Happy Mothers Day Hecate

As my offering to the world this mothers day, I'd like to acknowledge my genders ancestral shadow.  I have a feeling in my bones that it was us, the mothers, who equally chose to settle all those ages ago, and change our indigenous paths from nomadic and semi-nomadic to settlers.  It's a fair enough assumption to make, that we decided to stay in one spot and watch the stars, and set up great rock megalithic structures to tell the time and the seasons, to echo the smaller statues we were making at the time, little women with carvings denoting the seasons and the moons, as it corresponded to our moonblood.  

 

Picture from humanpast.net

So we settled.  A hard path in the early days, and one that once started, ate large tracts of land as it grew, sending top soil and seeds to the wind with agriculture.  A living system that required new land almost constantly, to move on from the land used up by crops.  With new land came the need for warriors, to advance town perimeters and then guard it.  And as sophisticated mammals, with our ancient learnings around birth and bonding, we practiced an early form of eugenics, to change the course of our species.  The Spartans used to throw their children to the ground after birth to create birth trauma, and thereby warriors, and the Mayans used to bury placentas on battlegrounds to produce the same.  Boy children in many cultures around the world were taken away from their family as apprentices, priests or warriors early, to create the suitable grounds of fear, betrayal and abandonment within young boys, to be shaped appropriately into what was required.  Not to mention endured often violent initiation or circumcision rituals, all to create the same beaten dog reaction, and ultimately warriors. 

Men and Women all over the world have experienced all sorts of top bottom heirarchies, with either sitting at the top regularly.  Viking and Celtic cultures had strong women as warriors and head people amongst many others.  We've had variously ranging horrific and beatific deities of both genders represented also.  In most of our indigenous religions, women and men shared the pantheon of the divine, in both their wondrous and traumatic incarnations.  

Hel-Goddess Of The Norse Underworld by xjessey at Deviantart

Yet today there seems to be a worldwide thread of pointing a finger to men, highlighting all the horrors potentially within them, whilst ignoring with deadly silence the three fingers pointing right back at us.  Even after rigid and long enduring conditioning by one cultural structure or another over my childhood, insisting on teaching me what was 'right' and 'wrong', which group I should judge against, and which group was better, while valiantly trying to 'educate' me about who were the 'safe' people to play with, I've prevailed by looking intently into every looking glass, rabbit hole, minority group, and experience possible, doing my best to lose judgement all the time.  I've visited most every minority group a white woman based in Australia can, in one way or another.  And learnt almost instantly that all preconceptions and judgements are usually wrong, when you face up with another human openly and honestly. 

I like to think that Currawong and I were born innately equal.  In every way.  No matter how often either one of us has endured an attempt at domination, we've refused to be dominated by any person or structure.  We have no masters, and no servants, we have peers.  We met as a recently lesbian feminist and a punk anarchist.......or a leminist and panarchist, and we weren't going to have any pedestals to anything.  Currawong, more than any other human I've ever met, treats absolutely everyone with the same dignity.  Be they a politician, homeless, wasted, rich, poor, black, white, man, woman or child, he will treat them with exactly the same respect.  Maybe it's our Friesian heritage.  I think in my heart it is.  My lineage from Suidwest Fryslan, about whom it was said they were all born noble, and bowed to no-one, practiced self organising social anarchy 700 years before the French Revolution, having no monarchy or ruling class, and respecting each other as sovereign.   I like to say we practice radical equality and acceptance.  We've learnt that just about every finger we've pointed at each other has indeed had three fingers pointing back at ourselves.  We've grown through the fire of uncomfortable self reflections and mirrors.  And had to acknowledge our shadows in the process.  Humbly.

Currawong and I when we first met as a Leminist and Panarchist

So I want to step forward and own the shadow of woman, and call Hecate in to illuminate our dark.  We can be hateful in our hate and projection, whilst bouncing those arrows everywhere else except for where they belong, in our own hearts.  We've whipped up great frenzies and high pitched sonic missiles at the evils that men have perpetuated, but we have evil skeletons hiding in our own skin cloaks.  We may not be direct aggressors as much as men, but we certainly know how to emotionally manipulate in the wings to bring clashes to a climax.  

I've searched many years for a sustainable sisterhood, and practiced with many others the art of brushing over the bumpy bits, and out of respect for privacy and the sanctity of women, hidden my deepest hurts.  Which have come from women.  My mother, sister and daughter relationships have been harrowing.  Glorious in bits but internally shattering.  My women friends have been my saviours and my sadists.  My first ever kiss, love and sex was with a divine woman.....who broke my young heart with her ex lover.  My best friends loved letting me know how much other people hated me.  My sisters first 'lover' was also her first counsellor.   And the first feminist I ever met, got me kicked out of home when she bravely persuaded me to out the abuse happening in my house, and then just dumped me to cop the backlash.  Satisfied with herself once she'd scalped her victim - my stepfather - but not so concerned about how me and my sister weathered the storm.  After getting my heart broke by a woman, I surfed the heterosexual world for a while, but always had contact with the gay and lesbian world, through my sister, and then myself, when I became a lesbian after the birth of my first daughter.  

My early days as a rad fem, wearing socks down my pants.....

A lot of the women who traveled those same scenes were either learning or practicing healers, social workers, counsellors, neighborhood centre workers, womens refuge workers, politicians, lawyers, feminists, nurses, writers, musicians or policy writers, who were definitely at the cutting edge of the feminist activist scenes.  They were organising dances and workshops and forums and marches and petitions and movements and womens groups and consciousness raising........all while hiding their skeletons.  Many of their secret worlds and relationships were very dark and hidden.   The first lesbian dance I went to, I was warned to avoid the toilets alone, as I'd get groped, and I narrowly avoided it.  One of my friends was working at the local womens refuge with her lover, an indigenous woman, and when her girlfriend got drunk and beat her up, she couldn't even access the refuge, as her lover took precedence, as the indigenous worker.  I had a lover who's first 'girlfriend' was her 30 year old woman teacher, when she was 14.  Her teacher 'love' not only introduced her to S+M, but used to offer her as a plaything to her other female teacher friends as well.  When I got raped at an S+M nightclub by a bunch of women, one of whom was on 'safety' patrol, it took talking to a counsellor at the Gay and Lesbian Anti Violence Project to be believed by my lover and friends, and when the owners of the nightclub found out I'd made a complaint, they tried to find out where I lived so they could send around their henchwomen to beat me up.  I went to the office of the magazine Lesbians On The Loose, or LOTL in Sydney, and they told me that they sympathised with me, but would never print my story, because other women didn't need to hear negative stories like that.  These are just the extreme stories, but the day to day reality of a lot of the relationships I saw, the hidden addictions, the nasty treatment of men - particularly boy children - that many women had, the secret rivalries, the public demonising of tall poppies, and the vicious power of a nasty tongue were equally traumatic.  And all of these stories would barely show up in statistics.

 

In the throes of lesbianism

 

In the worlds I've trod since then, and since finding the love of my strong hairy man, and challenging ourselves to grow through brutal honesty, and sharing our deepest darkest secrets first thing, and growing through bonding and birthing and the creating of a large family, I've seen a lot and asked a lot of questions, and found similar hiding of deep scarring truths, all to protect the fragile belief of the sanctity of womanhood and motherhood. I've listened to many secret stories of fellow women, who have similar scars from the wounds given them by the other women in their lives.  Scars they hardly ever talk about, let alone acknowledge to the world.  And I've lost all fantasies of a 'sisterhood', after witnessing the ease with which so many other women have tried to steal my man away from me and our family, mostly right under my nose.  

Mothers and women aren't always so great.  In fact sometimes we can be totally evil.  We kill our children.  We abuse young men and women at schools and in situations of trust.  We make up abuse allegations to get full custody of our kids.  We abuse our partners and we rape.  We control those around us.  We emotionally manipulate people.  We're fierce and deadly combatants when we choose, and we victimise people with our victimhood.  Women are oppressors as well.

The Dark Mother Goddess Kali from bhmpics

We could take those three fingers that are pointing back at us and follow them.  Look into ourselves and our deadly aspects and our shadows and our murk.  Own our own skeletons in the closet before we chase screaming at other peoples.  Witness our own internal worlds of power and domination.  And maybe if we did we could see that NOBODY is thriving in this harsh world inherited through the power of the roman empire that supposedly died.  None of us have a clear direction forward with no blood on our hands.  And the rising toll of men taking their own lives at the hands of a culture that tells them they are all that's wrong with the world, is growing too high.

Anyway.  Enough for now.  I've been needing to say this for a while.  So I thought I would.  Happy Mothers Day Hecate you black darling, owner of the dark and hidden secrets of the soul.  Here is my offering to you.  

Gone are the leaves on the Hecate trees
Shed to the wind till her skeleton claws the sky
I am alone in a forest of memory
Dragging behind me the howl of the winter

Hecate
Hecate
Hecate

P.S.  If you'd like to read a nicer offering to Mothers Day, you can find it here.

An Ode To Body Hair And The Great Unwashed

Now if you've studied history, and the tales of the conquerors and colonialists, there are two parts to colonising a culture and territory.  It's only the first part where there's a big war and killing with death machines, and after that comes the real strategy of utmost import, if the land conquered is to remain so.  Which is large scale divide and conquer, on every level, through every strata of the society or culture to remain colonised.  The disease of separation spread like a virus, through families, communities and peoples, based on age, belief, body type, look, profession, possessions, you name it, it can be categorised into a million different splinter groups, unlikely to ever form again into a glorious whole of connected, acknowledged, diverse and conscious parts. 

So as Australians, conquered how many times removed now?  From the Romans, to the Roman Catholics, to the English, to the prison colonies on supposed Terra Nullis…….we've been collectively divided and conquered within an inch of our long and tangled ancestral paths.  Split into billions of divisions and separations, some of the worst being within the splinters of the splinter groups, that fight each other for moral worth.  Divided and separated from our families, our bonding in our family groups, our connection to our larger communities, and extended families, our food, our water, our lifestyles, our works, our art, our clothes, our music, our homes, our animals, our authenticity, our bodies, our birthing, our body hair, our sexuality, our mammalian selves, and our smells.  

As a result of my birth, family life, religion and schooling, I was turned out into the world a bit disgusted by my own body and its emissions, and entirely grossed out by the thought of anyone else's.  I shaved and waxed and make upped and permed and wore dozens of products all over my body.  On my skin.  The most sensitive and large organ we have on our bodies.  I had sprays for my female bits, and sprays for my underarms, and shame for wherever my hair was that it wasn't 'meant' to be.  I had soaps and special face scrubs, and shampoos and conditioners, and body creams and scented panty liners, and a rigorous body hygiene that saw any body juice or smell, as something to be cleaned up and away, and the appropriate 'better' smell applied.  

Till I hit the lesbian world that is, where womens bodies were a representation of the goddess, and divine, and perfect as they were, and make up and shaving and all those other things were CHOSEN to be done, or not done at all…..PROUDLY!  I started to chill on my rigorous hygiene, and started to relax into some body smells and juices.  There were some women who had turned their back entirely on 'the system', and had amazing body smells, as they eschewed all corporations.  And then when I left that world for the other places where rare humans dwelt, I found quite a few scenes with a love for the human body in it's natural form.  Activists, anarchists, punks to be precise, are often members of the 'great unwashed', who have pushed off from the shore of chemicalised smells and shaved hair, into love and lust of the hairy, smelly, juice creating bodies we were born with.  

But my Currawong was the port where I set sail into my body in its natural form, so intoxicated I was by the sheer smell and feel and hairiness of him.  I'd reduced my money spent on corporate beauty products by a lot by the time we met, but still held onto aluminium free roll on deodorant under my arms, and a jolly good soaping and washing on a regular basis.  If I went for a few days without washing I'd start to smell in a way I didn't like.  And if I did sweaty work or sex, I'd often smell a little bit rancid after, and race off to the shower as soon as I could.  I'd become one with my bleeding, and the various smells that come with that time, but I was still seeing my body odour and flora as something to be tamed.  

And he hit my senses like a tidal wave.  An olfactorial wash that made me want to dive into him again and again.  His clothes, his bedding, his body…….the sweatier and sexier the better.  A totally intoxicating mix of musk and skin and warmth and hair and himness.  That can never be replicated or turned into a product, because it's his unique signature scent.  When we were first courting interstate, I slept on the sheets and pillows we'd slept in for weeks, wallowing in the remnant smells of him.  15 years down the track I still find his scent the most delightful aroma in the world.  

You know how all the other mammals smell each others noses, and bums, and bodies?  Sniff them all  over?  From dogs and cats to horses and elephants, us mammals know that there's a lot to be learnt from smell.  How a creature is feeling, when it's sick, when it's stressed, when it's fertile, when it's turned on, when it's angry, all of these things can be smelt.  And are translated through our signature smells.  The smells that identify us.  The smells that are our birth right, inherited in our bodies.  

So when we first got together, Currawong and I, a bit of fuss was made about his body smell.  More heady than any cologne or aftershave that had ever wafted past my nose.  Even the scent of our intermixed loving was an olfactorial orgasm.  And I was curious about his superior smell, and why I didn't have one of my own.  He told me to stop washing under my arms with soap.  And to stop using all deodorants and products of any kind.  And when I said that I'd tried that before, but I always ended up smelling rank, he said that was because the soap knocked out the ability of my underarms to regulate it's own microflora.  And to just stop soaping and wait a while.  Shower with whatever regularity I wanted, and keep soap for bits if it was really necessary, but just leave the rest alone.  Wash with our pure rainwater only, rubbing and washing my skin with the roughness of my finger pads.  

And blow me over with a feather he was right.  After a few weeks of no soap under my arms, I started to smell like me.  A signature scent that to this day, I can stick my nose in my armpit, and happily offer it to anyone to smell, with great pride and pleasure.  I smell hot.  I smell earthy and ripe and musky and sweet and it's all mine.  A result of the foods I eat, and the emotions I feel, and the sex we set sail in, and the things I do.  I've learnt that just like mens balls, when my underarms or boobs are constricted, or wrapped in polyester or plastic, they smell quite intense.  They like to be free and be connected to the breeze so my underarm hair can do it's job of regulating and spreading the scent.  So I wear clothes with no sleeves, or wide armpit holders, so there's no conqueror in my armpit.  Cause underarm hair is a large part of the smell.  Sometimes there's naturally formed salt crystals on them, and they just intensify the smell.  And underarm hair, like boobs, and pubes, can definitely be completely left alone.  To waft and move and jiggle and groove as they choose.  Like many of our ancestors from time immemorial.  

Not just communication, and not just sexual, our natural body odours are also great aides in bonding.  And comfort.  And creating a sense and smell of home wherever you go.  I've had more than one child who has buried their head into my armpit when they're upset.  And more than one person on whom I've casually left my scent in a hug, who has told me how good I smell.  We had one friend who told us we were the strongest smelling humans she knew, and that it was a really good thing.  We had friends who said they could smell us as soon as they entered a supermarket in Mt Barker, above all the air ducted smells, and they sniffed us out till they found us.  We spent a night in a perfumed bed, and Spiral-Moon baby cried and cried and cried until we went out to the bus, got our sheets, and remade the bed with our bedding.  Only then did she finally sleep.  And at markets back in Maccy a bit down the olfactorial track, when more than a few had sniffed our whiff, we'd meet up early in the pre market dawn, and give each other a snuffle of our pits.  Many a friend has vowed to stop using soap on their underarms, and told us later they were delighted with the results.  Most of our birthing experiences have revolved around bonding, and wanting our baby to be born into the smells and feelings of home.  To stay quietly with me and be welcomed to the world slowly and gently.  To soak up the heady perfume of birth, that once you've smelt it you'll never forget.  To bond closely, skin to skin, heart beat to heart beat, with no bras and deodorants and factory farmed smells intruding.  If you look into early human practices, there was a time when we licked the perineum of our babies after they were born, like the other mammals.  And the smells of birth were considered an integral part of a bonded birth.

Because to be totally honest…..after spending so many years with real smelling humans, doing all the communicating and hugging and sniffing that we do, the cloy of a factory farmed scent is quite offensive to my nostrils.  There's been so much fuss over the years, that some folk have even fronted me on, about the offensive smell of B.O.  So many mainstream people seem assured that the best thing to do in the face of an authentic human animal smell is to disinfect it and cover over the scent with the same smell as a million others.  At least.  To hide it.  Smother it.  Get rid of it quick.  I remember one night, in the height of our summer of love at the market, when there was a circus tent full of opera goers on the oval beneath our hippy camp.  We walked down to check it out, and were assaulted by a tsunami of chemically toxic perfumes and colognes.  I ended up holding my breath.  Grieving for the olfactory sensation I'd been robbed of, had I been able to swim through an ocean of signature smelling humans.  And Currawong and I both fondly talk about the events that we've been to full of human smelling humans.  On summer evenings, with sweat drenched bodies singing their aromas to the wind, many moments of connection and bonding occurred.  Our sex life revolves massively around our body odours.  We communicate so much with the way we smell.  One day I met Currawong at the door after a hot day away armpit first.  And it made him melt to the point of almost collapsing.  His knees instantly went from beneath him. And all the different zones on him, and how they smell, never cease to entrance me and stir me from stupor.  He's my Pied Piper, and I'll follow his scent to the ends of the earth.  

I'm only writing this, cause I was set to think by an article about underarm hair sent to me by a friend.  It really tripped me out that, like the fella said…

Mr Hopper sees his project as a 'type of protest' against the beauty industry.

'Although armpit hair is a natural state it has become a statement. Why is that?' he writes.  'For almost a century we have been brainwashed by the beauty industry, encouraging hair removal. Natural Beauty could be classified as a type of protest. 

'By creating a contrast between common "fashionable" female beauty and the raw unconventional look of female armpit hair, thoughts are intrigued and a discussion is made,' he explains.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2600074/Body-hair-natural-NOT-gross-Striking-images-women-unshaven-underarms-protest-conventional-standards-beauty.html#ixzz2zUurRJyT
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It really is quite bizarre that we find the natural state of our bodies that we were born with…..abhorrent.  One of the models even pulled out of the project, cause she was so 'grossed out' by her body hair.  I just don't get it.  In a society ruled by many religions and spiritualities, collective in their belief that we are made in the image of God/ess, in whichever form that takes…….how have we got so far from loving ourselves exactly as we are?  Aren't we meant to be a reflection of perfection?  It doesn't occur to me much to talk about, as it's so completely and intrinsically part of who we are, but when I read this article I thought I should post out a view from one of the many alternatives to the beauty industry.  Cause I know when I was enthralled with it, I never stopped to think that there was any other way.  It's a great big arsed multinational corporation regime that has many dancing to the beat of its drum.  

I love my underarm hair.  And I don't have to be part of a project to do so.  It's one of the sexiest things about me I think.  Currawong concurs.  And there is the odd human around who has kept a love for natural smells despite the mainstream.  I remember once Hairy Dave back in Maccy, telling Currawong rather sheepishly that he wasn't trying to cut his lunch, but he saw me lift my arm, and the sweat glistening on my armpit hairs was glinting in the sunlight, and he couldn't help it mate, but he barred up!  All said with a big grin and laugh of course.  Love it.  And I love every inch of hair on my man.  Incidentally, I don't think I've ever shared mine and Currawong's theme song with you on here.  I knew it from my lesbian days, and thought it was a hoot, and never expected that the song would go on to prove quite prophetic……except we obviously missed out a bit on the birth control :)  But here it is nonetheless.  Our theme song.  'I spent my last $10 on birth control and beer' by Two Nice Girls.

And I can't talk about body hair without a specific mention of pubic hair.  It's another amazing part of our bodies, that doesn't necessarily need taming.  And a rather special part in my experience.  One thing I particularly love about my pubic hair is that with every pregnancy I've experienced, it's grown really long.  Like a hairy protective measure to keep what's inside safe.  It also can perform a rather miraculous alchemical role in the collection of juices that can happen around there.  And I've only ever shaved it off completely once, and by gawd it hurt and was itchy and scratchy when it started to grow back.  How do you all go through that?  And of course…..if I'm talking about pubic hair, I'm going to have to share with you Amanda Palmer's song 'Map Of Tasmania', cause when I saw it I really fell in love with her.  Both the cheekiness and creativity of the whole clip and song about the map of Tasmania, but also her complete abandon for flashing her hairy pits.

Currawong and I totally agree, that the only humans that ever really enter our attraction radars, are totally hairy and smelling like themselves :)  Let your hair and body be what they're meant to be!  And at least run an experiment, to see whether there isn't a sexy smell lurking on your body, once it's had the chance to regain it's natural ecosystem…….

Chapters three and four....

Here’s the next instalment of my book.  Currawong’s very concerned that people who don’t know my blog well, will come along and read the story in the wrong order, so I should tell  you now, that if you haven’t already started reading the book that I’m posting on this blog, then you’ve got to go back a post and start at Chapter 1.

That being said, here’s the next bit.  It’s funny.  I’m finding that I’m really sensitive about this book!  It’s such a part of me, and I guess after having gone through the process I described last time of birthing it, I’m as protective of it as I am of my children.  I was sure that nobody liked it after I posted it for a whole hour and didn’t get any gorgeous comments….(ha!)  But then feedback started to come in, and I got over my jitters.  The urge to let it out into the world is proving stronger than the urge to be a wus J

So like I said before, I’d left the Blue Mountains and emigrated to South Australia, and had been in SA for about 6 months when I decided to go back to the mountains for a visit, met Currawong, and then went back home to write this book.  And I left the mountains cause it was all just too confusing.  In my time in the mountains I’d been a fundamentalist church goer, a very unpopular school girl with braces and glasses and knee high socks and below knee skirts and a head taller than all the boys, a dropout, and I disappeared for 3 years after I left home at 15 under police escort and lived with my sister in Bathurst for a while, then went overseas to Europe for a year to do the famous Aussie backpacker tour, then came back briefly to the mountains to be a Council postal clerk by day, and an RSL root rat by night, then went down to the North Shore in Sydney and sold Life Insurance, got pregnant and moved back to the mountains to become a single mother, then a goddess worshipping guided meditator, then a bisexual activist, then an almost separatist lesbian, lived with my girlfriend and our daughters and wrote for the local lesbian magazine, then left her and had a relationship with an eccentric man who worshipped the goddess Kali, at the same time as with a woman who wanted to look after me and take me to Holland………got too confused by everything and ran into a relationship with a young punk fella who had a very iconic name and a sweet heart, started a business in the main street of Katoomba and had some very big and grandiose dreams come to nothing, and then found it all too much and decided to move with my punk fella to Adelaide. 

Pulling silly faces with my best mate at school.....after losing the braces and not wearing the glasses for the shot....

Living in Bathurst with my sister

Sitting on King Arthurs seat in Edinburgh

Selling life insurance on the North Shore in Sydney.....

Being a single mother with a daughter

Being a lesbian at the beautiful Avalon restaurant in Katoomba

At the end of my time in the mountains, I could walk down the street and meet someone from church, then someone from the lesbian community, then a council worker who remembered my time there, then someone I’d slept with from the RSL, then a client from the business I was co-operating, then one of my single mother friends, then a fellow goddess circle member……..and it was just all too much.  I decided it was time to go somewhere and start fresh, without all the baggage of my past.  And Adelaide was about as far away as I was prepared to go.   The punk with the iconic name and I didn’t last long, so there I was in a new state (literally), on my own with my daughter, and trying to work out who the hell I really was after all. 

One of the first things I noticed was how I didn’t have any healthy relationships with men in my life.  So I spent some rather intense months trawling singles sites and having phone sex and talking to men on the internet to the point that I couldn’t talk to people in real life anymore.  So I cut all that out, and tried to make friends in real life, and my next big realisation was that I didn’t know how to fit in and be ‘normal’.  After sticking out so much my whole life, it had become my comfort zone, and I freaked out as much about being ‘normal’, as a lot of normal folk would freak out about being ‘different’. 

So I decided to go undercover, don some ‘normal’ clothes, get a ‘normal’ haircut, try and slide into the reality of the majority of the people around me, and enrolled in Community Services at TAFE.  I gossiped, I talked about boring shit, I didn’t tell any stories about my life, and blended in quite nicely.  And all was going well, and the strain of being ‘normal’ wasn’t too bad, and I was getting great marks…….till two strong personalities in my class started pushing my boundaries.  One of the girls who was verging on being a bit of a bully came out with her homophobia, about how she thought AIDS was a good thing, and the class clown decided to come out with his racist dislike of our indigenous folk, and I just couldn’t hold my tongue.  I literally stood up in the class with the girl speaking homophobia, and bore witness to my experiences and why I thought she was wrong.  And I also spoke very deeply about the racist fella’s opinions and what else I thought he should know. 

My cover was blown.

And would you believe it, they both thought I was awesome for it and all of a sudden I was the most popular girl around!!  Sitting next to me became a privilege, I started clubbing with the more open minded ex-homophobe, and the ex racist fella did an essay on the indignities suffered by black fella’s!  Since there was no point pretending to be normal anymore, I just moved towards wearing clothes that were comfortable for me, and celebrated getting over my normalphobia by just being me.   And people loved me for it.  And I wasn’t reacting anymore.  And I started feeling really good about who I was.  And decided it was about time to go back to the Blue Mountains and catch up with old friends and let them know how successful I was being in my new life.

Little did I know that I was about to meet my soul mate……..

CHAPTER 3 - That first glimpse.........

She’d briefly seen Balthazar that age before when she’d been walking the street with her young male lover.  Her Adonis, young and strong, full of testosterone and laughs, smooth of skin, hung like Pan.  She’d glimpsed him a few times and watched her Adonis grow in battle of preen to outshine him.  They were similar, these two men.  Similar in style and cover and show.

She and her Adonis had walked together down the busy street.  Busy with gossip, busy with conversation, busy with sights and sounds and smells, busy with memories, busy with energies.  They walked the street where everyone met whatever from their past, whichever ghost they most needed to see.  They walked and she held to his arm, his brash young innocence, his muscled good looks, his sliding blend of male and female, his love of her dominance, his obvious difference, and she watched quietly from within.  She watched the reactions to her, to him, to the couple they made, she watched the assumptions made and judgements reached, she watched the souls of others fly by her in eyeballs, she watched what people wanted from her or from their belief of who she was.  And she watched for the qualities she wanted in her next lover, as indeed she knew she’d have one, for this young one, this Adonis, this fear of invisibility, this run away from her past, was a boat that was ferrying her to the other side.  To the shore she knew she’d seek before too long, that would welcome her as its own, and show her the map to herself.  So she watched from her safe place by his side and she’d noticed him......Balthazar. 

She saw his eyes and felt consumed by them instantly to the past they’d shared, the wealth of love, the tangling images one upon the other flickered inside, and she felt drawn into the whirlpool.  She’d seen him, known him, loved him, feared him, felt him, taught him, learnt him, burnt him, claimed him sometime before....but not in this lifetime.  She wrapped him around her like a warm cloak of sanity and peace and the dark......and knew they’d meet again.

...........

He’d seen her strength and soul but couldn’t look, as he was not quite ready to see her yet.  There were a few resolutions just made that he needed to put into practice before meeting her.  He had some patterns to clear, some habits to destroy, some judgements to challenge, some thoughts to stretch.  After a history of enslavement and fear and bloodshed, there were some wounds to heal.  Some salve to supply.

He started heeding that voice from across the gulf when it whispered to him.  Started seeing other selves within.  The strength and bones of his being.  He traversed the gulf and began building bridges.  And finally acknowledged the mother.

He looked around him and surveyed the damage he’d wrought in his battle lust.  He mourned the dead, begged forgiveness from the wounded, and set about paying recompense.  And looked to the mother to see truly within.  All she’d ever asked was that he see her in himself.  See her and love her part in him.  This was all she’d wanted all that time when he’d bullied and railed against her to tell him her secrets.  And even though he thought he’d destroyed her, she existed still in every separated particle, for each particle had once been part of her.

He wept at the waste and bloodshed caused, and the information he could have gained, insights grown, had he only asked respectfully for what he hungered.

And he knew that this time he’d hold her hand.  Respect and love her.  Treat her as divinity.  Share knowledge and support and growth and learning.  Revel in her power and sex and intellect.  Roar with her humour and passion and anger.  And he recognised her as Nimue.  He knew he’d see her soon.

CHAPTER 4 - One year later......

   She shed her young male lover, and her hatred of mankind.  Shed the skin of who she’d been.  Traversed the underground and died to herself, then rebirthed into who was within.  Shed her childhood, her rape, her lost innocence, her wounds, and grew into her whole self.  Her arching sweetly sexual side.  Her dreaming shadowed passionate side.  Her amazon leather bound worldly side.  Her darkly despairing alone side.  Her philosophical truth searching theory side.  Her strong joking tough side.  All were her, all were loved, all were divine.  She was Goddess incarnate and spent time on herself and her senses. 

She created ritual and body scent, inner clothes and outer clothes, stories and experiences, mind stretches and style.  She shed her past and stepped in the flow and decided it was time to return to the street.  To bring with her the new clothes she’d fashioned in the hills.  The new tools she’d learned to wield.  To marry her worlds and heal her past. 

So she’d come to the street, to bounce energy down the sidewalk, and enthral with her raptures.  Willing and able to engage in life around her, and draw in a partner, wrapped to the soul in hunger for learning and life.  She knew her partner would be a man.

And then she saw Balthazar.

.........

He’d walked through fire and found his own insides, his poet and dancer, his singer and wit.  He’d mapped the depths of the empty hole his anger had nestled in, and drawn up plans for it’s renovations.  But he was still moored to his past in the form of a girlfriend.  A ‘you’ll do for now cause I’d rather not be alone’ companion who had come to him in shared desolation.  They’d huddled together against the storm of the wild around them, and now when he stepped out she told him to close the door against the wind.  But the outside to him was full of wonder.  Bright with promise and new faces and inner insight.  The harsh jarring of his two lives was stringing him tight, tuning his bow.  But he didn’t know where to aim yet so he awaited the sign. 

And then he saw Nimue.

.........

It was in the local pub, inured against the cold with warm clothes and a mellow joint, cold beer by the fire.  She walked round to the back room to sit with her friends and saw Balthazar sitting there, perched on a stool.  Waves of emotion washed her and she went to strike up conversation.  Told him how her young lover had been intimidated by him.  Laughed about the young male pride, gazed in each others eyes.  Communicated without words or mouths or moving.  Balthazar sat with Nimue and their worlds began to collide.

And then another day, on the busy street, they’d chanced to pass, and stopped and enticed, and went for a coffee.  Lazily conversed on spirituality and horses, sex and iniquity....and sent out fine tendrils of lust and promise.  That night at the pub again, inured against the cold by sexual hunger, they’d chatted, then sitted, then glittered their way to a hotel room to shed the clothing of outside.

A musical trip down memory lane.... Part 1

Currawong got home late from drumming last night, and we sat up till early in the morning as I took him on a trip down memory lane with music clips from Youtube.  I told him a whole heap of depth to my stories about my dyke days in Katoomba that I'd never told him before.  It's wierd.  I had such a blast, and I've always been very  proud of my stories as a scene queen in the Blue Mountains, but I kinda stopped telling them when I became very monogamous and heterosexual with the love of my life, and having copious amounts of children....kinda didn't seem to fit anymore.  And I was always wary of the voyeuristic tendancies of the folk I told stories to, and thought that if they wanted to know the intricacies of lesbian culture, then they should go have a look themselves (if they were the right gender of course), rather than get a peek through me.  And I was also very aware of the privacy and respect that a lot of the women I hung out with would appreciate from me.  So I just kinda tucked all my stories away, and got on with only being so weird as to be a big hippy with lots of kids, and a crocheted bus, living in and around community, into homebirthing and natural learning, and traveling, and the festival, market, and dance scenes.

But strike me pink and call me lemon, I had a huge amount of fun. I'm gonna tell you some of those stories, doing my best to respect everyone's dignity and privacy, just cause they were some of the most brilliant and magical moments of my life.

I moved back to the mountains when I'd got pregnant from a fling while selling life insurance to have my first child.  Her birth transformed my life completely and showed me layers in our culture that I'd never known about before.  Feminism, the Goddess, the divine feminine, spirituality, pagan culture, my world exploded into realms I'd never dreamt of.  I went to a meditation group and kept hearing about this tall, striking woman who was a lesbian, and when we met we almost instantly fell head over heels in kindred, platonic love.  We talked and compared and enlightened and shared and learnt the patterns and trends of whole new worlds together.  And just when we were both on the verge of thinking that women were the most splendid creations on the planet, and we could just launch into a parallel universe where men didn't exist, (more colloquially known as separatism) she brought a blue eyed man to visit me one night, we talked all night, and he instantly became part of our platonic love triangle.

We were all three intensely into LIFE and honesty, and unpeeling layers off our childhoods and popular culture and 'reality' and trying to find out who we all really were.  Exploring music and art and literature and concepts and foods and smells and sensuality and sexuality and gender and textures and natural found objects and everything we could lay our incredibly open minds on.  We got so into intense and brilliant conversations with each other that we forgot all about the people around us, and sometimes we'd all come too and find we had an audience with hanging mouths who'd been listening to our collective journey.

They became like parents to my young daughter, and we fast became inseperable, and they lived in a plush wooden mansion in Blackheath on Shipley road, with an incredible view from massive glass windows of cliffs and valleys reaching into Megalong Valley.  And we whirled and glittered and spun and talked, and freaked out nearly everyone around us.

We gals were bent, he was straight, I had a daughter, he was in a wheelchair, and we talked and laughed and tussled with concepts while dashing through the mountains in bright streams of colour and wafts of pure delight.  We challenged nearly every stereotype we could find, about disability, sexuality, relationships and gender.

"Your inability to see my ability is your own disability..."

And in the middle of these halcyon days, my gal pal and I were asked to make some music for a dyke dance in Katoomba.  We already had a reputation from a few parties we'd been at where we'd hijacked the sound system, so we set to our task with joy, using his music and our music, and sewing ourselves lush velvet capes with hoods, and long fitted frocks for the occasion.  We were cheeky as we made the tapes, putting on songs we knew were very different to the music normally heard at such events, but playing the music that inspired us nonetheless.  And even though he helped us create the soundtrack, our third mate couldn't come to this event, not even we tried to stretch that particular boundary.....

 
It was one of the most amazing nights and dances I've ever been to, still to this day.  It was like all cliches and stereotypes and distinctions dissolved, as all the gorgeous women of all shapes and ages just got on with the business of having fun. All the songs we thought would be challenging were just plain enjoyed.

We knew when this song was coming, and ran outside to hide while we giggled helplessly about what the reactions to it might be, and to our surprise, no-one said a word.

At one point outside the hall, there was a circle of about 10 women standing together, hugging and holding and talking and sharing, and everyone seemed to step out from their internal worlds and stand together united.

 
And when this piece played, as it was our threesome's collective favourite at the time, me and my beautiful friend skipped and swirled round the dance floor with capes billowing out behind us, and slowly all the women joined in as we whirled our way through the drum beats.

And we all had a huge amount of fun......

25 Random things about me

I know this is meant to be a blog about spinning and crochet and the like, but the fact is I'm not doing a hell of a lot of that at the moment, what with a new bubba and the like, and I want to keep writing things here....

There's this thing that's happening in my facebook network, where people are posting 25 random things about themselves, and I really enjoyed doing it... You should try it yourself and see what you come up with!! After about no 15, you've gone through the store of things you wanted to say that you thought you had an endless supply of, and you start having to dig a bit deeper. That being said, I could probably write another 25.....

Anyway, I thought I'd make the most of something I'd written, and put it in here too, so here goes..........

1. I agree with Ellie, in that I don't normally do stuff like this, but I loved reading other people's 25 things, and thought I should share as well.

2. I have 5 children, and when they're all sitting around me, I spin out about how they all came out of my belly, and were made with love inside me.

3. I'm a spinster in the original sense of the word - I spin the fleece for my family - and a creatrix, and it's my 'thing'. I thought I'd never find my 'thing', until my mum bought me a spinning wheel when I was 30 as a birthing present. Which incidentally was the age when she got her first spinning wheel. It's been a mad love affair ever since.

4. Speaking about mad love affairs, and something I thought I'd never find - I live with the love of my life, and it's as good as I always secretly dreamed it would be. We met when we were 28 (we're the same age), and he's my soul mate, constant partner, best friend and most awesome lover I ever had. And the father of 4 of my children. Don't think we don't fight tho, cause we do - like cat and dog. But in the vast majority of our time we have huge amounts of fun and adventures and talking.....lots and lots of talking.....

5. We're also both Fries. Or Friesian. Where the black and white cows come from up the top of Holland. Though we're not Dutch. The Fries are a breed of their own, and the only tribe still living in the same place and speaking the same language from the survey the Romans did in 0 BC. They're also indomitable. I only discovered this a few years ago and I'm very proud of it.

6. I fancy myself a writer, and am in the process of writing a book about spinning, crochet and the things I make, as well as another one about birth, sex and death. I also keep a diary sporadically, wrote really bad poems when I was a teenager (who didn't!), and write down some of the kookier dreams I have.

7. I'm the seventh child of two seventh children, (my mum was the seventh child of her father, and my father was the seventh child of his parents, and I'm their seventh child), which has often made me wish for seven children, because there's a story that the seventh child of a seventh child will be psychic and special, and I'd love to know what the seventh of the seventh of the seventh would be like. But I think we're going to stop at 5, which is kinda sad.

8. My dad died in the Granville train crash when he was 49 (7 x 7), and I was 7, in 1977. He gave up smoking that morning, which meant he was on the non-smoking carriage right under the bridge, and if he hadn't of done that, he would have still been alive on his normal smoking carriage. He came to me after he died and told me that it was gonna be all right. And then I got teased at school that my dad was squashed like a tomato, so I stayed home for a year.

9. I really hated school. I was a head taller than most of the boys, had braces and glasses, wore long socks and long skirts, and was also a Mormon, which didn't really add to my popularity stakes. But I always had one girlfriend who made life bearable.

10. My sister got her boobs touched a bit too much by my step-father, and made a career out of it by turning it all into a comedy routine. I felt a bit ripped off when I found out years later that the 'incest' was just boob touching, cause that happened to me too, and I lost everything in supporting her and getting her out of home. ( I was 7 years younger than her). Notice how these 7's keep turning up?

11. I went overseas when I was 18 for a year, and did the whole backpacker euro-rail thing around Europe. Drank lots of beer, learnt how to scull an english pint in 3 seconds, met lots of groovy people, met 6 aunts, 5 uncles and 25 cousins in Holland, and generally had a blast. It put my life into perspective.

12. I sold life insurance for 6 months on the North Shore in Sydney. I scammed people on the phone by pretending that a friend of thiers had recommended me. I had a whole script that I learnt in training sessions where they used Colonel Sanders as inspiration. I left when I realised that I was seriously ripping people off. Also when they fired me....long story.

13. I'm seriously into Quantum Physics - after all the different belief systems I've trawled, and all the things I've learnt, I've found that Quantum Physics has room for every belief, and helps me make sense out of just about everything.

14. I was one of those horse loving girls, who had fantasies about horses and drew them lots. A bit of a crush I had.

15. I thought I was always going to be alone in that deep dark part of me inside, until I met Currawong, and we shared all our deep dark bits together. Even when we're fighting, I still know I'm not alone.

16. My dad was an uninitiated witch who could melt clouds, and I can too when I want to.

17. I have 4 brothers who won't talk to me, one of which calls me 'boofhead' everytime he HAS to talk to me, and my sister wont either. All long stories, but mostly because I was my dad's favourite and they weren't.

18. At the ripe old age of 38 I've discovered mountain bike riding (thanks Ellie!) and am surprised by how much I love my early morning rides through Kuitpo.

19. I started the Macclesfield Growers Market, although no-one would know - the 6 months leading up to our first market was the hardest I've ever worked in my life. It changed my life....

20. My favourite colour is purple, and I love shades of red and all the hues inbetween.

21. I was a lesbian for 5 years, and learnt a lot, ran a lesbian forum, and was 'super dyke' for a while, with my shaved head and leather wearing habits. I was the typist for the Mountain Lesbian Newsletter for a goodly amount of time.

22. I had a life changing moment in 6th class when a hippy couple stopped in at our playground during lunch. They had a baby boy, and as they were chatting to us the dad was changing his nappy. During the process, the baby pissed in his face, and he laughed!! I was gobsmacked. In my family there would have been yelling and tantrums. From that moment on I knew that somewhere 'out there' were colourful happy people, who lived in peace. And I vowed to find them one day. Now we are them!

23. I felt guilty the whole time I was a mormon, for playing 'mummies and daddies' with my girlfriends as a young child. It was a bit dodgy when one of my friends wanted me to pretend to rape her.... I always wanted to be princess Leia cause I had the long plaits, but she made me be Luke Skywalker cause I was tall.

24. Of all the drugs I don't do anymore, tobacco is the one I miss the most.

25. I hide my shyness by being extroverted