Politically, home is a very loaded term in Australia. You cannot consider the idea of ‘home’ without raising ideas about colonisation, migration and geo-politics. And yet it is also a deeply personal thing.
Gareth Hart, Director Arts Mildura
In July 2020 I was commissioned to write an introductory essay for the exhibition catalogue for home2020. artsmildura commissioned eight local artists to respond to the lived experience of enforced isolation during the pandemic.
It’s the end of spring 2019, deep in the bush of the Strathbogie Ranges. I am attending a Rewilding camp, seeking a meaningful connection with the wider natural world. It has been raining lightly ever since we arrived. On this morning, we are learning to build a debris shelter. Working together to identify and collect the appropriate materials from the surrounding bush, we construct a small shelter for one.
Burrowing down inside, protected from the cold and the rain, I am being held in the arms of the landscape. I think maybe I am in a coffin, or a cocoon? It is dark, but not claustrophobic because I can feel the forest gently breathing through the shelter. Rain drops slide and scribble down its ribs. The smell of damp dirt, creased leaves and scats is so potent I can taste it. And it is delicious.
Not long after this, our Country began to burn. The challenges of the year 2020 were only just beginning. Our concept of and relationship to ‘home’ was about to evolve into something new, a meaning about to be shifted by circumstances not yet experienced in our lifetime.
***
Back in the Mallee, reflecting on what home means to me in 2020 is a culmination of experiences of constantly changing dwellings throughout my adult life. Renting houses, minding others houses, portable houses. Drifting chapters of friends, lovers and strangers. In an everchanging environment the comforts of ‘home’ are activated by sensory cues; the smell of chai brewing in the morning, a collection of my most loved books next to the bed, the feel of my favourite pillow case on my cheek as I sleep. All of these things I can bundle up and take with me from place to place.
For each relocation I shed more belongings. It is an unsettling yet liberating de-scaling. I curate and minimalize possessions down to those which hold most value to me. It’s becoming addictive, and I imagine a never-ending process. Each time I question; what am I holding onto that feeds an idea of who I am? What history am I ready to let go of to enable my evolution?
As the boundaries of what is ‘mine’ contract, boundaries of belonging expand. Buddhist Monk Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche suggested that if we change the focus of our responsibilities from inside the boundaries of our house, to accepting that ‘this whole world is my house’ we can begin to discover how and what we can contribute to the world.
***
I’ve heard that your soul chooses where you are born on this planet. I feel this as I move quietly through the Mallee. Adoring the towering red gums standing on the tippiest of toes over the banks of the Murray, the soft silvery glean of saltbush leaves reflecting the desert sun, the faint smell of clay particle dust lining my nose reminds me. I am from this place, I am of this place.
Each time I arrive on Country, I place my bare hands and feet onto the earth and engage in a practice of remembering. I image the Indigenous ancestors of this Country alive. Celebrating through song, dance and story; cooking and crafting around the fire; trading and governing community; birthing and nurturing life. I recall that my own ancestors, although their origins are unknown to me, live in the cells of my body. They remind me that the water flowing through the Murray is akin to the blood flowing through my veins.
All humans once knew how to live in synchronous flow with the elements. We could read the wind and the clouds, understand the language of birds, smell the warm breath of prey through the forest. Life was lived in consistent and direct contact with the earth. Mythologist Martin Shaw describes us now as having ‘traded shelter for comfort.’ In a modern world we have adapted to seek structure and safety in a secure, sealed space. Within walls we construct an idea of home, building our identity and affirming who we are with what we own. We categorise, formalise, expand and compartmentalise. Lines of imagined boundaries create our homes, cities, states and countries. Nonsensical notions of ownership of land, ownership of rights and ownership of knowledge keep us segregated and contained.
The comforts of what we seek through constructing what is ‘ours’ has in turn disconnected us from what belongs to us all. And while we are distracted by comfort-creating and chaos-containing, our true home is slowly and quietly degenerating. Yes, sometime she cries with a voice so powerful it shakes us. But in between those moments, if we aren’t listening carefully, we easily miss the small and almost silent breaks in the web of life that sustains us all.
***
For those fortunate enough to be living in a position of privilege and equity, 2020 gifted a unique opportunity to slow down and tune in. For some staying still has been confronting; the lack of distraction revealing uncomfortable silences, spaces not yet explored.
At the crest of my trepidatious acclimatization to the changing world of 2020, I chose a ‘sit spot’ at Kings Billabong. Nestled in the heart of a gathering of red gums, every day I sat in stillness and silence, observing nature. She felt my clinging; as I sought to recognise patterns, identify and label all around me. She sensed my mechanist mind sending out ripples of frustration and confusion as I tried to impose structure to the chaos of the world around me.
The moment when I realised I was truly seen by her, in all that I am, I felt so exposed and vulnerable. Restless as these energies moved through my body, she held me and my discomfort close. A space opened up for me to finally land into knowing. We live in an ever-changing dance of evolution and chaos, these are the only guarantees in life. Even as a perfect structure emerges from nature, the moment they are expressed into the world, the chaos of life starts to shape them. Everything is new and never the same as before. And here lies the true beauty of life, it can’t exist in a perfect, stable world. And neither can we.
***
Observing what emerges from the quiet of 2020; I see an uprise in awareness of life’s practices that foster a coming home to self, each other and the land. Making space for energy to flow through yoga, mindfulness and being in nature. People walking in pairs by the River engaged in intimate conversation. Sharing of resources such as books, tools, skills and ideas. Fingers digging into soil, nurturing bodies with home grown food.
We can no longer take for granted the simple pleasures of being connected to the ecology of life. We can no longer deny our radical interconnectedness and commonality of fate. We have been gifted an understanding of the home that is simultaneously in us, our family, our community and our planet.
Are we as humanity in 2020, coming home?
Regenerative Communities 