PHILOSOPHY
Visions of ancestral past
Floating in that headspace so elusive yet omnipresent
Paramount to creation.
We are the same Earth, them and I.
We are the same Earth, you and I.
We walk through our forests, watching the buds grow
We hear the thud of a fallen fruit
And savour the bright gift of ripe red.
The Ancients knew to respect the elements so
They chiseled their Gods in marble,
And I chase mine in gold.
We honour Demeter in the eternal stone, setting sapphire into seed.
We speak in this way, centuries apart,
By minding our present in joy.
It is a journey upon which each step taken is deliberate and respectful, to be
As honorable as Ulysses on his Odyssey home
As compassionate as Gotama on the Eightfold Path.
The path leading there is plain.
The path leading there is pain.
The path leading there is joy.
The path is leading there.
Meditations on Ancestry
I would like to talk about ancestry. It is something that most people are familiar with to the extent of their grandparents, perhaps great parents if they are lucky. It’s about knowing where and who you come from so that you can better understand yourself. My ancestry is complicated. My parents come from two different countries: Greece and Malaysia. Their parents also come from two different countries: Borneo and China, Greece and Austria. My grandparents’ parents also come from different countries: India and Borneo, China and Afghanistan, Greece and Turkey, Greece and Austria. The point is, it’s hard to keep track and figure out where my roots lie. That’s why from a young age I’ve been curious about all of those cultures, their religions, their histories, and have been looking farther and farther back to find commonality, something to tie it all together.
That thing goes by many names and shapes, but I refer to it as spirituality. Something that when nurtured, gives us sensitivity connecting us to the natural world. Through making jewellery, my aim is to reconcile the philosophical, human centered spiritual beliefs of the Ancient Greeks to the nature centered cultures of ancient Austronesian people.
Sink into the earth, go with the flow, surrender. These are guides in my practice of Yoga. It means “one”, “unity”, “to join”. It’s no coincidence that so many of its guiding analogies refer to elements and phenomena of the earth. The whole reason of doing this, of being, of practicing, of making jewelry, is to feel home. What else is home but the earth we live on?