More Than Meets the Eye
Efrat Livny
This piece is a large eye hovering over my future gravesite. It hangs from the arched limb of the beautiful tree that almost a decade ago, called me to choose this place as my final bodily home. I have always visualized myself under its canopy, held in the net of its roots. In the last two years the tree has gradually died. Shedding its bark in large sheets all around it, it now shows its inner being, smooth and light and strong like a bone. Standing at the intersection of several paths that lead in the four directions, it is a unique visual signpost and an emblem of what persists beyond our physical life.
The eye, its pupil made of copper spirals and a rusty wheel, is fringed with strands that are constructed of stones and bones, shells, feathers and metal objects. They represent the five elements - earth (stones and bones), water, (shells), air (feathers), metal (rusty things), and fire (movement). The materials used come from my vast collection, amassed over decades of wanderings and travels, close to home and in far away lands. As I made each strand I meditated over my rich life and imbued it with deep longings and prayers for our natural and human worlds and the unseen spheres above, below and all around. These strands serve as prayer flags, dispersing their blessings and protection as they sway in the wind. The central strand provides an anchor to create a point of stability, the zero point, where all the forces are neutralized and find an intrinsic balance. In this place life and death are one.
Finally, a cauldron of stones is provided for you, the visitor. Please take a stone that calls you, hold it in your hand and open yourself to the power and mystery of these humble woods. Allow yourself to shed your protective layers and meet the visible and the invisible. Hold it as you walk the paths and listen to their stories of lives and deaths. Feel into the inseparability of Life and Death. Keep it as a talisman that will hold this experience and these teachings.
