UNDERSCORE 1.0

Parallel reading of
'the whale rider' by Witi Ihimaera (1987):

“In the old days, in the years that have gone before us, the land and sea felt a great emptiness, a yearning...

Suddenly the sea was filled with awesome singing, a song with eternity in it, a song to the land:




The dark shape rising, rising again. A whale, gigantic.” (pp 13-16)




UNDERSCORE 2. 0

Letter writing, bread crumb throwing, gentle lob one to the other:
its own kind of warm up, dance, preamble.




UNDERSCORE 3.0

The man constructs a whale costume, each day adding to the new iteration of the behemoth suit - stitching, unpicking, unthinking, following, gathering onto a surface.
An act like a prayer, a healing - allowing the past to unravel, the future to glisten.

RICHARD CILLI

_
_
He stands in the wake of his own life
In awe
In reverence
In blessing
In grief
_
_
_
_
Deep the grief
The body cries:
Irreverent cow, Kafka’s cockroach
_



The giant body begins
a turn
The quantum
field of
all
we
hold
Heralds it presence,
intent to become palimpsest
Tabula Rasa
Terra Nullius
The land cries to the ocean
‘
We work in the third diaphragm
We feel the dance leaving
she audaciously going
he chuckling on his way out the door
Oh, you fools, you fools!
It is,
One must
Watch things die
One must watch
The watching
And grieve
And let the body down-fall without seeming to
Bony increments chipping off, fascia unwilling,
gnashing onto flesh,
horse legs fretting but halted:
un-doing
un-done
un-holding
un-held
That which held us, yes,
has stopped
We are left in a karst land:
Underground rivers,
sinkholes,
bare rocky lands
an absence
of surface streams and lakes
But
even that which
seems dead
Is


not
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:

Poetic destruction
Is poetic
And
Intoxicating
Non ci piove!
/
My head will be concealed
/
Sensorium
Planetarium:
piling up,
screaming,
dying,
wetting the days
ahead
slap slap slap slap slap
surge with speed
Glorious SPUME!
Then, I will river walk, head down, stride open
Karst land and aquatic beasts resting
You have called and I have come
Maybe this is what the whale rider is: a spear that blossoms
A final one
A final bow
A costume for
That accumulated
Saved to serve
And impel
the
annihilation
of my
body
story
need
The life presses on
The spear bites:
I, the he and she, throw
Arm bones cast to the world
Knowing wisdom is not mine to own.

“The flukes of the whale stroked majestically at the sky.
Hui e, haumi e, taiki e.
Let it be done”

non-chronological EXCERPTS:
'A whale of a dance for the ends of things: a poem of pulsing lengths'

by Paea

9 August 2020

He: Northern Beaches (bush walking),Sydney, NSW
I: House, sitting, Western suburbs, Melbourne

RICHARD is balancing the knowing and the doing, the art and the science. He has done what feels like a lot of dancing, and is sitting on top of a hill, waiting to see what happens next. He has relished the chance to dive deep with Paea.

IMAGES:
Paea Leach, 'The black whale' (artist's 5 year old son's bath toy) with ribcage (from Osteopathic Sense, Melbourne).