Salt Self.

A few months ago I asked Dancer Seb Geilings to film some movement for the Ceremony. We talked about the connection between nature and human nature and about the ways that flora, fauna & the elements can mirror so closely the experience of living inside a body. Rain, tears, sap, blood, breath, wind. We talked about Mary Oliver's poetry & laughed because when he sent the footage to me he said 'my shirt was off and there is shit everywhere but it was right body right time'. Isn't that the best? Right body. Right time. If you haven't heard of Mary Oliver, today is a brand. new. day. I wasn't really into poetry before I read 'Wild Geese' given to me by my friend Arabella. I also have to tell you that I have a fiercely negative physical reaction to spoken word almost immediately, yet the way Mary Oliver articulates the intangibleness of the world is something else. What draws me in is the way I feel poetry (and all forms of art) can be incredibly powerful tools for calling for a better world. If everyone saw Earth through the eyes of M.Oliver- the waves, the birds, the colours, smells- there is no way we could continue to treat the planet how we currently are. As Toni Cade Bambara said, 'The role of the artist is the make the revolution irresistible'. I wanted Seb to move for you so that you could see the physical representation of how we believe M.Oliver felt. She refers to the 'soft animal of [the] body' and arriving at the 'river of [the] imagination'. I gush about Seb too much, to too many people who don't know him. Can't stop won't stop. However, in the interest of keeping some things sacred and understated to retain their weight when kind words are said, I will simply say this. If our tears are rain, if thunder is built up communal anger, if our skin is the skin of the ripe nectarine, then Seb is unequivocally the beehive. The melting, falling, warm honey. The strength & structure of the honeycomb and that eternal orchestrated hum. That's what he is. This week, I encourage you to notice nature reflected in yourself and those around you. Consider how a smile is like the opening of a flower or how connection with a partner can feel like the warm of the sun hitting your face or the inner rumble of an earth quake. Observe & use it to respect your three homes a little more- your mind, your body, the planet. Ocean, Mary Oliver. I am in love with Ocean lifting her thousands of white hats in the chop of the storm, or lying smooth and blue, the loveliest bed in the world. In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough, a heart-load for each of us on the dusty road. I suppose there is a reason for this, so I will be patient, acquiescent. But I will live nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting equally in all the blast and welcome of her sorrowless, salt self.

Here are two small snippets of the whole 4mins. More on my instagram, which lives on the home page of Daily Ceremony. Thank you Seb, the eternal hum.

Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.