Currawong Love Song

On cool misty mornings

when we cuddle up deep in bed together

first thing in the morning

after the babies have said

good morning and

mummy mummy mummy and

squeebed over daddy and

rolled into the middle and

prised us apart and

sat on our heads and

layed with their heads on me while

pushing you away with their legs and

looked at the bush turkeys outside and

taken off their nappies and then

gone into the adventure of the rest of the house and

maybe one or two has gone away and come back and

cuddled in at the side and

I’ve probably already got up to do

various other

very very early morning things

But

I get to snuggle back into

the warm nest of our bed

next to you

the hard soles

of your feet rest

on the tops of mine and

my toes and

my knees are pressed into the back of yours and

your beautiful curved bum

gently pushed into my lap and

my breasts nestled into

your smooth skinned

brownly muscled back

with that huge red mole

right over the back of your heart and

my arm drapes around

your soft hard hairy chest and

my hand curls

around your shoulder

It feels so completely full

And perfect.

And like I’d never want to move again

if I didn’t have to

 Curled so beautifully

warming each other with our skin

your velvet skin

singeing a band of heat across my flesh

your smell that fills me

with all sorts of archetypal yearnings and wantings

your hair tickling my nose

wrapped in each other and our bednest

with our tangled limbs holding hard

My mind wanders as it usually does

and because I’m so full of love for you

it wanders all around you

how I love all of you

every bit of you

The grumpy stroppy acidic snark and

the fights we have and

the gentle days and

your spontaneous joker and

irrepressible romantic and

the times when you feel like my ancient teacher and

those when you feel like my biggest child

The adventures we’ve been on

the sights we’ve seen and

the depths that we’ve delved in each other

The babies we’ve made and

the births that they’ve had and

I love the reality of you and

the hard muscle of you and

the sun warmed skin of you and

every single thing of you

I love my loyalty and jealousy

how much I feel like I want to

hide you away

in a treasure box

with all your love just for me

 I love the profound moments

that we both have etched

on our souls in shared memories

I love the perfection of all our imperfections

I love your carnal lust and its echo in me and

I love how our search into that lust

no matter how many dark roads it may have taken us

always leads us to each other

Our search into sex

and desire and carnality

has taken us to that place

that many seekers search for……..

The world where you can let go

of your earthly thoughts and

worries and

ego and

just

be

pure

lust

Exist only in the moment

forget how we look

be

love and

wonderment

lost in the eternal now.

In fact

I love every detail so much

that I try to find us an eternity

cause it’s hard to feel so much love

without the knowing that one day it will end

one of us will die

and then the other

surely with this much love

wrapped up in our souls

it cannot die?

surely even after all the

universes and

suns and solar systems

have fit into our consciousnesses

we will still see each other and melt?

I go through all the things

I know about the world and

myself and

each other and

all the places I believe

we’ll all go when we die………

And I know that we’ll still love each other

Everytime I start to feel afraid

of death

or of loss

or of an unexpected and horrible thing happening

or of the future

I try to quick remember

that it’s all me

Everything is me

It always has been

Would I ever be really cruel to myself?

would I ever really hurt me?

without giving the balm with the pain?

and a reason for the cure?

And then I always relax

cause I know me and

 I’m pretty groovy

 I know

that wherever we may end up and

however we run into our next journey

beyond this one and

no matter in what form and

no matter what universes we have sitting within……..

That there will always be you and me and

this epic love between us and

that is all

there really is

Love

Eternal

Funk

I’ve been in a funk.  A blue mood.  Full of conflicting emotions and realities and perspectives and worries and attitudes past and present.  All my most prized and hard won beliefs have been parading past me like a gay pride march, colourful flags billowing, sequins body suits sparkling, signs and symbols of lessons learnt emblazoned onto brightly painted placards.  Or sneaking into our bedroom at night, slipping between sleeping babies to kiss me on the cheek and remind me of their worthiness.  And all the doubts associated with the getting of my beliefs have been re-animated as ghosts………did I really get it ‘right’?  Did I really stretch and tease and pull apart my beliefs and iron out all the wrinkles? 

Sitting with babies and cleaning their messes and feeding them food, BIG THOUGHTS come and dance a whirly gig in my head.  HOW AM I GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD? thoughts, and WHAT DIFFERENCE CAN I MAKE? thoughts play intricate games of chess with my mind.  And when they go quiet, the seductive pull of self doubt and feelings of aging come sneaking round.  Why do I think it really matters what I think, when I witness the enormity of the universe, and entrenched beliefs around me, and that great wheel of life that never stops it’s grinding procession?  Who am I really, but another aging hippy trying desperately to hang onto the vitality of youth?

I guess it all started with the business course.  Determined to carve us an income from our lifestyle, I launched into an ecourse feet first.  And landed heavily on the glass shards and needles of my attitudes and life experiences around the monetary drive that I’ve periodically ignored and explored throughout my lifetime.  The justifications I’ve used to pursue it, and the rationalisations about how I’d use it better than I’ve seen.  My lust and disgust for it.   And then my last post ‘money’ galloped out of the wings, trumpeting wildly about the beauty of the places where money isn’t, and placing it in the hall of mirrors where I nearly always end up.  Me, and my unique spark of the universe that I carry with me wherever I go, nearly always end up sitting on the floor in a vast reflective cavern, where I see my spark mirrored there, and there, and there, glinting and crackling along with all the other sparks, that contain every spark within them.  My drop of the ocean that remembers where it’s been. 

When the dust settled on my introspection about money, I came to realise that my dreams of having money almost always end up in some kind of “We’ll buy our farm and close our gates and set up our own private heaven, and the world can just pass us by” fantasy.  I think our lack of money keeps us far more real.  And sociable and interacting.  When it comes it will be perfect though, and we’ll know how to deal with it.

Then we were sitting at home one morning, facing another day of feeding babies/cleaning babies/entertaining babies/cleaning up after babies, and the call came to action!  We tumbled into the van, oranges and nappies flying, and we swooped off to a nearby town where Metagasco was digging a pond to hold toxic water, the ‘waste product’ of the system of gas fracking.  One of 5 ponds in this town close by, that are shallow, and leaking, on a floodplain in a regularly flooded area, that is totally fertile and growing food.  Coming from 9 wells that are operational, only 2 of which that are working, quietly humming away in this town so near where we live.  We were gutted.  And elated to meet so many disparate folk coming together and forming community around protecting the land.  And devastated when we looked at the reality of this unsigned pond in front of us, leeching poisons into the waterways.  And delighted to passionately speak to the man who was making a movie about CSG.  “Just wait a minute, I know this is going to be profound and I want to be filming it” he said, when I came up to him to tell him one last thing.  Lilly found spiders that were the same but different on tall grass seeds, and he filmed her reverently observing them, exclaiming over their beauty.  And we were sick to our stomachs as we watched this pond in our backyard…….I thought it was only happening in Queensland!  And they’re MINING THE KIMBERLEY’S!!!!!  The only environment on the planet where there’s no record of anything having gone extinct!!  They’re stealing our planet, and our children’s future, and ‘they’ve’ got to be STOPPED!!

And our activist clothing came snaking out of our closets, settling on our skins and in our minds so easily, so neatly.  Our old bedfellows of righteous indignation, and wrath for the despoilers of the planet snuck into our bed that night.  Squeezed between me and Currawong and Zarrathustra, leaving the head lice of the countless wars waged by ‘them’ on our pillows.  Keeping us warm with all the ideas we were hatching, for saving the world.  We spent years being passionate advocates and activists.  Once you start to open the book titled ‘Humanities damage to the planet’, carcasses spill out readily, and atrocities bleed through the pages.  Where do you stop? How can you choose which is worse than the other? A mind numbing litany of heartless cruelties heaped onto refugee’s, indigenous clans, wild landscapes, ancient artworks, millions of other species, waterways, oceans, forests, biosphere…….you know how long this list is.  It’s an overwhelming and despairing list.  That can hurtle you to burnout quicker than a shuttle.  But fuck ‘The Secret’ with that whole concept of Mother Theresa not going to anti-war rallies, but only peace marches, and how what you focus on grows!  Protest is powerful and productive, just look at Iceland, and Ghandi, and Protestors Falls, and the Franklin Dam, and all the other amazing things that have happened.

Our old clothes fit us so well, that we wore them for days, and were having passionate discussions and feeling heavy thoughts on our shoulders as we sat with babies and sheparded them outside.  As a brief interlude one night, we sat watching photos and videos of our journey to our new home.  Marvelled at how beautiful and nostalgic our trip has become in hindsight.  Now that we know it all turned out okay, I can look at the worry lines on my brow and laugh, knowing that I had nothing to worry bout.  I could have just enjoyed the ride. 

So we went to bed that night, in a bubble of remembering that the very best thing we can do with our lives is to smile, and love, and create beauty and inspiration.  But in the morning our heavy clothes had snuck back on.  “How could they mine the Kimberley’s”, and “How many billions of dollars do they need?”, and “What can we do?”, and “Don’t they have children?”……………..  “They” started dancing over there in a place where I could get them in my sights and SHOOT THE BASTARDS cause they didn’t deserve to dance on mother earth with me and Currawong and my precious babies and you and all the other peaceful people on the planet with love in their hearts.  We felt remembered and real aches and griefs and deep down sorrows about all the destruction our species has wrought. 

Currawong went to visit a smiling wise hermit on the hill behind us, swapped shorthand stories of deep and yearning places, as you can learn to do when you’ve a mountain of children that hug the toes of every interaction, and he came home crying.  “Surrender!” he cried.  “It’s all about surrender.  I can’t hate, and attack, and pursue loggerheads with this world………….because it’s all me.”  It felt for me like a light had been chiselled, and then all of a sudden warmth wrapped me, and with it came instant peace.  Like a bulldozer had just dumped a load of remembered perceptions and lessons on my head that crackled through my system.   We brainstormed and swapped quick flashes of realisation, and it all tumbled out of him like sour tasting words that he knew were true for him nonetheless.  “Of course that waste water pond has been built badly, cause that supplies a need for the clean up team, who then require a holding team for when the ponds overflow and need pumping out and holding till later, which provides work for another team, and it’s all interconnected and perfectly interactive cause it reflects the way evolution works, and the millions of fine tuned balances that keep our world spinning.  Every single thing reflects everything else in it’s complexity and interconnectedness.  From fast food chains, to enormous corporations, to the Kimberley’s, to our governments…….. Of course it works so well, because it’s reflecting the brilliance of the universe!”

Microcosm of the macrocosm.

And he’s right.  And it’s interesting to note that 12 years ago when we were settling into our first nest together, we both remember an argument/debate we had that lasted all day.  From the pub, over the bridge, through dinner, and into bed, where early in the morning we had to agree to disagree – He thought (r)evolution could only come from changing the system till it filtered to the individual, and I argued it had to change in the human till it filtered to the system – and realised we were arguing the same thing from different angles, and finally got some sleep.  And another one I said when we met absolutely infuriated him.  I told him he had to stop hating George Bush, cause he WAS George Bush, and that argument lasted years.  Later during our market years, I dropped many a jaw, when I said that George Bush was one of the greatest environmentalists ever.  Think about it.  The man lives in a five star rated environmentally friendly and energy self sufficient home, and has galvanised more people into environmental and political action since Ghandi, and was definitely a harbringer of many people realising that their governments weren’t to be trusted.  I can just imagine him sitting in his rainbow dyed t-shirt hashing over his plan with a friend, “So if I turn into a complete knob, get dad to make me president, and destroy the environment, take my country to war, blow up the twin towers, start a war on terrorism to destroy individuals freedoms, and come across as barely sentient and monosyllabic, then I’ll galvanise a huge amount of sleeping dreamers to wake the fuck up and get in control of their insides and this runaway train we’re on!!”  But I digress…..

So after Currawong’s passionate moment of clarity and realising it was all about surrender, and all a reflection of him………..all these little lessons that I’ve learnt along the way came out of the wings in their slightly bedraggled tutu’s, pirouetting remember songs in my head.  The first time, sitting in the sun on my sister’s lawn in Bathurst, when I really got that love and hate could co-exist.  And were indeed the same thing.  I hated my stepfather and what he’d done to me and my family, yet I loved the special attention I got, and how he was careful with my sensitivity.  While I was trying to settle on whether I really did love or hate him I was in a quandary.  When I accepted I could do both at the same time, I was peaceful.

All those times I thought to myself as a young thing “Why does she have so many children if she can’t be nice to them?” And I’ve since learnt exactly how she might have been grumpy.  “Why doesn’t she just keep that child quiet?” And I’ve learnt how you can be in a situation where there’s nothing you can do to stop a baby having a tantrum.  “How can she smoke when there’s babies around?”  You guessed it.  I know how that can happen too.  “How can they be so nice and together, and then go and do something like THAT?”  I’ve done things that people would think such things about.   "How can women have caesareans?"  I got that one too.  “Why does she say all that, and then go and do the opposite thing?”  Yup.  Been there too.  In fact just about every time I’ve said “How can they/she/he” do ANYTHING………I’ve been totally destined and fated from that moment to have a life experience that will show me exactly how.  

I started noticing that every time I had a falling out with someone, they would say exactly the same things about me, as I was complaining about them.  After observing and listening and learning for years, I realised that every human being was capable of every single thing under the sun…..including me……given the right circumstances.

Maybe I was more fine tuned to the ‘darker’ side of life from my childhood and my family and the stories that pulled me and made me feel.  Maybe it was leaving my childhood religion and knowing that I had to re-educate myself and that I knew nothing.  Maybe I just have a deep place inside me that’s never forgot how dark I can be throughout my many incarnations.  I was reading a poem about the witches that were burnt one day, and felt in detail my fingernails being pulled off one by one.  I’ve heard loathsome and fearsome and disgusting stories of human depravity, and I’ve hunkered down and cringed…….but I’ve never been surprised.  It’s always been recognisable.

I’ve sat with murderers, and businessmen, and rapists, and clergy, and paedophiles, and politicians, and dominatrix’s, and doctors, and prostitutes, and psychologists, and drug dealers, and fundamentalists, and bikers, and police officers, and just about anyone else that might have graced the likes of Australia’s Most Wanted, and seen myself.  Connected with them, not as a judge, or a do gooder, or trying to hide a sensationalised voyeur…….but as an equal.  And been honoured and privileged that they also showed me all their beauty, and fragility, and sensitive hurtness.  Their inhumanity and humanity all together and intermingled.  Not separated into the polite and nice boxes that we often like to keep ourselves in.   

And I’ve got a doozy of a lesson that I’ve been wanting to tell you about for a while now, and here’s where it belongs.  I’m a survivor of incest.  I had body memories and flashbacks when I was 24.  And went through all sorts of groups and books and modalities of healing to try and make peace with it.  Now nicely packaged along with sexual abuse, often comes weird arse sexual fantasies.  Where a person can fantasise about rape, and feel totally fucked up and despicable because of it.  Sure that if anyone ever knew what went on in their head, they’d be hated and avoided forevermore.  Obviously that person was me.  Many moons ago when Currawong and I were still in the flush of new love, we set our feet on the path of honesty, and gently showed each other our scars and deep wounds.  And loved and accepted each other despite them.  In this climate of acceptance I was running a well known fantasy in my head, with me as the abused.  And decided to switch perspectives and become the abuser to see what happened.  And got off on it. 

In that moment I knew that I could abuse.  Given the right situation, and provocation, I could.  I understood my abusers and how they could hurt me.  I realised they were enacting what had happened to them.  And in meeting this strange and unloved part of me, I knew I could accept it as  me, and would never be so removed and in denial of it, that it could hijack me into doing something I wouldn’t choose in a loving space.  Now I’m not saying this is the cure for incest, but this is what worked for me. 

And another thing happened.  If I could learn such heart stretching deeps and compassions and love from these parts of me that I saw reflected in others……………….then how could I say it was wrong and bad?  How could I apportion judgement and blame onto anyone or anything?  If they were all potential experiences and lessons that could bring about so much acceptance, learning and love?

When Currawong and I finally got together, he was such an enigmatic and angry bastard, and had convinced himself through numerous situations that he was unlovable, that he was Faust.  And I was fresh from healing my hurts, and learning mammoth lessons, channelling the amazing book I wrote after meeting him, and in the prime of living in the moment, and seeing absolutely everything and everyone around me as perfect and me.  And lots of things happened between us that many folk would have found abusive, and he certainly was expecting me to throw accusations at him, but all I could see was another fear faced, and another lesson learnt, and how perfect he was to get to all those hard to see places where my fears had taken refuge.  I’d been through the desert on my Saturn Return initiation, and faced my fear of the dark, of being alone, of the unknown, of the heat, of the desert, of men, of so many things, but I hadn’t ever lost my sight, or my glasses, which I did when he stomped on them during a wild new years eve party at the end of 1999.  That was a deep fear and hidden hurt I’d had since 6^th class that I didn’t even know was there.  I tripped him out when I thanked him.   And when I was dragging him by the hair off the property after he went psycho during an argument, I realised in one crystal moment, that no matter how far I was pushed, and how angry I got, I would never kill someone.  Which was always a fear at the back of my mind, once I realised I had a volcanoe inside me from all my stored anger and repression as a child.  I thanked him for that one too.  And he got that one as well. 

I also realised years down the track that all the time I thought I was ‘healing’ Currawong, we were actually healing each other, and we both needed that time to learn how to let love in.   And that process has scaled all of our secrets, and all our dark bits, and all our hidden selves.  They all get accepted, and all get loved eventually.  Unconditional love can wreak miracles.  I’ve experienced it over and over again. 

So back to the story again, all this stuff was bubbling and boiling in the background, and I sat on facebook one day and used it as the oracle it is.  Threw out my nets to my friendship web and peered at what the deeps brought me.  And there was a theme that set me rattling off into stories and memories again.  And all my recent experiences, and our passionate discussions and revelations kinda swirled around the links that I stumbled on and  they all coalesced...........

Here was the first fish in the net.....

Then came this one......

This one really got me.....

And this one topped it all off

And here’s my point, that we’ve been walking towards here, and that you knew I was going to make.  Our western world in particular is so dedicated to our ‘godliness’.  Our ‘goodness’, and ‘white light’ and ‘pureness’ and ‘love’, and we’re so convinced that following the rules and doing the ‘right’ thing will lead to an eventual reward, that we’re all neglecting our shadow selves.  Our dark.  Our deep.  Our dead.  It’s like we’re all walking through life with these blinkers on, where we can only see the parts that we collectively sanction as ‘true’ and ‘right’, while behind those blinkers, in our collective blind spots, our shadow selves are twiddling their thumbs, and getting a bit bored, and making us act like puppets on strings cause we refuse to acknowledge they’re there.  We send them to ‘those’ people who are evil, and ‘they’ over there who do things that we just can’t understand, and have set all our dark selves loose on the world through our neglect to acknowledge and learn from and love them. 

And they’ve proliferated and thrived in the compost of our dirt that we refuse to own.  “I’m good, and I’m kind, and I love everyone, and if only you’d do the right thing, you too could be happy like me!” we proudly proclaim to the world, whilst our shadows are knifing each other in the background.  We’ve left all our nasty baggage on that great carousel, and they’ve slowly spread their hidden power to the neighbours.  They’ve run off to the Wizard of Oz, to make that Great Wizard even greater and nastier while the little man pulling the levers has been hiding himself from himself.  They’re snaffling schnapps in the boardrooms of the great corporations that are eating our world.  They’re metagasco making toxic wastewater dams on floodplains.  They’re dancing as the puppeteers behind every tradgedy and sin. 

And it’s time that we claimed them.  Owned them.  Loved them.  Learnt from them.  Sewed them back into our souls like Wendy did for Peter Pan’s shadow.  Let them blend with our white, and create lots of greys, and fine tune our pure, and add depth and dimension to our love.  When we pick up our dark children from childcare, and bring them home to ourselves, there will be no more room or energy for ‘those’ people to wreak such havoc in our world.  No more will we be able to hurt and harm our skin the earth, and our internal landscapes that we’ve endeavoured to domesticate will return to harmony, and a reflection of the bigger chaotic harmonies that exist all around us.    

From all of my lessons and life experiences, I feel that the very best thing I can do with my life and my love and my learning is to be honestly, truly, and completely me.  To follow the flow where it takes me, through overworlds and underworlds, and learn from everything that happens to me.  To acknowledge all my sides and potentials and understandings and respect it all for the broadness of view it brings.  To follow the thread of everything being connected to all it’s possible permutations.  To continue my endeavour to marry the worlds inside me and see their interconnection, and allow that interconnection and respect to translate itself through my touch and imprint on the cosmos. 

And to smile, laugh, love, respect, acknowledge, honour, beautify, empathise, and inspire as much as I can.

Cause it's all me.



Midwives are Cassanova's......

Yes you read right.  Lothario’s, Don Juan’s, Prince Charming’s, Romeo’s, Lady Killers, Libertines, Paramours, Heartbreakers………….

And I can say this from compelling experience.  As I sit here, on some level, grieving the passing of my most recent affair with a midwife, planning an outing to catch a glimpse of her, I’d really like to acknowledge the sexual nature, that from my experience anyway, is at the root of all of our interactions with each other.   Whether they be ‘sexual’ in the real sense of the word, or sexual in the attraction towards each other, or sexual in the understanding we feel about each other, or sexual in the confidence we exude………our sexuality is at the foundation of our sense of self.  It has to be.  We’re mammals, created and designed by millions of years of honing and adapting to procreate.  Sex is essential to that.  And everything else.  Sex is part of birth, sex is part of death, sex is part of great illness, sex is part of our most treasured friendships, sex is part of looking after our children, sex is part of our wider communities, sex is underlying our family relationships………. Whether we like to talk about it or not, sex is at the bottom of everything.  Our big Corporations and Religions use sex to drive us, sell to us, motivate us, inspire us, suppress us, and often we’re in denial of our own version of it.  And most of this sex is happening subconsciously, innocently, guiltily, blissfully, honourably, subversively, and seductively…….all at the same time as being totally platonic as we’re happily monogamous.  But sex is there all the same.  A powerful essence of our natures.  All of us.  Whether we like to express it, talk about it, show it, feel it, or not.

Now.

That being said.

Midwives combine quite a few different levels of sex.  They are there for us on a fundamental level, no matter who is around or how many times we’ve done birthing before. They are there to listen to all the intimate details of our sex, and bleeding, and previous sex, and talking about our vaginas, and any diseases we might have picked up, and how well our vaginas can and will open,  and all those other subjects that are reserved for our own heads or our lovers usually.  They ask us questions about things that our best friends and lovers don’t even think of.  They’re deeply aware of pregnant women’s insecurities and sensitivities and woo us with gentle understanding when others may dismiss us as being hormonal.  They’re considerate suitors during pregnancy, till the consummation of our birthing experiences, and then there’s the gentle letdown during the postnatal period, where they help you prepare for the fact that they’re going to move on. They’re there for the gently sexual pregnancy, the intensely intimate birth experience with all the oxytocin’s pumping round the whole event, and they’re there for the incredibly sensitive, and sometimes sexually painful after period as well.  All rather ‘take charge’ kind of roles, done with a woman’s compassion.   

And so many of us feel so strongly about our midwives, and love them so fiercely, and stand by their sides, and do whatever we can for them………………..because we’ve had an experience with them that was the same intensity as a mad, intense and sweet little affair while we were having our babies, and then we watched our loves move onto the next lover, the next woman with child, and the next bearer of such in tune and devoted attention.  So we go to her coffee mornings, or her meetings or picnics, or to any place where we know she is likely to be, and we look at her from afar, or we recapture a moment from years ago during birth and the affair with each other, or if we’re lucky enough we get to stay friends. 

But many women can have just the one experience with a midwife, just the one mad affair, and then have nothing more to do with the ‘scene’ , but be left with a gentle memory of a brief liason.  And some women don’t experience any kind of love at all with their midwives, and can feel quite ripped off by the experience, as a virgin offered Romeo, and instead given Quasimodo.  And in the worst case scenarios, women can have truly horrific experiences with midwives, where they more take on the role of Bluebeards. 

I’ve felt jealous over my midwives.  In a few different ways too.  Jealous of their attention definitely.  Jealous about them having amazing births with other women.  Jealous of intimate stories I hear other people have.  Even jealous of other women going through ordeals after their births, because I know ‘my’ midwife is totally being there for them.  Jealous enough to feel a skip in my heart when I know I’m pregnant, and will be spending time in the sun lushing up on another…….. or the same midwifes care, attention, focus, understanding, love, loyalty, appreciation, empowerment, support, positive and inspiring thoughts, skills, experience, and knowledge………..until I’m fully cooked, and both me and the babe are moving forward into the journey, and she moves onto the next affair.

And it’s not an illicit affair either.  Not a secret I have to keep.    Currawong usually falls just as deeply in love as I do.  So do the kids.  Other friends can almost get jealous themselves, as between us and our kids it’s ‘our midwife say’s this’ and ‘our midwife did that’.  It’s a publicly approved of affair.  That everyone who’s loved a midwife can relate to.  That other mothers get, even though they may not equate it with an affair.  But I say, that in all my years around birth and experiences thereof, not to mention the stories I’ve read and the people I’ve witnessed, that it’s a relationship with the same intensity and loving, and this analogy may start at least to make some sense of some of the very intense and passionate emotions surrounding birth within it’s different factions at the moment.  I’ve read many articles with disconcerted obstetricians, media reporters, and legal people talking in uneasy terms about the cult like following of midwives, the women and children surrounding them in a colourful throng.  The devotion these crazy midwives attract.  And they really don’t seem to get it.  The huge amount of love and sexuality flowing around these birthing creatures, interacting with the women and families around them who see themselves reflected.  I remember reading one article about an obstetrician, talking about how he wanted more adulation for what he did, and had studied years to do, rather than watch midwives get all the action.  But they don’t seem to get that birthing in a hospital just isn’t sexy.  Being treated as another number on the treadmill of birth doesn’t get a woman hot.  That whole white or blue coats with gloves thing isn’t a turn on.  (For most people anyway).  Women really respond to their chosen carers treating them with compassion, respect, gentleness, understanding that birth isn’t an everyday experience for birthing mothers.   Women really respond well to being treated like a goddess.  Both when the baby goes in and when the baby comes out.  That’s the area in which most midwives I’ve met really excel.  And the attitude that makes them so incredibly attractive. 

And let’s face it.  A lot of midwives are just goddamn sexy.  In their attitudes.  Their unique sense of personal fashion.  Their knowledge and support around birth.  Their general attitudes towards women.  Their conversation skills.  Their depth and capacity to ‘be there’ in all matters birth, death, sex, or illness related.  Their quirky personalities.  Their cars full of stuff.  Their fierce loyalty.  And I’m talking all midwives here.  The hombirthers, the hospitalbirthers, the hospitalbirthers who really wish they were homebirthers and vice versa.  The students, the ex midwifes, the part timers.  And also the ones who midwife both birth and death.

The first midwife I ever met was a friend of my best mates mum, and even though we’d never met before, she was gentle with me as she told me that the drugs I’d taken in my early pregnancy with my first daughter wouldn’t affect the baby, as the placenta hadn’t attached yet.  The second midwife was a squinty eyed hospital old timer, who drew in a whole group of us first time parents for a pre natal group, and told us with great humour and risqué innuendo about all the different ways we could birth, and some of the things to expect.  And the only midwife I remember from my virginal first birth hospital affair, was a beautiful and tall woman, who told me I reminded her of her daughter.  This created a connection between us, and made me feel set apart from her ‘others’.  I wanted to go back in afterwards to thank her, but felt too shy………what if it didn’t mean as much to her as it did to me?  What if she’d already forgotten me? 

My second hospital birth was such a joyous and party like experience, and I was so caught up in my partner, mother, surrogate mother and friend that I hardly noticed the midwives.  The one who was on duty when he was born was friendly, and happy, till we went and had him far too early according to her calculations, and she freaked out a bit cause I was still in the spa bath.  Pulled the plug on me cause she hadn’t done a water birth before.  Just like the withdrawal method!!  Totally unsatisfactory, and interrupting the sexual dance that was bringing him down!  But I got the water turned back on, and stuck my bum and  hand over the plug hole, and was determined to have my way.  Which I did.  Born in water.  And by the time he got there, she’d called all the other midwives in the hospital, and they were all standing round as he was born in the sack.  Crying, and clapping, and welcoming him to the world.

The first homebirthing midwife I met for our third baby, busily pressed her suit to not just me, but to my partner, small family and mother all at the same time.  We needed her to be the legal midwife, as the student midwife who was courting us as well needed a registered midwife to be there.  She had all the flashy birthing aids – bouncy balls, books, articles, photo’s, messages from other women about their love for her. She also came with another midwife who took amazing black and white photos, still some of the best birthing photos I have.  She was the first to tell me that when we had a homebirth midwife, we had a ‘midwife for life’.  Which she didn’t end up being.  She was there for the birth, kept the water too hot so I fainted on getting out, panicked a bit at that, was happy again when I came to, stuck around to weigh the baby and get a copy of the letter of complaint that she’d encouraged me to write on her behalf to hospital staff who had spoken badly of her, and that was it.  That was the end of our affair.  Blunt and unsatisfied.  When I rang her to tell her I was having a hard time, she told me about how terrible her husband was, told me I’d be allright, and that was the end of that.   I wasn’t happy.  It hadn’t left me with blue birds singing round my head and all the woosy feelings of love and emotion that I saw in my other friends who’d had homebirthing midwives.  She didn’t come round and clean my house and bake me goodies like a friend of mine’s midwife did.  She didn’t do any placenta prints.  She was a very vague and unsatisfactory suitor.  And like a woman spurned, I went on a bit of a bitter thread about midwives after her.  Got together with other women who didn’t like midwives, and said ‘yeah!’  Read lots of books from the Christian right about unassisted childbirth, and how intrusive midwives were, and how they got in the way between a woman and a man and their baby.  I agreed.  Got all sniffy about midwifes in general.  What was all the fuss about?  They were just doing a job…..

Till I got pregnant again with our fourth baby.  And had a chance meeting with another midwife.  Who very gently swept me off my feet again.  Sat with me a whole day while I purged, and complained, and cried, and whinged.  Sat quietly, and respectfully and understandingly.  And then offered me whatever combination of her care I needed or desired, no obligation, and no expectations, and totally un-judgementally.  I started to fall in love again, and was so very glad when she made it all of the 250 kms to be there in the classical sense of the word.  To be with me.  With her knowledge.  And her happiness to take a back seat.  And she gave me the gift of letting me catch my own baby.  Lift her out of the birthing pool.  Work out myself what gender she was, when and how I wanted to.  And then gave us a guided tour of the placenta, which I’d never met before. 

And she really is a midwife for life.  Has kept in contact no matter what all these years, has been available for all sorts of honesty from me, has remembered birthdays and the babies she helped into the world.  A faithful love.  But a Cassanova nonetheless J.  Loved to distraction by a whole harem of women, who will tell you their stories about her with tears in their eyes.  She also introduced me to another midwife for life, who was even more of a superstar, and they were both there for me with the birth of my fifth child.  Which was a facing of every fear I had about birthing – to be out of the water, to have to transfer whilst in labour, and to have a caesarean – which I did with the gentle ministrations, understanding, path easing, and love, of two amazing midwives.  And the best bit was they were so completely there for me afterwards, my first love in particular, helping me to heal, getting me to rest, doing every little thing she could think of to ease my shaky days afterwards. 

Then there was the world famous birth of our sixth and seventh twins born two days apart and in water as a VBAC, with my superstar midwife who was totally amazing in her friendship, advice, support, compassion and tender charming ways.  We were all so in love with her that I actually felt shy and would sometimes lose my breath and stutter when I had her undivided attention.  I looked forward to her visits with the excitement of preparing for a lovers tryst  I’d have to constantly chase the kids out of the room and give Currawong stern looks when no-one else was looking, just to have a little time with her on my own, as everyone else had a crush on her as well.  And the love, understanding, and compassion she poured on me as I went through such an extraordinary birth, only served to put her higher in our esteem and love.  She was so close to us all through the 3 day process and afterwards, that I felt quite privileged to have so much of her time.

And that’s not to mention all the other midwives I’ve come across in my time in South Australia, who I got to meet and make friends with, they impressed by my lengthy birth history, and I impressed with their general midwife grooviness..... Many an hour was spent at the local farmers market with luscious midwives sitting round us swapping stories.  The places we could go in our conversations of and about birth and related topics was deep, and gold, and uterine. 

All these midwife women I’ve met through my time have been amazing and colourful characters, willing to explore any taboo subject with total honesty, on friendly terms with all bodily functions, and able to see the beautiful in everyone and everything.  And the best bit of advice I ever got was in the dawn of welcoming a new baby to our nest, when I was advised to not ‘forget that Currawong’s your baby too, and needs to feel loved, so drown him in breastmilk and fuck him lots’……. Advice that he was very appreciative of, let me tell you. 

At the point of writing, and this piece has been trying to be born for a few weeks now, I’m not really sure if there’s any point to what I’m trying to say, except to acknowledge a part of my relationships with my midwives that I really treasure.  An intimacy and closeness that I wish I could experience with a lot of other people.  And maybe an aspect of why there are so many bruised personal feelings and insecurities in the debate around homebirthing at the moment.  If nothing else, maybe the start of a debate.....

Midwives are cassanova’s…….and they know it!

And now for a bit of book.....Balthazar and Nimue that is.  If you haven't read it yet, or want to recapture what was going on, chapters 1 and 2 are here, http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/love-story.html, chapters 3 and 4 are here, http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/chapters-three-and-four.html, chapter 5 to 8 are here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/last-installment.html, and chapters 9 and 10 are here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/law-of-repulsion-and-more-book.html ........now you can read on.

Chapter 11 - The next time.....

She walked into the pub off the street, the busy cold street, leaving the cool nips behind as she edged by the fire warmth.  She saw him before her and fell straight in his eyes.  She asked how he’d been.

“Oh, not too bad considering how much you’ve messed with my head.  I can’t seem to get you out of here...” he tapped on his skull.

She smiled, she big gap tooth grinned.

“Glad to see I’ve got company then.”

He looked at her closely with questions in mind.

“Had any wild dreams lately?”

The silence that followed ensured their connection.  They looked around them to think for a bit.  Speculated on the glass mirrors behind the bar, bleary eyed barflys, soft cushioned foot rests, clean sparkling glasses, the faint waft of beer spills and music cranked full.

“Wanna go somewhere quiet?”

She smiled her agreement, too shocked yet to speak.

.........

They curled into blankets and pillows and sheets.  No talking as they sated lust.  Replayed the great rite they’d engaged in before.  Sweat and wetness sprinkled merrily, sparkling in the soft ebb of the candle’s glow.

“I’ve seen everything differently.  You’ve reminded me of who I am.”

He couldn’t contain his wonderment.

“I see in you all the women I’ve known, all the hurt I’ve caused, all the anger I’ve birthed, all the love I’ve felt, all the states I’ve aspired to, all the reason for life.  I’ve been your oppressor so many times, and yet you love me.  I’ve borne your lash cleaving me bloody, yet I trust you still.  I’ve stolen your art and your beautiful soul, but it lives on.  You’ve pushed me so far to the edge of extinction, yet I’m by your side.”

She smiled half sad and spoke softly.......

“You’re all that you say and yet more.  I thought I could never let your kind inside again, I closed the doors tight and drew the blinds.  I was happy once in my world on the fringe, till I started to wake and wanted to feel all.  You are the outside world, entering my inner sanctum.  You terrify me with your deadly dark, yet I see the same mirrored in me.  Only with you do I feel like I’m all my playacts, all my reasons, all my arts, all my darkness, and only with you are they seen all together.  I’ve run from you so long, yet it’s you who holds the key.  Just as I hold yours....”

They clung again and blocked out all but sensation.  Cut adrift in the mid morning hours to ride the swells.  Cloaked their rapture in thousands of guises and masks and perceptions.  Reeled through time to find new scenes.

.........

“What do you love of me?”  She lazily brushed fingertips over his chest.  He barely faltered.  “Your strength and nobility, your wisdom and grace.  Your smile and lips, your soft belly warmth.  Your innocence and carnality, your sex and pure.  Your muses and wanders, your theories and plans.”

She looked at him sweetly.

“You realise that all you see in me is strong in you.  That all you love in me, you love in yourself.  And all that irritates, is your own critic nagging in your ear.  We are mirrors to each other.  You love me for what I draw out in you.  What is it you love of yourself when you’re with me?”

He pondered.  He wondered.  He looked round the room at his clothes strewn around him.  He cast his mind back through his many long years.  “I love how I tremble, see the mysteries before me.  Feel in my godself, and nurture my core.  I love how I’m a better man, and feel you within me, see all your aspects from maiden to crone.  I love how I know that I’m just on the edge of the precipice taking me out to my future.”

.........

They travelled the train to the hills together.

And the ancestors travelled with them.

 

Chapter 12 - New lives.....

They lived in a mansion set in a quarry, with cliff walls entangling craggy arms round the house.  Life was sweet and sensual, her daughter and mother happy with the addition to their lives.  They bathed in salt water and themselves and rising awareness.  Sexuality, the rising serpent sliding through their lives, was starting to stretch in awakening.

One night she’d gone out with friends to glittering pubs in the city not far from the hills.  Whole souls and half souls, mostly the latter, drifted in and out of her vision, no spark, no connection.  She was heading for home, leaving drunken friends behind grinningly, when Balthazar came into view and beamed in her path.

They floated through pubscapes and dreamed through a night of intense love and wholeness.  Exotic clubs and colourful people dizzied themselves through the night.  Later, she’d taken him back to the hills in the moonlight, and led him up a disused path to an abandoned, ivy strung house.  Inside the door lay broken floorboards, dusty spider webs, tattered curtains flaying in the breeze.  Burn out rooms, an abandoned piano, and yellowed paint cracking walls.  To the left of the entrance lay a mattress draped in satin, surrounded by candles she leant to light.  Filmy white tatters floated the windows, and soon wafts of incense hung the air with musk.  She slowly unwrapped her layers and peeled off her skins, spread out before him in soulish wholeness and sweet white softness.  They stroked and kissed and supped and fucked and entered each others skin.

Dawn snuck in through the tattered curtains and lifted hair on a breeze through the cracked wall.  They put skins back on softly, and went outside to the car.  Drove through the dawnswept hills, misty from it’s sleeping, sunbursts pushing through to caress their lips.  Music spiralled and dew breath floated, and everything they needed in the world was there.  Every touch of fabric and skin was a sensual delight.  They drove in almost silly happiness, grinning and beaming and soaking it in.

.........

By day she spent time on herself and her studies, her daughter and mother, and sweet time with him.  He found work at a studio making drawings and concepts, and began to build his clan.  They started making mutual friends and creating the couple webnest.  Life was swimming outside the broadnet of harshborn patterns and cultural lore.  They dreamed dreams of acres with gardens and horses, earth caves and children, parents and kin.  A soft land of healing, writing and teaching, making and playing, and growing within.

They deepened their connection and found stronger bindings, and dreamed of the past lives they’d lived and their cause.  And their web spun beyond them, and traced shadows round them, bringing light to the grey and warmth to the chill.  The echo they made shuddered out through the life waves, to ebb on the beach of divinity’s shore.

They both felt that finally, after a lifetime of giving and taking, and ending up feeling alone and drained, that they’d found a partner who fuelled their fires, and helped them grow stronger without giving in.  Together they glowed brighter, and people around them felt touched by the fire.

.........

The ancestors watched still, spread all around them, taking small breaks for light refreshments.