Wadjella Yorga: 01/01/2012

Firstly I wish to acknowledge JB @ Mindarie Project, for being the catalyst for this examination and subsequent musings. Through seeking clarity, by asking himself pertinent questions, JB had me closely analysing what it means to be an artist, and I found myself seeking answers to the questions of purpose and validity, of value and meaning behind the creative force that drives the explorations of this Wadjella Yorga.

Indeed many of my fellow travellers have kindled those fires, confirming & expanding much of what I have been observing and processing on this journey – other dimensions, other views of the world and our place within it, captured through the sheer perfection and courage of honesty that is a delight to behold. Spirit had an important message for me, through their example, that of unlocking my own story, making it more tangible, more grounded, that in turn kindled a small willingness to share, and for once I feel grateful for this window of vulnerability. If only, for the sake of my own clarity – I can perform the solidification into words of that which is meaningful to me, of what shapes me, what the journey has revealed thus far, and what I intend to create as the artist of my life - that which constitutes a living, experiential art.

Have always felt like a phoney when using the term artist to describe myself, and never more-so when I realised that the establishment required extensive training - a degree no less, not to mention an extensive body of work to be acknowledged as such. The world of art, neatly packaged and put into a box through the intellect, for marketing to an audience, and perhaps therein lies the rebellion. Art is instinctual I counter, and does not belong to the world of description. Surely artists are a bridge, a connecting link, facilitating people to cross boundaries and enter new dimensions of awareness, through being a reliable witness to the unknowable – and therein lies the paradox. Perhaps in this unwillingness to acknowledge and tell the story, the ground, for this journey, I fail to provide that connecting link for myself and for the viewer and therefore have not fully become an artist by my own definition – which may explain the phoney feeling.

Have tended to shy away from telling the story in all of it's dimensions, for many reasons, chiefly it has been and will remain, ethereal, a work in progress, that changes with the wind of every new awareness, but more importantly I grappled with the purpose in the telling? Am I merely seeking external validation in some vain attempt to come to terms with who I am what I'm communicating through this art, instead of trusting in that Yorga – that feminine. Am I once again invalidating that female that speaks of things nurtured in the dark if I start to fill in all the blanks, to sell the concept to myself or others. Or is it remiss of me not to share the accompanying processes, both internal and external, to provide some sort of context for the images that present? Are they any less relevant to the observer if I don't explain them, or provide a thread to follow, if I fail to assist the observer to recognise the driving force behind these expressions and they are left to ponder and explore that for themselves?

Have been grappling with this for some time now, and have witnessed the value in providing a context for the form that creative force takes and know that acknowledging the history/context is a powerful means of coming to new understanding. However there is a danger that this understanding merely reflects or becomes another mental construct that does not contain the power of knowing, of feeling beyond those boundaries. Am starting to come to terms with the possibility that I need to shine a light on the personal meaning behind the creation of a work, not try to describe it for the viewer or myself for that matter, but to provide a lens through which to view the work, channelling the light/information that may strike a resonate frequency in the observer, both the internal and external, enabling us to derive our own deeper meaning in our own timing.

Perhaps the only value in examining this context, this briefest recapitulation of personal history is that it will allow me to get to grips with where this Wadjella Yorga is coming from, who she is and acknowledging what she sees, what visions she is being called to nurture within that sacred womb of creation, to integrate that into the field of her being somehow, but it will only be a fragment, incomplete, a small and ineffectual description of a much bigger whole, a multi faceted, multi dimensional whole that will continue to spiral its way into new growth and awareness.

Childhood set the tone, the foundation for the new awareness to come and provided fertile ground for raising questions, for seeking the truth, in what felt to be a monumental struggle between the energies of the light and the dark, the disparity between the inner and outer worlds. This experience, this awareness, that accumulates as personal power, catapulted me on a quest for reconciliation between the two seeming polarities of existence. That journey of finding the zero point, the doorway to the infinite continues.

I am grateful for the minimal, formal arts training that I have experienced, which gave me a modicum of practical tools/skills, but most importantly it fashioned within me new eyes with which to see the world. Concentrating attention, intensifying focus, on seeing, through examining positive and negative space, observing light and shade, learning about perspective and its impact, examining the relationship of objects in space, observing the minutiae (wherein I later found the entire universe resided), of seeing the contrast (my greatest teacher), of creating a harmony through the balance of this light and dark, through composition, of the Golden Mean and the sacredness of geometry - there was an alchemical feel to this process of transforming three dimensional objects onto a two dimensional space, of capturing light that had me hooked.

It was only later on that I came to grasp the new meaning from this practice, it became a metaphor for life and a kind of Philosopher's stone for transformation, for seeing into dimensions beyond the five senses and what we have been conditioned to believe is reality. It became a meditation and an attempt to capture and hold onto those fleeting glimmers of awareness that hover in the spaces between. Perhaps that is why photography has always appealed to me, has been with me since childhood. Somehow it seems less laborious than drawing or painting, an instant manifestation of creative energy/inspiration, a means of capturing that fleeting awareness, a small window through which to witness moments of realisation mirrored in the world, though painting does beckon...

Efforts to tell the story behind my work/creative process thus far have been ethereal and minimalist, and reflect a certain unwillingness to enter into a cerebral analysis, or try to explain that which is too incomprehensible for words, and that may be better described in the language of feeling. Perhaps that's why the focus on nature, on this beautiful Boodja (country) that we belong to, as she is the energy that keeps this spirit grounded, in a world/society/structure that is the antithesis of our nature, mother nature. I've always felt confounded that I should have to explain this connection to country, but just maybe I do need to tell that story, out loud to myself, so that I can remember that foundation, that context for who I am and how I have been shaped by the world I was born into. The unique set of circumstances that have come to form these perceptions and trigger the questions that may or may not ever come to any resolution as we continue to expand in consciousness individually/collectively, no separation.

As a kid I always felt like an alien in a bizarre script of life that did not resonate with my soul. I had questions much larger than the answers found in the outer world and it was perhaps my saving grace that I grew up on a farm – in the mallee country. The isolation taught me to be contented with my own company, to seek and find my own answers, to master the use of imagination, to find my belonging to country, to place, to instinct, to discover that the only thing we can be sure of is our connection to this Earth, our mother, to merge with her dreaming. The trees, the wind, the animals...the moss, the rain, the dirt..the sky, the birds, the flowers...the sun, the moon the stars were my friends, became my family, and we communicated in an unspoken language, we reached a place of deep connection through my wide open heart and the soles of my bare feet.

Then there were those hills...Koikoneeruff (A place of mystical clouds) that provided a backdrop of constancy – ever watchful, a comforting presence, my refuge of stability, when all wasn't right with the world, when I gazed into the distance, befuddled by the incongruence of society, of the conflict of values, and the hypocrisy of the adults in my world. I was planted in an environment of survivors, conditioned to a certain level of background noise, unique to those living in the shadow of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This later came to teach me a great deal about compassion, but in those moments of experience, trained me more-so in the art of detachment as I watched the energy of the internal war projected outward and the lightness of my being receive a battering from that wounded yorga (woman), that ngangk (mother) who I loved.

To complete the balance of wounding, the appropriate initiatic scarring, this little yorga witnessed the poisoning, the destruction and death of her beloved, her other mother, largely at the hands of man – white man, he was the destroyer, he was blind, dead in his heart, he tore down and raped his own mother, leaving her scarred, fractured; he removed her diversity, he interrupted her connectedness, he dug up that womb that nurtures life, his own life, and cut it out, he wantonly mowed animals down in cars (I mention this because the award for the highest number of views goes to a previous post titled Road Kill – an interesting confirmation). Man, white man, who turned everything about the feminine into something of his own fabrication, something to be used to satisfy his lust for power and control and he used his imagined power to dominate and tame the wild things, to shoot those wild things for sport, and in his arrogance he turned that fragile fertility into a sterile, salty wasteland.

The pain was deeply felt, and I cried a lot for both my mothers and I would gaze at those hills...and their ethereal blueness would sing me home, back to my heart, into that deep connection to this country of my birth. Those hills, that bore witness to the pain and suffering and transmuted it through an ever present awareness. Perhaps that is why I relate so strongly to the story of the Noongar people as I hear of their love for those hills, their Boodja, their dear mother too, this ultimate feminine archetype that remains ever receptive, supportive of her children and attentive to the well-being of their Spirit. She bears no malice and teaches us to love unconditionally, but she will shake things up if necessary to preserve herself.

Growing up in Gnowangerup I witnessed the separation of black & white in its extreme. In my heart I knew this was bullshit and I cried on the inside, a lot...every day to and fro on the school bus past the Reserve where the Noongar people, the 'boongs' lived (boong - a derogatory term). Not in houses, in town, like the white fellas (wadjellas), but in tin humpies, on the fringe, with one cold and lonely metal tap supplying water – in stark contrast to the living water that flowed freely in the country of their birth. As shocking as it is to use the term Boong here, I speak of the mindset of the day, this day, still, in many parts of the South West and indeed throughout the entirety of this great land. I recoil in horror at the derogatory terminology used to describe our fellow human beings, and with which we ultimately end up describing ourselves. Nothing escapes that judge, that vicious, nasty voice of the accuser, that stabs at the heart and feeds us lies, which has become so normalised in this version of reality that I wonder if we as a species, and I as a part, will ever shed those scales from our eyes. Therein lies another common theme of exploration, of labelling without question, of taking up someone else's war, someone else's opinion and making it our own.

That's where discernment comes into play and I had bucket loads as a kid - as do all children before they are moulded into seeing the world in a particular way – that spectacular ability to cut through the crap & to ask the tough questions. I never once got a straight answer as to why the hell any of this was happening or how we could be treating people so badly. 'It's for their own good' was the condescending patriarchal overtone that I heard as a kid and that in itself created a split – a split between what I knew, that little Yorga – (woman), that feminine side, and what I was being told by those in authority, that egocentric masculine authority that began to dominate internally – that took on a life of its own, a certain kind of inner monster of denial, of guilt, of hidden shame that drained my personal power and taught me to mistrust that inner radar.

It took a lot of ferreting and going inward to find that disconnect, that imbalance of perception and connecting with Noongar people helped to dig up the truth as I journeyed through life. What I unearthed made that internal conflict even worse at first, as I realised the enormity of the travesty perpetrated, and I struggle still with the 'why the hell of it all'. I'm only starting to get it now, to see the psychology/the soul of this story...and indeed to provide some perspective to what I explore both within and without. This stark contrast, this pain of separation, this otherness - this living breathing heartless monster that invaded our shores has come to be my greatest teacher.

The ever present duality of black and white, good and evil, love and hate arising from the ego centric mind being played out around me, within me - the fear of the other. White fellas were the good guys, they were the ones who walked with God their saviour, and imposed their version of reality onto those who were different, the others, categorised as savages, less than human, in need of some form of redemption. The land down under as it turns out, provided a natural polarity, a mirror to the other side of consciousness for those Anglo/Europeans who made the perilous journey. Had they been aware of the inner journey they may well have met these savages in another way, with different eyes.

Did these original boat people recognise this family of nations, living in communion with their Boodja, who perceived Wadjellas as 'Spirits of the Ancestors returned'? Who greeted these intrepid voyagers to the new world, as moort ('family' – an implied reciprocity)? Who were these people who possessed such spiritual vision, that they recognise the connectedness of all life and did we bother to learn their language so that we could find out?

What held the seed of potential, the meeting of these two polarities to create a dynamic whole, became instead, the great split, that devastating separation, that resonates within this Boodja and her people today.

The journey of confronting the dark side, the unknown, the hidden, is perilous indeed, and I can attest, through experience, that to meet it's inhabitants with fear is fraught with struggle, misunderstanding and bloodshed, that involves the imprisonment and torture of our true nature, wherein we kill off that which we wish to deny and control, and we repress the life force a little bit more each time, until we wither on the vine, disconnected from the fullness of life - bound by a prison, a construct of our own making.
In some grand design of the universe we come full circle to the re-membering of ourselves, our true nature and through our connection to country, we are re-formed, through the integration of all that we have experienced and we awaken to unity, of walking in harmony, as we grow into the totality of ourselves.

The outer Reconciliation, the apology to the first nations people of this Boodja, is significant, for so many reasons. To me most importantly it heralded the dawning of this new vision, for we all share this wound, it is our collective journey. There is much to learn and unlearn and this is the nature of growth that can not reach its fullness without an alignment with integrity.

It is our sacred task to be reconciled, to come back to our centre, to gather our courage and perform that deftly act of balancing our two halves, the inner & outer, masculine and feminine, individually and collectively, coming into balance by transcending ego mind and remembering an ancient language, that spoken by the heart and soul, that sings of connection to country and that original custodian inside us all, to acknowledge the Spirit of the Ancestors who remain as guardians of this sacred space in the time before creation...to flow in the gravity of the universe, the timelessness, the dreaming, to bask in the light of our inner sun, the place where our freedom resides...in a bid to stop the world, the internal dialogue, & see with spiritual eyes once again.

Walking in a sacred manner through this Boodja (country) is my process...my meditation, from which stems the outpouring of creativity, that reflects my journey back to wholeness, that contains within it the artistry of weaving the story of my life back into relationship, into connectivity, into a place of meaning.

Here endeth the first instalment of the creation of the Wadjella Yorga – white woman – a label that when unpacked and examined means so much more to me than I realised.