Our Enchanted World: Untamed - an exhibition at Kirstenbosch

We were both surprised and delighted to view a most provocative exhibition at Kirstenbosch Gardens - Untamed. Our photo shots of Dylan Lewis' sculptures, Ian McCallum's poetry, and Enrico Daffonchio's architecture paint the picture. We are spell-bound.

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"Whose permission are we waiting for to enter that 'uncertain ground'
where the voice of our wild history can be heard?
How long is it going to take to acknowledge that there is indeed a menagerie
within each of us... a wolf, a hyena, a lion...a wild man and a wild woman?"
Ian McCallum

A Dylan Lewis sculpture.

The Rising
One day your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
"Rise up!" it will say...
"Stand up inside your own skin."
Unmask your unlived life...feast on your animal heart.

Unfasten your fist...let loose the medicine in your own hand.
Show me the lines...I will show you the spoor of the ancestors.
Show me the creases...I will show you the way to water.
Show me the folds... I will show you the furrows for your healing.

"Look!" it will say...the line of life has four paths -
one with a mirror,
one with a mask,
one with a fist,
one with a heart.

One day, your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
Ian McCallum

Wildness has been confused with savagery. Wildness is hard wired. It is part of our essential survival and emotion charged expressions of territory, curiousity, nurturance, lust, rage, fear and play. To distance ourselves from, and worse, to deny our wild ancestry is to witness its return in all manner of savage outbursts. ~ Ian McCallum

Homecoming
You have come this far...
keep moving...don't turn back.
No one holds the measure
of their own undoing....no one,
the meaning of their dying.
Hold what lives
behind the masks
of your own making...
the music of your wild name.
Know that every tumble,
every turn on your twisting path
is a dance within a living
church of elements...
a sanctuary of stars
wings, breath and bone
where the masks of your making
are undone. ~ Ian McCallum

We have to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing. The Earth does not need healing.
We do. Our task is to rediscover ourselves in Nature. It is an individual choice. And how or where do we begin? We begin exactly where we are right now, when we look at the world as a mirror, when we discover that our sense of freedom and authenticity is linked to the well being and authenticity of others - and that includes the animals, the trees and the land. ~ Ian McCallum

I like the word , fierce -

the way it aligns itself with

nakedness and solitude:

a fierce nakedness...

a fierce solitude...

And I like the way it holds the word - fire.

I like the word, fire -

the way it ignites

the cutting edge of poetry

refusing to be nothing less than

a fiery edge...

a fiery tongue...

And I like the way it is linked

to the word, wildness.

I like the word, wild -

how it weaves its way

between yes and no,

how it announces itself as

a wild anger...

a wild joy...

And I like the way it nurtures

the word, fierce.

I like the word, fierce -

~ Ian McCallum

Sculpted from ancient rocks and stream
there's a dream in me...untamed.
Unnamed, it comes alive in my silence
and in the unframed manner of my waiting.
Awake, aware...it is there, coiled
in the folding of my arms,
in the holding
of my breath and in the deep
wakefulness of my sleep.
A force of fire and clay
It hunts along the edge of play
of hide and seek and turn away.
Body of sand and skin,
to know this spoor
Is to know the allure of our gravid kin -
three months here...nine months there
always expecting, and always...
the unexpected.
~ Ian McCallum