Songs for the World Turning

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Songs For the World Turning

I live in the face of the weather — a westerly aspect, high on an escarpment overlooking a vast body of water. At this height perspective on the world changes. Patterns and phenomena that can only be seen with altitude are made visible.

It is a place of soft pink silent dawns. It is also a place that knows the crystal clear crispness of a blue sky day in late Autumn. There are days when I feel the weight of the air  as a storm brews far out on the horizon and my palette responds with colours of deep moody blues and greys. Sunsets arrive on the shiver of a zephyr — a geometry of liquid light, reflecting and refracting in the mirror surface of the lake — every day a different curtain call.

Squadrons of migrating birds flying low in elegant formation and flotillas of black swans drifting in and out of shadows illuminated by the light of a full moon are all part of the language and spirit of the lake.

I often experience a sense of transcendence as the theatre of the lake plays out before me. I am reminded of the ancient rituals that honoured the ageless rhythms of the world turning — day into night, into day into night — vestments and raiments, prayer mats — ceremonial robes that might be worn to honour the going down of the sun and the passage of the seasons. There are moments when I become attuned to inaudible chants from far away realms which inspire a private dialogue of signs and omens and creation songs of my own imagining.

Jo Sabey