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 :)
