding through them look like wires, as in copper wires, perhaps relaying information to mother Earth, news of the trouble that our family is in. The investigative hole had been dug by the body corporate. They didn't fill it in again after they had determined the issue, rather they chose to leave the hole and wrap the area in a plastic fence as in a crime scene. It has been like this for four months. The plastic fence surrounds the hole, a lemon tree and our bedroom window. Our troubles and the trouble of the pipes have been cordoned off, our ruptures isolated, “here there is no flow”. When we came home that night my wife said to me “you know our schism will persist until this hole is fixed”. She is a poet and will be one again when the repairs have been accomplished.
The tree, the owner of the offending roots, really is our family tree. This glorious tree, deciduous, stands next to our ground floor balcony. One evening, when our son was in primary school, an owl came and sat on the low bough that runs parallel to the balcony balustrade, a classic sturdy bough. The owl sat there and my son and I went quietly out onto the balcony and we three regarded each other for a time. I felt blessed by the visitation and the owl remained with us for a fortnight or so. Our son had a school project to design a family coat of arms so he drew a picture of the tree with the owl sitting wisely on the bough and a sleeping dragon coiled around its base. He drew this design in the shape of a shield. Soon after the gardener cut the bough from the tree, the first incision. Now we hear the body corporate plans to remove the tree altogether in its bid to repair the drains. Vandals. That would never be my solution to the problem but like I was saying we are just tenants here. In order to fix the drains must we really sacrifice our family, our family tree? If the body corporate learnt of my superstition would they change their minds?
You see I don't think it's superstition. Each day through our actions, through our activity, we leave an imprint on the world. When we wake up in the morning the world returns to us the marks that we have left so that we can resume the thread of our lives. While it might be hard for some to see how the blocked relationships in our family could lead to blocked stormwater drains for me this is but a small leap from there that I readily make, that I make readily, naturally, nature knows. Jung agrees. Jung was once in a meeting that was not progressing well when he noticed that his recently repaired wrist watch had stopped. He adjourned the meeting and reconsidered, changed his mind. Some will never believe that our thought lives affect the world, that our emotional lives physically alter Gaia, yet a survey of monastery buildings or landscapes altered by war says otherwise. An honest survey begs to differ. We belong to Gaia so why not? Goethe said that through our creativity we humans become co-creators with the Gods and participate in the evolution of both ourselves and our planet. If we solve our family issues will we save our tree? I fear not at this late stage. But if we can find that higher perspective, if we can live a little deeper, a little further, the planet will hear and respond.
You know with all this rain my mood has deepened of late. Sometimes, when I try to survey things from that higher perspective, when I see the macrocosm from within my humble microcosm, I can feel it. It is a real privilege to be alive and in a dialogue with the world, as though living in a Tarkovsky movie, from time to time, seeing what's going on within reflected in the world without. A dialogue. And to listen to the messages that the rain has been whispering. I learned this week that John Berger has passed away. Read John Berger. Anything by John Berger. He knows.
Links
