On Tuesday it was
snowing in On Thursday we reach
Uluru. Had I brought on the thick snow myself so as
not to have to leave my children behind? I know that life goes ever on, and this big
burning Red Rock will sooth my sorrows. You come back to Uluru as you visit an
ancestor, a grandfather who tells you your family history. Aborigines of He listens to my fears, my doubts. And my desires. If you meet this grandfather, he adopts you. So
you come back I am progressing in wider and wider loops and
one of them passes through Uluru. The photos are blinks of the eyes and the Rock
makes my heart swell so. Your loved ones are safe there. I also feel protected there. Nicole Kurtovitch You can only arrive in The sea, which enters this city through all the
available inlets, through all the openings from the land, the sea that even
comes in on the wind, is definitely what makes this stop a compulsory one for
me. So it still moves me, but subtly, as if it were preparing me for the long
desert journey, for the aridity, the heat, the yearning for water and shade
that will assail me, I am sure. In I travel by air. Then it was night, above I was between the stars in the sky and the
stars on the ground, thousands of farms and smallholdings, big villages, small
towns, a multitude of signs of life and wakefulness. I was surprised by so much
light, so much electricity in I don’t like sadness Under the metal belly Greetings rise to me from happy
gatherings Around each glowing light I imagine a thousand peasant women A thousand fine saris And all their smiles Those few hours you can’t do without that I was
talking about just now. In An old woman feeds The pigeons On her shoulder Result Pigeons Everywhere in The old woman Feeds the pigeons Even that solitary one Perched on the bench Result The best time to walk is dusk The white men say that Uluru, which is situated
somewhere in the south-west in the immense Such is the geological history as told by the
white man, and why not? There is also the story as told by the other
people, those who know, those who have a different way
of seeing things. The great ancestors walked around here, in the
time when there was nothing, when all was being created, they liked to take
their time and enjoy the immense space around them. Theirs are the traces to be seen all over the
continent and especially in the deserts. Here at Uluru the Mala Hare Wallaby
people have left traces of their fight with the Dingo Kurpany and Kuniya the
Python Woman is still truly present in her struggle with Liru the Fish Serpent
and there are many other stories, many other traces. All this is clearly
visible: the Great Ancestors have made sure that all is clear and intelligible
for their teaching to enable humans to live safely here. No-one forgets these
teachings, on the contrary, the lessons are taught every year, the young ones
learn and in the end gain the knowledge. Uluru is a University, an
encyclopaedia, a body of life-knowledge, of wisdom, as much as it a place of
beauty. Here is the other story. On Goose climbed the Rock. Antakarinja Pitjantajatjara Ngatajara Luritja Pintupi Ngarti Warlpiri Warumungu Bularnu Anmatyerre Alyawarre Arrernte These are some of the names of the communities
that live in the centre of They were all there at the ceremony to hand
back They are still and always there around us,
perhaps they are walking alongside us, hidden in the heart of the Dreamtime
spirits of Mala, Liru, Itjaritjari. They have gone Leaving nothing on the sand Apart from a song For fear that we might get lost A word Only one coming from them And I will roam unendingly Around Uluru Around the world Around myself And with cries of joy Songs of delight Giant steps If fatigue kills me not When I leave the plane I will walk around the Rock Tomorrow evening I will know A sea of white clouds Peaks crevices Cliffs and gullies Welcome me far above The red sand continent It too Peaks crevices Cliffs and gullies Where I’m going Within walking distance Traces of red Uluru is there Sitting firm on its foundation Waiting for none Mirror of visitors Usually deserts Nothing superfluous This one sometimes Nothing First, there is no choice but to stop, because
it is late, too late this evening, on one of the parking areas opposite, two
kilometres as the crow flies from the Rock. Where people talk to me Of Of Of Of While scanning the horizon The promise they have made To raise a glass at sunset I have already been here twice, and so can
imagine the Rock rising there from the sand, before I see it. It is wide and long and high, with depressions
and protuberances, full and hollow, smooth and rough, light and dark, high and
low, dry and damp, with grass around or totally arid, windy and absolutely
still, noisy and silent. Here the Rock, with enough volume, has enabled
vegetation to grow, the presence of water in some parts, sometimes permanent,
more often intermittent, but the sub-soil definitely retains moisture, and the
vegetation can meet its meagre needs because the grass is thin, light and
springy, the bushes spiky and not very leafy. A few trees
which sometimes come together and form a miniature forest where it would feel
good to plant your backbone and become a tree yourself. The rain when it pours down apparently in a
great deluge of thick black water, makes Uluru into a
quite different place. No chance of rain What I have seen in photos Makes me want to be there Clinging to the side Quite naturally Naked In the muddy water To leave at sunrise To see the sun On my heart on my soul Rise over Uluru On the way Without having taken care To be caught between sun and moon When walking, the matter of shoes is basic, the
dream: to walk round Uluru barefoot. The reality, sharp pebbles and upright
thorns, rule this idea out straight away. I opt for the minimum, a pair of
plastic-leather type sandals. Théo and Emmanuel, two walker friends who have
not been to Nicole,
Jonathan and Linda, the rest of the family, who have Uluru experience from
previous visits with me, would have made different choices. The two women would
have simply elected cautiously to wear tennis shoes, but Jonathan would have
made the same choice as me and I’m not sure that he wouldn’t have taken off the
sandals after an hour. Whether shod or barefoot, people have crossed and
recrossed the earth and continue to do so. Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Conquerors,
Colonisers, Mongols, nomadic hunters, Redskin Indians, Pacific peoples,
explorers, sportspeople, or sympathisers, for Western folk, with the ideal of
Théodore Monod, man has always had to meet the need to protect his feet without
making them too heavy. Otherwise walking becomes a real trial during which he
is bound to die. My choice proves to be the right one for me,
I have no blisters and no feeling of pain whatsoever. Uluru has four faces (the north face, the east
face, the south and the east). Each has its history and these histories involve
animals, animal-humans, present, past, destiny. Tjukurpa,
imagination and dream. Each of these faces carries on it part of the
history of the Anunga people. The rock is the page on which life is written, the
folds, colours, small rocks, small protuberances, shadows, holes, peaks, trails
left by water when it rains, are the signs of an alphabet that you have to
learn to decipher. The children do so from the earliest age, they like the
stories about the great ancestors who left traces. Some peoples have
cathedrals, archives, knotted ropes, electronic memories; the Anunga have
Uluru. They also have songs, genealogies, dances and paintings, from time to
time all is renewed, recreated, life starts over again, not only theirs but the
life of the whole earth, ours too therefore. “ The Mala performed ceremonies on the north side of Uluru. This time they were doing one restricted to men. The men climbed up and planted the Ngaltawata. At about the same time the Mulga men, who had come from far away, came to convey an invitation to the Mala; unfortunately they refused to interrupt their ceremony, as the pole had already been set. The Mulga decided to punish these Mala by sending the dingo Kurpany. He, alternately snake and bird, and finally dingo when it reached the last dune, decided to attack the women and children rather than the Mala men. The women fled to be close to their men. Kurpany followed them and killed many Mala men. The remains of these poor men are clearly visible on the north side of Uluru as is the stone that is the remains of the woman Lunpa, she who alerted the children so that they would not be exterminated by Kurpany.” Those who are just passing through Like me, at Uluru One foot in the sand One foot on the tarmac Head perhaps on the top of Uluru The serpent says Tomorrow at dawn I will be a river The serpent says Tomorrow by sunrise I will be the thunder The serpent says Tomorrow all the time Remember The elusive serpent is no more then a line in
the stone, a rain shadow, the shadow of the water coming from millennia past,
it speaks and tells in its quiet way of the world and humans intertwined. As I pass the north side The faces of thousands of Aborigines Come to meditate here Surge forth before me To cross mountains and ford torrents Raising no more than a few puffs of
red sand Is all wearying and bends the body From that weariness surges the sky Blue only blue straight overhead Imagine blue sky blue rock Which emerge with each step on
burning sand Above the curves, lines and peaks And carry us upward It won’t rain, definitely not, not today and
not tomorrow. When I think that the last time we came and left it rained the
very next day, rain that had not come in living memory. Apparently there has
already been a kind of snow or hail up there at the top, at an elevation of
three hundred metres. Too bad. But I could easily see
myself spending a whole season tramping the water-soaked rock, walking by the
waterfalls, soaked from head to toe, alone. The animals, as usual when there’s
no need to stay out, stay deep underground or hide under a dry log, out of
habit or wisdom, while I, I remain in my storm dream, in my enthusiasm, in my
discovery and in my at last satisfied desire to hear at close quarters the
sounds of the first life, that first life, that original life that I feel is so
close to the truth, so close to the beginning and at the same time so close at
hand, ready to yield itself to me. Too much Cartesianism prevents me from
accepting as the only truth the story of origins, that of the ancestor serpent,
the bird woman, the breath of life needing constant rekindling. But in the end,
what matter the geological, geomorphological, scientific and verifiable truths,
these truths have not brought humankind more happiness or more justice or more
love or more friendship throughout the world or through the years. The lizard
man carries the rainbow on his back and Uluru is held out to me like a ladder;
from its back I will leap onto the rainbow that I will ride and there I will
meet the white clouds. A bird’s call To me almost insignificant Ignorance Not being able to hear anything It must be singing to me Where to place my feet, where to
walk Where to look what to see and not to
waste my time Walking aimlessly around Ah! To hear in the sound Of a rolling stone Fallen from above More than an impact To hear the salvation Complete Total and joyful Uplifting, of Uluru Ring out in my heart I am going I am Walking as close as I can to the
rock Its back to be precise Right shoulder The whole right side leaning Brushing against the rock at times I turn Belly to touch Rock and grains of stone Barely attached Come off and stick to me Are we so transparent That in the middle of the Naked men and sand Carry off sadness and ignorance We started to walk round Uluru by the west
side, not far from where the ancestors, half- animal, half-human, performed
their ceremonies. We walked around the Rock clockwise and the west and north
sides are definitely the most mysterious. Crevices, caves,
holes, huge gaping lips, mouths with which the rock devours us, but also
women’s labia sucking me in as in undiscerning penetration I enter the body of
the country. There are huge areas, vertical and perfectly smooth where,
there can be no doubt, no human being has ever set foot, only eyes, like mine
today can alight and set off dialogue with the stone, with the wind the noises
and the shades of grey and red. There is an undeniable female presence at
Uluru, of those women who give us life and who nurture us during our first few
months of life. However death is never very far away, it can ambush us even
when we think we are safe, under the protection of the Rock and of the
peacefulness that gradually invests us. As I reread these lines, as I look at
these photos, I think of that young man who died so far from home, a week ago.
He lived out his very last days in a capsule at the hospital, alone, completely
cut off and so far from here and the news of his death caught up with us when
we got back from the walk. How he would have liked Before going To see Uluru All covered in red He would have contemplated himself
there Tall and strong as ever (David F.) Do not climb Uluru Do As the Anunga entreat you Climb Uluru In awareness Assert Human universality At the top Find David’s soul there As if he were coming back today To live at We reach the water hole. They say that this one never dries up, why
should it? The place is ideal; the height of the Rock to halt the clouds, shady
trees, bushes for balance and to sooth the aspect, grasses, birds, beaten earth
on which to sit near the water and recover your breath, to attune yourself to
the time and place, to the peace, restfulness and beauty. I think about the
fact that we humans, we are constantly searching for a place where we could be
at peace for eternity. A few trees Suffice The tired body finds its place Here the forest is the mother of all
others Futile my friend it is even on this
day As the year closes to song To try and convince anyone of
anything In the end our bones will mix with
dust On the bank of the meagre river The country of the Dreaming of the
honey ant I try and find the traces of people Who are following an invisible trail To the water hole
guided by the song The ancestor leaves us his heritage A human vision of the world At the moment of death as the gaze
turns to the sky The idea of the Rock entering your
life Veiling the horizon with its dry
colour Over crevices and dark caves Moving up and over the ridge towards
the sky If I could, in a wingbeat, in a single leap,
find myself a few kilometres distant, I would have a further view of Uluru.
Eyes closed, I let myself go. The spirits come and take me, carry me away with
them, deposit me elsewhere, exactly where I wanted to be. The Old Man, Uluru itself, thus seems, lying
between two trees, simply asleep, while in going down, the sun leaves a
gigantic shadow to cover our hasty steps of people from somewhere else. I
imagine, now that he is asleep, that one can weave between the bushes, between
the red dunes, those that well up at regular intervals like a magnificent swell
of soil and grass, to weave through to the feet of the old man, very close by,
to listen to him, to touch him, with emotion to find oneself close to his
heart. Here, I will hear the Rainbow Serpent making its way beneath the sand
whereas on the surface without my seeing the naked men walk to the The path is clear and as the old man will sleep
until morning, between two trees, I will hear the voices glide between the
branches, as they enter the wood hollowed out by the termites to make a
beautiful musical instrument. The spirit of the Wadjinis like a
cloud Above the desert I am miraculously the spirit bird To fly over Uluru is not enough Long trails of hard rock Pinks reds ochres and then nothing The keys of such an ancient world Solely that of the heart the spirit
empty One step then three not ten thousand Are like walking round your life And at the end of Uluru The horizon turns They my loved ones Left so far way Do not have Uluru with them To walk around To hear To the echo of ones own heart To come to oneself Jonathan and Linda,
may have stayed behind in Just before the end of the walk, at the place
called Kuniya Piti, where there is the shade of a few trees but no surface
water, I think of Ryokan, that appealing poet, what would he do were he with
me? Pockets empty Completely drained the walk
completed Shifting an old tree stump to sit
down on And find a flask there “ Kuniya the serpent woman lived far away
from here, near Erlunda, to the west. When she laid her eggs she decided to
carry them to Uluru, where she herself was born, at the place called Kunya
Piti, the easternmost point of Uluru where the tarmac road passes barely fifty
metres away from the Rock. On the rock you can see the wavy lines which show
the way that she went from time to time to forage for food. Alas, Kuka Kuka,
her nephew who came and saw her from time to time was killed by the Liru men,
venomous snakes, one even carrying her body to Mutijulu, the water hole
situated in the southernmost part of Uluru. Kuka Kuka had infringed the laws of
the Liru but her aunt did not know, she didn’t even want to know, she wanted to
avenge him, full stop. When she met Liru, she asked him for an explanation, but
all he did was laugh, so Kunya threw sand to calm his anger and where the sand
fell, the bushes and trees became poisonous. Finally, as Liru continued to
laugh even louder, she killed him with a blow from a stick. And still today you
can see the blood which stained the rock at this place, Liru’s place. She
carried the body of her nephew even closer to the water hole. At that exact
spot, both changed into Wanampi or rainbow serpents. They are the protectors
and the guardians of the water hole, they make sure it
never dries up. Dream of the
desert once in the desert nothing else matters Memories of Uluru without having gone back after today Countless dreams yet The women’s place might be called Kapi Mutijulu, we reach it after two hours, with no shade but up
close to the rock. There were two of us for this nine kilometre walk. What I
write, she who has been walking with me since the start, she could have written
it herself, she has left it to me, and for that I am grateful to her, Everywhere Present and attentive In their silence They are like Rainbow When angry Namargon Punishes his sister For having been in love The story of Namargon and his sister would be
too long to tell. All that is needed is to know that, twenty thousand or more
years ago, he had no choice but to change her into the Rainbow Serpent so as to
punish her, yet without killing her, for having been in love with a distant
cousin. Today’s story hasn’t even kept the name of those times, of those places,
but you didn’t take lightly those stories, that period of the founding
ancestors, no incest, the desert is sparsely populated. The problem is that
today that rule is still followed but I didn’t hear any tale of a Rainbow
Serpent wanting to come and curl up in the rocks. This story takes place far
from Uluru and yet as far away as we are, we feel the ground tremble when the
serpent comes close to people. Walking I feel our shadow Shading all of us From the too-hot sun It is pointless to stop all over the
place This morning I was thinking The stone will be hot My hand will not have time to stick
to it In sweat my whole body will be
wreathed The summit of Uluru is apparently
like the sea With waves swell and wind With careful steps I walk avoiding The sharp stones and slashing
grasses The branches and twigs that crunch
beneath my feet Red sand and grey soles wreathed in
dust As we walked, always on the flat because the
path we followed neither climbed nor fell, we rose to meet the sky. Sad
thoughts, or aggressive ones, small sufferings due to too much ego, interest in
things we know all too well to be futile, too futile, gradually disappeared, as
if diluted by each footstep, transformed into vapour by the heat of the place. A heat due not only to the desert temperature. An inner warmth equally strong; similar to that which the yogis of Unfortunately, we also have to walk on the road, which is sealed, marked out with yellow and white lines, without any potholes or bumps, no grass growing up in the middle, and the grass along the sides ends exactly on the edge of the road. Why did the people concerned, Aborigines and rangers, not build a dirt road and route it further away, at least a hundred meters from the Rock? If people want to drive round, why not, I am sure that no-one would complain if the drive round had to be done slowly because of the road surface, and they would appreciate the bumping and dust as much as the shapes of Uluru. As we approach the end of the walk, our
starting point, we expect silence. We aspire to silence, tranquillity and the
feeling of solemn contemplation it affords. We hope to possess the ultimate
moments of beauty by clinging as close as possible to the rock of the Rock, the
water of the waterhole, the grass in the shade of the few trees, the impalpable
presence of the benevolent spirits of the sages who have passed through Uluru,
in the evening of their life on earth. After a while, if we keep our eyes
firmly focussed on the path with each step, the work does itself. It just
happens, without our wishing it, the door just had to be opened at the
beginning, we had to reject the picturesque, the strange, the curious, the
interesting, the informative, the search for knowledge, all
forms of thought. We talk of magic, why not, this is
the modus operandi that serenity uses to manifest itself. There, around Uluru,
there is something quite different from peaceful countryside, something quite
different from a restful spiritual atmosphere, with no tomorrow. This
‘something’ is the walking of a path to the middle, the middle of self, the middle of the world, but it is only definable and
understandable to oneself. Anyone else can just walk the path, and the path
will, if the person leaves his or her intuition free expression, bring out the
awareness of that which he or she needs, that which he or she desires. The
simplicity of the place, the lack of human presence, have enabled me to grasp
the fact that beyond reasoning, non-attachment is not non-interest, but that it
is a total presence, a complete presence, in the world. Uluru reveals, not
putative secrets of the world, no, but quite simply, and that is enough to
continue one`s life in betterness, a part of one`s own being, one`s own love,
one`s own joy. The horizon hidden behind the dust neither sky nor summit Uluru fadesRedfern is far far away from Uluru submerged in Potholed roads beer blood and crack nothing ideal The Dreamtime can no longer be if it is not also at Redfern The Australians of the
origin are dying in the city impossible to be in the desert In run-down
Redfern the red of the houses recalls the beauty of the desert The painters some Abos in town Paint the desert On torn-off car doors
Their heart of red sand Their loose teeth are the rocks
that have tumbled from Uluru Nicole Nicolas Kurtovitch February 2000 |