Twelve months passed. One day, one memorable day, I was in town visiting at the home of a friend. About this friend, a trait that I particularly appreciate is his curiosity, his interest, and his appreciation of life in all forms. I appreciate that he is an appreciator of unusual and wondrous things. Among the scatterings of eclectic books, piles of magazines, articles, fossils, paintings, interesting plants and the odd mammoth tusk, there, squashed between stimulating conversations on the wonders and the delights of the world, there on a dusty shelf, in the jumble of other oddments I came across a curious item. I picked it up. I dusted it off. I turned it over. I turned it around. It did fit snugly in the palm of my hand. “What is this?” I asked.
Off we went together on a storyteller’s journey. At one moment we were skimming over the tops of trees in a helicopter, swooping down valleys in the next, flying over islands. Upon the sighting of the carcass remains of a whale on a beach, the helicopter set down. The stench was memorable yet not pleasantly approachable, definitely advisable to be walking the beach in any other direction. Along that beach, poking out of the sand from time unknown was an unusual specimen: a bone, an ear bone of a whale.
An ear bone of a whale. That was the item that had come to my attention on that shelf. How absolutely wonderful. I admired the bone. This is the instrument through which the whale listens. I contemplated. Such a miraculous instrument. Through that bone, sound is gathered. I sat with the bone. I had never before thought about, nor even considered the existence of a whale ear bone. I had not considered that a whale would have such a bone within its anatomy. I now imagined the whale taking in and processing sounds of the underwater world. I pondered whale sounds.
At some point thoughts drifted to “Cedar and Granite“ wood sculpture in the studio at home, This sculpture included both whale features and sound components. As well, the sculpture, in part, expressed subtle physical characteristics of both beluga and sperm whales. As for sound components associated with the sculpture there were the resonating and amplifying of sounds produced within the cavity of the sculpture. Might there be some kind of connection? Sculpture, whale, sound, and the ear bone…
Whale and sound as coinciding incidences. Maybe this situation is something to pay attention to. Might there be an intuitive connection? I brought the bone home and sat with “Cedar and Granite.” I pondered while holding the bone in hand, this rare, unusual object associated with both whales and sound. I pondered as well the sculpture that also presented connections with both listening and with sound. I pondered the ear bone and then the sculpture to which I had been so closely bonded for so many months. Both expressed elements of whale. I pondered. I had experienced unusual sound reverberations while inside the wood sculpture.
Whale, ear bone, sound, listening, sculpture, whale components, sound components. Am I detecting pattern? Is this coincidence? Is this serendipity?
Exploration of the intuitive is much about tuning up one’s listening and about shaping one’s awareness of pattern, or of resonance in everyday life.
Pattern. Resonance. I was ripe to recognize a possibility of connection, of coincidence. Coincidence, those incidents that have coinciding characteristics, coinciding patterns.
I contemplated, ear bone, that instrument the whale makes use of to hear and to transpose sound, a sculpture containing essences related to whale, both beluga whale and sperm whale plus other more subtle whale features. Sound and resonance, resonance within the large cavity of the sculpture. What more might I understand from this incident?
This first introduction to a whale’s ear bone, triggered personal awareness of the presence of pattern, of connection, of coinciding incidences.
Despite my resolve not to carve creatures in the piece, as clever brain had been encouraging me to do, a beluga whale was determined to be there in the sculpture. Eventually I had allowed it some definition. As well, the clearing of a band of soft and rotted wood in another area of the piece revealed what to me was the lower jaw and head of a sperm whale. Although it was visible I choose not to give detail to the sperm whale. I knew it was there and I chose to leave the form in abstraction as first revealed.
Another note here. I would not intentionally carve either a beluga whale or a sperm whale as they are not whales I would see In this area. These whales are not familiar to me.
Upon transcribing this last paragraph I paused to collect my thoughts and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle. Before the kettle had boiled, within a hundred meters of the house, simultaneously, two humpback whales together did two full breaches. It was breathtaking! What an inspiration! This is definitely not an everyday occurrence, particularly not right in front of the house. And to have it happen at that moment in the composition of the writing. Wow!
I am back to the keyboard.
Was that a coincidence? A whale celebration for sure.
OK, where was I? I have to be clear and accurate with this ‘introduction to the ear bone’ as this event is particularly significant to the events that follow.
I continue with another note
I took the ear bone upstairs to the studio for contemplation with what was then referred to as “Cedar and Granite.” I do not recall how much time elapsed before I realized connection between the ear bone and the driftwood sculpture. I found myself in a state of awe, standing in front of the large wood sculpture, holding this bone in the palm of my hand. If there ever was to be a state of being awestruck, this was it. The physical similarities were mind boggling. The probability of the occurrence of the multitude of serendipitous occurrences was astronomically mind boggling.
From that piece of driftwood, chosen from thousands, combined with a process of listening deeply within myself, I had somehow managed, without knowing that whale ear bones existed, to have carved, to have replicated, many of the unique features of this ear bone. I now recognized that the general features were already physically within the chosen driftwood. The features in the wood sculpture were an unequivocal representation of those of the ear bone. I was stunned and elated. Without a doubt in my mind.
I felt confirmation that through an inner listening process I was able to carve an object, the existence of which I was previously unaware. And the metaphor, the listening inside, the feeling of wanting to be inside, the instrument for listening inside, all this came together in a rush.
The odds of all the coinciding incidents to have come together for this phenomenon to occur, would be astronomical, and it had occurred. I was spellbound. I am not speaking here of one or two incidents. I am speaking of many.
MY mind raced, swirled, felt a little unhinged. To have chosen this particular piece of wood from all the other thousands of pieces of driftwood. Chosen despite it being both inconveniently large, and inconveniently inaccessible! This piece of wood that with intuitive listening would unknowingly incorporate naturally exhibited features as replications of the natural features of this ear bone of whale! That occurrence, that coincidence is in itself amazing. To have chosen to plunge in with the saw in a precisely appropriate spot, then to have carved an organic opening where there had not been an opening, to have carved that specific shape and with that proportional size congruous with the opening in the ear bone. All of these occurrences have been breathtaking.
To have, through an inner listening process, elongated the shape of the opening following visual cues and then to have this elongation match the shape of that portion of the ear bone. Undoubtedly this was indicative of the guidance of intuitive expression. This was an incredible expression of intuitive creativity.
Through carving I responded to the intention that I wanted to be inside this piece. That feeling provided guidance to make an opening in the wood piece where there had not previously been an opening. This portion of the trunk was solid previous to my plunging in with the chainsaw. If I had realized that would be a decision of such significance, such magnitude, I would have taken pictures of the solid trunk before I had plunged in. “Sigh!”...that is often how life works. Understanding comes later.
Metaphorically “being inside” was where I had to be on a mental level to make the appropriate decisions to end up with this sculpture. I had appropriately, yet unknowingly, taken literally the “being inside” as an indication that there was to be an opening that I had to make physically in the wood so that I could physically be inside.
That day “Cedar and Granite” became “Confirmation.”
The metaphor of the whole experience is stunningly beautiful. I am teary-eyed just thinking about it.
These sculpting notes provide only a glimpse of the mental processes that were going on as the sculpting was taking place.