My eldest brother Bruce is an artist and has been doing mosaics since he was 13 years of age. Many of his works are presented in places across Australia and he has been teaching Art for over 50 years. Bruce lives in Tasmania and one of his recent works was a map of Tasmania using pens. See below:

What is interesting in this work is that Bruce is dyslexic and cannot read or write well. It is why he left school at the age of 14 and entered the workforce. I have written about Bruce in some of my books.

What is fascinating about this work by Bruce is that it tells the semiotic story of fragility through the eyes of Marcus Clarke’s work, For the Term of His Natural Life. It is a story of convict life, colonialism and love. The art work is simply called ‘Fragility’ and was accompanied by a poem (see below).

You can see the two lovers from the story facing each other in a mix of amber colour. Their faces are contrasted against the lush green of Tasmania in a dialectic of longing yet not realising that love. The text of the work is not in words but the text is semiotic strangely, using instruments of text (pens that had been thrown away).

So much of what we experience in life and being can’t be expressed in text. It is where we get the language of being ‘lost for words’. It is also why we turn to figurative, metaphorical and Poetic language to express the inexpressible.

When we face the immeasurable, we turn to Poetics. This is why we wrote the book Poetics and Risk ((https://www.humandymensions.com/product/poetics-and-risk-feeling-into-being). Poetics is about all in life and being that cannot be measured, that can only be expressed through persons as living text. This is the beauty of fragility and fallibility and what makes us human. If you don’t know risk, then you can’t learn. If you don’t know and share fragility, how can you connect with others?

In risk and safety, it is in the things that cannot be measured that we really understand the job of being in safety.

It is not in the mechanical or computational (eg. AI) that we become conscious of risk but in the Poetic and non-measurable that we find our meaning and purpose.

Fragility

 

Marcus Clarke wrote it

A life lived in brutality.

An island of love and longing

Harsh in its belonging

 

In writing, inviting

Love and intrigue, uniting,

The fragility and suffering.

 

A frail love lost,

Van Diemen’s Land, crossed

The immortal word be-tossed.

Sylvia’s song, unsung.

Fragility.