To bra or not to bra.......

I just read an awesome blog post about the usage of bras, that I highly recommend you read.  About how it's really not a funky practice for our boobs.  And the comment I wanted to leave was so huge, that I thought I'd better blog about it myself, not least because the more this kind of information is out there the better, but also because it comes down to sovereignty again.

Hot on the tail of my last post just fresh off the press about self organisation, this is so timely because the self organisation that can exist within our communities and groups, can also exist in our bodies.  Us Westerners are so into control.  Controlling our groups with heirarchies, controlling our creativity with standardised learning, controlling our animals and our children, who often have the same rights as each other, controlling our fibres that we make things with, controlling the ways that everybody does everything, and most of all, personally, and in our direct experience, we try to control our bodies.  What they look like, smell like, feel like, perform like, when they rest, when they eat, what they eat, and all the different ways that we 'manage' them into submission.  Do our best to knock all the animal edges off, so that we can prance around in our dog trotting ways emulating aliens that don't shit, stink, have hair in unsightly places, writhe with sensuality, or force us to admit our card carrying status as animals like all the others.  

And I would like to suggest, that instead we could surrender to our humanimal bodily experience, and maybe even find that our bodies, like our grass roots communities and wild environments show us, have within them an inherent consciousness, that when respected and uncontrolled, can find a harmonious balance from seeming chaos.  

I've written before about our signature smells that can be liberated through using only natural soap and water and no deodorants or cleaning products, but never really got into my proud bra free status.  I don't wear a bra.  I'm over 6 foot tall, and I've weighed between 100 and 125 kilograms for years now, especially during babies, and have big bosoms.  I've been up to a size 26H which is pretty huge, and I've breastfed 8 babies now, all for the first year of their lives, when they've naturally weaned themselves.  

Incidentally......apparently there was a test done in the 50's as to what size bra one should buy.  If your breast could hold a pencil underneath it, pinned between breast and chest, then you were a certain size. If your breast couldn't hold a pencil it was another.  Three pencils was considered a larger sized cup.  But since a very young lass, my bountiful breasts have been able to hold a whole pencil case.  A soft one of course.  I wonder what size that would have been?  Bloody Big Bra perhaps.......

When I was a young thing I was a bit of an obsessive bra wearer.  I'd wear them to sleep.  And felt awfully nude and nipple shy and vulnerable to go without one.  And then I had my first baby and discovered all sorts of things as a result, one of which was the joys of making love with women.  And a lot of women who love women are really into women.....surprisingly......in their raw, natural, authentic and real states.  So I came to really love my breasts, and their fulsome milk giving nurturance, and how they wobbled and bounced as I walked was almost a badge of honour, that I was a WILD woman, who'd howled at the moon and found her soul, and loved my body as it was.   At first it was uncomfortable and I sweated a lot, but after a time my body found it's own balance, and I got used to hanging loose.  

For a very brief time I explored complete femininity, and lacy push up bras, and fell as in love with my cleavage as all the very short men who I hugged often did.  

Then I met Currawong, but as a punk anarchist, he was every bit as into reclaiming the beauty of the untamed or uncliched body, and loved my bouncing breasts.  I convinced myself that I needed to wear maternity bras from birthing to at least 6 months down the track for only the first three of my babies, and had mastitis, and sore breasts often, and a huge mess around with bra straps and nursing pads.  But with my fourth baby I just let the whole thing go, wore latex tops that held material nursing pads in place, or just gushed into cloth nappies that stayed in place under my tank tops.  I had no problems, and my breasts were so less sore in general, and they've always been easy and comfortable since.  

I'm 42 now, and 8 babies later they droop, and my nipples point to the ground.  They're so soft and the skin is so gently stretchy that they're comfortable and warm pillows for any of my babies.  They get a bit tender coming up to bleeding, but in general I forget about them, cause they just bounce along for the ride.   Before I got to evolving into complete self love and acceptance,  I sometimes felt stared at, and uncomfortable, and exposed, and wished I could just have a body that didn't attract attention.   But what always helped me deal with that, was to remember that I was part of a sight seed of a different way of being for everyone who looked at me, for an individual who was going about their life as a natural and authentic human animal.  And for my daughters, so that when they grow they can choose which cultural fads they want to take part in, and not feel pressured into fitting into anyone else's norm.  And for my sons, to be able to appreciate women in all their glorious forms.  And for my Currawong, who has been such a huge part of my self love and appreciation, through the glowing reflection of his adoration for my body, and maybe in particular my beautiful bosoms.  

And with my complete and easy surrender to my body, and what it actually is, I find that I have such a profound gratitude for the amazing beast that it is, to have taken me this far in life, borne this many babies, enjoyed this much sex, love and bonding, had such stamina and energy for all of life's distractions, and has these amazing pillows of soft flesh and skin that can express so many sides of me.  When left to their own devices, and accepted for what they are, they come into a graceful prime.  In the cold they can shrink up almost pert like and my nipples harden in weather and in lust.  And when hot they kinda spread and hang out and try to keep as cool as they can.  They nestle and fold my loved one into me in all sorts of ways, and I wear halter tops and sheer stretchy tees and let them shake the tango along with all the other generous curves of my womans body.  

And I've got so used to it, and have so many women round me now who also walk the world braless, that sometimes I catch myself looking at women with obvious bras on, and think to myself 'Now that's just wierd.....'

Breasts are wonderful.  And a journey.  Enjoy them.  

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

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.

Love

We’ve just enacted our shivery skinned, soft lipped, sensual supplication to love…….love that leaves a big hole when it goes on vacation, and fills the house to overflowing when it returns.  Love that turns a potentially tragic life into a dream.  Love that makes sense of everything, imbues with meaning, and can turn every action into purpose.  Love that reminds that everything is everything, connected and created, following the slip threads of every other thing into love……..

Kids safely bribed with cups of tea and a cartoon, we close the doors and settle into each other again.  Hello eyes, and lips, and that strong band of arm, and our hair entangling, and that warm, moist place where only we connect……the electrical touch, the building friction of warm soft skin.  Hello again my love, wrapped in this cocoon of us for a snatched moment in a life surrounded by younglings and small limbs and fractious cries and nappies and feeding frenzies and tiny fingers and border disputes and infectious giggles and the elephant stampede of small feet bounding and rebounding over bouncy wooden floors.  Hello again to the pull of our bodies that created so much life shimmering through the corridors around us.  That unrelenting sinking into each other that never seems to have an end.  The plummet into eyes and skin and lips and limbs and soft hair and hard man…….  The ancient magnet of mammals to create life in the cycle of birth life and rebirth, ever rounding circle of life through it’s stages, the young, the fertile, and the diminishing.  And then bodies sated and satisfied fit together so snug that there’s no beginning or end, limbs draped gracefully and sharp shoulders so soft a pillow, no slight movement is required to make it more comfortable.  Everything slows to minute detail, the blood gently lifting a pulse in a wrist, cool breeze drifting through the window, bird calls clear as a bell ringing outside, body’s sanguine reposing in layers, the slow drift of a dust mote, resting in that endless moment.  All of it makes sense, all of it has meaning, all of it is perfect if it led us to right here and now.  Of course we love, and we love so deep, and there is no end, and there can be no withholding of the great big love that we have for each other and our lives and our children and our friends.  Nothing can damage or stop the strong driving river of our shared experiences and lessons of each other and our places in the world. 

Which isn’t at all how it felt only a few days ago.  Stopping still in a home at last, after a long and arduous journey through fear and betrayal, judgement and heartache, jealousies and intrigue, threat and defensiveness, deep and gnarly patterns surfacing due to the stress.  Ugly bits of ourselves that we didn’t want to show, dragged out by excruciating circumstances.  Long hauls of personal strength and heroic efforts done alone.  Isolated feelings of being unappreciated.  Unloved down in the marrow of childhood aloneness.  Hiding behind the barricade of our battered love, till great tidal waves swept over them, and split us apart to battle the waves on our own.  Enacting the rituals of the love that felt faded, hoping that pretending would bring back the strength.  Pushing and striving and hurting to leave the place where all the pain focalised.  To leave the people that looked at us with grim eyes and snappy mouths.  To leave the arched eyebrows and slimly disguised taunts.  Pushing against invisible and seemingly insurmountable barriers that constantly seemed to be in front of us, blocking our escape. 

Till we did.  Escape.  Run fleeing from the harsh and lonely desert that was aching all around us.  We ran and we stumbled and we fled through the bitter cold and the sultry heat.  Cloaked in a magic tent that shipped us through the salty rocking waters.  Bits of our love bumped back into each other, and we started remembering who we were before the heartache, but the moments retracted like eyes on a snail, whenever the rigours of the journey became too taxing.  Easy to take it out on each other.  Easy to blame one another.  Easy to think that without that other, life may be easier.  Wouldn’t have to remember so much.  Wouldn’t have to try and keep healing those wounds.  Wouldn’t have to be surrounded by children full time.  Staying in other people’s houses, and on other people’s floors, and in other people’s camp sites, and on other people’s land, and in other people’s headspaces…….quiet kids, and don’t swear in public, and stop hurting him, and don’t ask for food, and stop playing with their special things, and don’t keep asking questions, and stop stop stop and squeeze yourself in so you don’t……take…..up…….too…….much………space.   Dreaming of a sanctuary and a private space, and blaming ourselves and each other for being this old, and still not having all the ticks and ribbons that we’re meant to have as grown ups in our culture.  Still not having a home.  A safe place to be who we are and take off the masks.  Let the kids swear.  Let them make mess.  Let them yell and scream and bounce all the floorboards.  Let them sound like harpies at each other, let them eat with their hands, let them, let them smile. 

Then we finally get here.  Our home.  Snuggled in by the owner of our home, who hugs us and kisses us, and thanks us for being here, and has left fragrant snippets of her life to surround us, and seat us, and feed us, and clean us, and keep our food cool.  A sweet wooden sanctuary, perched on a hill, surrounded by colourful folk and rainforest, tree’s dripping with life and surging green.  A home and private space at last.  The journey from heartache has finally completed, and found it’s solution in a place to finally let….it…..all……go……  Now that the fleeing and survival is over, there’s time to lick wounds again, and to finally feel into the new one we created, that’s been sitting inside quietly, silently promising to be no problem.  Our new child cradled and biding it’s time, the time that’s drawing nearer with every breath.  We finally have the time to turn our attention inward.  To redress what we can, and let all the ragged bits of skin that had to be pushed down unfurl, and set about soothing them.  And then all should be better shouldn’t it?  All should magically fix itself when the home’s been found? And it is and does…….to a certain point.  We know that we’re lucky, and we know that we’re doing the right thing, and we know that it will start to get better.  But unnoticed by us the heat keeps rising, and the humidity sweats on our lips and drops from our brows, and feels like walking through water.  Our internal temperature gauges start to boil.  Insides feel like they’re slowly cooking.  And it feels like I have a heavy hot water bottle strapped to my middle.  For weeks on end it builds.  And builds.  The heat.  The sweat.  Unrelenting apart from brief downpours of sub-tropical intensity, and then the continued build up of heat.   

And unnoticed by us the rise in temperature mirrors the rise in our unease with each other.  I remember things that hurt.  I spend hours in tears.  All the hurts and pains come bubbling up simmering to the surface, feeling so so alone and betrayed and wondering how to forgive.  Can I forgive?  Has something been broken?  An unbroachable gulf between us?  And with the bleaching of love, the children seem harder, and more difficult to deal with, and the reality of another one popping into our nest starts to seem silly.  Like we’ve gone too far.  Gone over the edge of practicality and manageability.  Everything seems difficult, in the sweaty reality of a beautiful home that’s void of all of our personal treasures that we left behind in our dash to get away.  Taking love out of the equation leaves a dusty, slightly macabre and messy life between two former colleagues.  Two ex best friends.  Two comrades who lost faith with each other in the battle’s dying glow.  Love leaves a sad ship wreck on the sandy desert floor. 

On the last night of heat, I slip away into town on my own.  To a women’s dinner.  He’s been trying hard to mend the gaps and spaces between us.  Asks me if I’m going to be swept away by a long haired lovely and back into the arms of a woman.  And I throw a “I wouldn’t leave the children” over my shoulder, as I shimmy out the door in my red velvet pants and drive through the cool evening breeze and thank everything I can think of for this break in the sultry heat.  Driving on my own feeling sad for my hurt bits, and glad to have this moment of my well known company all to myself.  I remember me.  I’m always there.  Always willing to make the best out of everything.  Always wryly observing myself and loving all my bits.  Loving the sense of me.  Driving through the uber green I feel a sense of peace and ease.  Forthcoming adventure.  Sliding down the road into town I slip into the hall and haunt around, looking for a familiar face.  A few women who have met me take notice and introduce me around, seat me with them, wrap me in friendship, touch my burgeoning belly.  A string of talented and passionate women perform for us, sitting sweating in our seats, by our tables, with our plates of food and glasses of wine and water.  Poems and songs and words of women and their places and their skills and desires and attempts at finding….love.  And stories float round me from the tables nearby, and faces speak tomes of love held and lost, and optimistic love spreads it’s wings over couples, and all seems to be a promise and faint hope to the potential of love.  I listen to women talk about how they’ve been loved for a year and it still keeps burning!  I listen to how they’ve decided that love has become a worthwhile and surmountable path to follow.  I hear the reasons why they think love is worth the gamble.  And the hollow ache that sits beneath the surface for the ones that have given up the challenge.  Decided the odds are too great.  And I sit, hiding the blood red heart of a love that’s been burning hard and singing our skin regularly with lust for a full blooded 12 years of lovemaking and yearning and babies and birthing and erotic dreams and fantasies lacing each other in the quiet unobserved moments between child interruptions.  Knowing that I have it.  I have that love that gets songs and poems and yearnings aching for it.  A bit of perspective is always a good thing…….

And the next day, the heat breaks, and clouds hover, and suddenly everything seems better.  I hear mention of how people go troppo in the buildup to the wet, and how extreme behaviours come bursting out in the heat.  And I wonder how much a part that heat played in our drama.  And with my newfound perspective, and remembrance of how lonely and desolate life can be without our love……………we bribe the kids with cups of tea and cartoons, and submerge ourselves in our love renewed.  As it always will be.  As it always has to be.  As I will ever keep it.  Untattered.  Unbroken.  Bouyed by the long distance haul of shared experiences and traumas and birthing and babies and walls scaled and hurts healed.  Love is.  And always will be.  Even if sometimes it seems to go on holiday.  Love wont let us down.  We wont let love down.  It’s ours for life.