SOUL SURVIVOR (BYRON BAY, N.S.W.)
ABOUT THIS JIGSAW PUZZLE
This painting arose when Sam and Damien experienced their first shark attack. As new residents to Byron Bay, they knew this day would come. The painting is about a surfer who, like all surfers, was deeply in love with his sport. So much that he felt like he was in heaven – surfing the break at Cape Byron. When he gets eaten by a shark he doesn’t therefore travel to another heavenly realm he instead transforms in to a seagull to for ever fly in his Heaven… his surfing home of Cape Byron.
SOUL SURVIVOR – THE STORY
A child sits with his mother as he looks out to sea. His thoughts fly as freely as the seagulls he watches and he asks his mother, “What happens when you die?”
The child’s mother looks out to the blue, far stretching sea and answers, “My love, your soul is born again to fly”.
High up above Cape Byron, a flock of seagulls swoop and dive. A thermal circles them ever higher in a vortex of sheer joy.
One seagull shrieks to his friend “Look at all those surfers down there, riding the waves. They are suspended in the power of Nature, just like us! Water and wind in perpetual motion.”
Meanwhile out in the sea a surfer feels like he is in Heaven as he paddles to catch a wave.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, a shark takes the surfer’s body and swims away.
“And where does your soul fly to?” asks the child.
“You fly to wherever your heart takes you, my love. Your thoughts will carry you to the source of your imagination; a place so loving and safe. You will feel like you are home. There will be a guiding light and it will look after you.”
While up high goes the surfer’s Soul, high up into the sky. He looks down towards the Lighthouse and feels suddenly safe and loved. A seagull flights past him and rejoices, “Welcome back to the flock. You won’t need your leg rope any more, you are no longer tethered, you are free to fly and surf the sky”
“But mummy, my heart is with you”, said the child.
“Then, my love, in your dreams you can practice your wings”.
While the Soul of our surfer soars high above the Mother and Child, his arms become wings and he is a seagull…. a true soul of the sky. Heaven is here, his ocean home, the source of his joy…and here he will fly, in the heart of his dreams.
As he remembers the time he asked his mother as a child…
What happens when you die?
(c)Breakaway Art p/l
FACTS ABOUT BYRON BAY
* The awesome beauty of Byron is attributed to a volcanic eruption over 23 million years ago.
* Cape Byron is the easterly most point of mainland Australia
* Byron Bay is known historically by the aboriginal people as “Cawanbah”. Its modern title commenced from 1894.