About Bonding......again....

I’ve lived in a house on the edge of an escarpment in the Blue Mountains, where the wind would rush up from the valley, and push the door closed, and whip through your skin to tickle your bones.  Where mist would sit like a waveless ocean in the deep blue valleys, and the cliffs would shine in the sun.

In an old terrace house, with a huge and elegant bedroom, that had a quaint fireplace and balcony, overlooking a busy country street in Bathurst.

In a caravan, on the bend of a river through an Arab horse stud, where I spent all my days looking after horses and riding.

In a student house in Strassbourg with Canadian art students, creating exhibitions in deserted warehouses.

Above a pub in Islington.

In the bottom storey of a massive sandstone manor called Wadi Shaifa, looking over another valley in the Blue Mountains, with massive windows where the moon shone in, and an enchanting park down through the front yard.

In a share house in Lane Cove, with bright lights and a beautifully glittering harbour.

In a witches cottage in Katoomba, set behind the street, where magic seemed to shimmer on the walls, and I painted it cream and crimson as soon as I moved in.

In a two storey cottage on Cliff Drive near the Three Sisters, with an overgrown garden that my girlfriend and I reverently uncovered like archaeologists, in a cute and artfully painted home.

In a stunning three storey tower with floor to ceiling windows, and carved bookshelves, looking out on another valley in the mountains.

In a bluestone mansion, set into a disused sandstone quarry in Stirling, with a spa bath, and paved verandahs, and luxury living.

In a three story rammed earth squat, with wooden balconies, in a country town in Adelaide.

In a disused Uniting Church Camp, where we hung out in a massive Mess Hall with a huge stone fireplace, and I had one of the oldest churches in Adelaide, as my first ever studio.

In a quirky, greek style, 4 brick thick home in the Adelaide Hills, on beautiful land, with massive gum trees, and a sacred spot where three creeks met.  We lived in a meditation studio, and witnessed epic night skies, and one night we even saw a Moonbow.

On a community in the Adelaide Hills in a true hippy home, where all the houses were joined by the roof to stay on one title.  Living on redgum regeneration land on the Meadows creek, and right next door to pristine indigenous bush, and stately pine forests.

In a bizarre little self organized shared household in Mt Barker Springs, where we lived in an unlined shed that I hung with material. With an indoor/outdoor fire pit, that we sat around a lot. 

In a little shack on the side of Mount Donna Buang in Victoria, in breathtaking mountain ash forests.

We’ve slept in a river bed outside Alice Springs, where you can see the Emu in the sky most perfectly.  Red earth and wide skies, and the brilliant aliveness of the desert.

And in and around all of these homes, our deep and abiding hearts home, was our ex army Toyota Commuter van, that I crocheted the seat covers of, and made cargo nets and beds in, and crafted hand made swags for.  In which we drove everywhere, could be ourselves and unobserved more than anywhere else, and had a mobile environment that we took with us everywhere we went, as a permanent sanctuary.  Where we could wake up at any place in the country, and have a cuddle before a strong cup of coffee. 

We’ve lived in two beautiful houses, on the picturesque and diverse community of Billen Cliffs, in Northern NSW. 

And I’ve never loved a home and parcel of land as much as I love it here.

Living here has fit a final piece to a puzzle that I’ve been working on, researching, and personally experimenting with for decades.  That puzzle being the full capacity and breadth and wealth of bonding in it’s extreme.  And through beginning to know the ocean of it…….maybe more to the point learning in the extreme what bonding ISN’T, along the way. 

And to be brutally honest, from my perspective as a bonded lover, mother, crafter, and now home dweller and animal herd……..virtually every facet of western civilization, is more of a lesson on how to unbond, disunite, disconnect, and separate, than any kind of bonding and love leading to community, self organization and empowerment. 

I’ve written so much about bonding over the years, from many perspectives, it’s been an almost obsession in my life and blog.  All the lessons  I’ve learnt from unparalleled honesty and trust, in an intimate and loving releationship, and from my larger amount of birthing experiences than the average bear, have led to very similar whole body learnings about love and bonding.  Those lessons now extend into home, land, and animals – all universes on their own.

Before I started my interior journey through loving Currawong and birthing babies, I thought of bonding as some vague cliché thrown around in ways like ‘male bonding’ and ‘female bonding,’ to do with sports or business.  The most I really heard about it was in nature documentaries and zoo stories around bonding, and farming stories of bonding to other species.  If this kind of inter species bonding and it's potential power interests you, watch this documentary about Animal Odd Couples.

But through living all my different experiences, I’ve learnt how integral bonding really is, in our mammalian journeys, and through our ancestral and evolved consciousnesses.  I believe, through truly living my life and following my own path, I’ve stumbled onto enlightenment through all the stuff that most people like to transcend.  I’ve deeply bonded with my mate, with my children, with my home, with the land around me, and with the animals we share the land with, both domesticated and wild.  I’ve bonded with the world around me, through my focus and unbinding into the bonding of birth, sex and death.

And this is the kind of bonding, love, community and connection that my ancestors went to war for.  Defended their lands with their lives for.  And had many stories and different ways to access the divinity within them, and through them, their land and connections. 

Living as we are presently, in Western Culture, or maybe more accurately, as the most educated Roman Slaves on the planet………..it’s not surprising that virtually all aspects of our society, are about how to disconnect us from each other, to prevent that bonding and community from forming.  From my perspective anyway.

Why is homebirth and homeschooling so roundly and solidly attacked?  Have you ever wondered about that?  Such a tiny minority of people?  Who affect hardly anyone?  With virtually no damage to the average person? Why is homeschooling illegal in virtually every western nation except America and Australia?  And why is homebirthing so intensely vilified?  Could it be, that these very events can potentially create greater bonding, and thereby increase the capacity for community?  Why are the genders set up in war against each other?  Why have sensible wholes been split into dualities that are foolish without each other?  God and Science belong to each other, as a dynamic, cyclic whole.  Home birthing and Hospital birthing the same.  Cultural education and Home education as well.

When you truly look at most indigenous lifestyles in our ancestries, in which we’ve lived in for the majority of our evolution, how did we get here?  Where we send our children off there, to bond with strangers that change regularly, and a bunch of other scared and emotionally undeveloped younglings, to bond with each other?  Behind fences?  And our men off there, to work with other men usually, in work unrelated to their immediate survival, clothing or food.  And our women off elsewhere, be it to groups or services or jobs or home duties, bonding with others in other ways.  And all of this bonding and unbonding of families, is all happening elsewhere, other than our homes.  Our homes have largely become the places we eat and sleep, and nowadays watch screens.  All the important stuff we do is somewhere else.  Our jobs, our passions, our crafts, our trades, all usually happen somewhere other than our homes.  And our relationship to animals has gone from co-dependant relationships that include the land we all live on, working out how to help each other birth, survive, thrive and die with dignity, to a bizarre pet relationship where those without children of their own, or a lack of community love, can translate that bonding instead to a pet, who they love and bond with in the same intensity.  Or we have a complete disregard for any other sentience at all, in the form of factory farming.

We’ve all got a honing instinct as wide as our hearts towards bonding.  And whether it’s with an animal, partner, child, craft, home, land, trade, community, sport, religion, or spirituality, we’ll have it in our lives in some way.  And I’m suggesting that our humanimal potential is to experience bonded love in all those areas.  Or at least a lot more than just one.  If that’s our yen and destiny.  A love to family, home, animals, land, and community, that is bonded and deep, intensely intricate, and eternally interesting.  A love that is as scary as exhilarating, and deep as potentially shattering.  We waft through life with a hundred breathing hearts, connected to our beings with yarns.

And that bonding creates the oxytocic bubbles, that mirror the intense moments of birth, sex, and death, and echo through our existences.  When we connect and truly bond as families, and communities, and at markets and events, we generate a vibration that truly attracts others, hungry for that love and connection.

I’m not sure if there’s a point to all this, except that this is all deeply on my mind and in my heart at the moment.  As we experience awesome bonding with the home where we live.  The animals we live with.  Our journeys together and how attractive they are to the most interesting people.  How through deep bonding to all aspects around us, we’re experiencing self organization on a profound level.  All the aspects we need to continue our bonded and self organized flow together, and around each other, just come.  Without any effort.  The right people and events spill around like pebbles on the creek floor, effortlessly going with the flow or staying put, depending on what’s needed at the time.  Every animal, child, tree or wild animal experience, relates to other things on many different levels.  Taking the steps  towards each other, working out how to mutually benefit from each others existence, rather than harm the co-existant whole. 

Each morning we wake, with a whiff of the potential of just about anything whispering on the wind.  Any person or entity could rock up and we most likely wouldn’t be surprised.  As we sink into our self organized, bonded family, chaotic harmony, a bright buzz whirrs around us.  We’ve got more visitors coming to swing through our realities, than we ever have in our entire relationship.  One tent comes down, and another one goes up!  Things are learnt effortlessly, as valuable mentor relationships spring up all around, our vibrant and authentic children.  So much is packed into our days, that we barely get time to recognize it, before another wild event comes galloping down the road.  So much learning is fast tracked and hacked into, by so many people and lessons on our doorstep. 

We’re learning about each other, and who we really are, and other people, and how they live, and animals, and what they need to thrive, and eat, and how it’s best to be eaten, and personalities, and how deep they root, and the re-spelling of the spells that our great western culture has spelled on our souls.   

And coming across so many other people wanting to travel the same authentic paths.  Into themselves, each other, their homes and land, and other animals.

We live in one of the most diverse communities I’ve ever lived, where the main tenet is respect for every living thing, except for violence or cruelty, which is dealt with in person and directly.  There are so many people with so many philosophies trying so many different ways to live.  So many directives, inspirations, and dreams being striven for.  Nobody really knows how many communities there are in the hills of the Rainbow Region, but there are hundreds, and they’re all different.  I’ve heard tell of communities focused around medieval sword fighting and knightliness, around unschooling, christianity,  womens land, fairy land for men, permaculture, survival anarchy, the desire to share no community at all, solar power, low income earners, activists, and more exotic possibilites of this sort than you could possibly imagine. 

And all these people shop in Nimbin and Lismore, and get together at markets and events, and swap stories and experiences, and I know that it’s a world that could be endlessly explored, and never fully known.  And the experiment is a huge success from everything I’ve seen.  People have learnt compassion and acceptance from their lived experiences. 

It’s fast tracked our family community experience, as a mirror showing it’s face to a world full of mirrors. 

I think the point of all of this is to ask you to jump in.  Wherever you find it, however it moves you, find yourself a community to bond with, with your family if you have one, or if not find a family that needs you.  And dive in!  Experiment!  Realise that the hurts and pains are the equal and opposite on the way to learning how to navigate the stormy waters, leading to the gentle bay of bonded community. 

It’s the only way we’re gonna save ourselves and our planet.  To bond with it and our families and our homes and our lives and care for each other.  Because we’ve recognized our dependance on each other and everything.

Or something like that anyway :)