A note to the humans........

Say what you like about the nature of humans, for my money we’re absolutely spectacular.  Just sit for a moment and let your mind range over the many manifestations of our creativity, will, spontaneous urges, thoughts, theories, and mind sets that you can think of.  And consider our human nature’s……….our excessive capacity for beauty and our extreme depths of horror.  All the wonderful and terrible things we’ve done together, and on our own, and to the planet, and our homes and gardens, and to our pets and domestic animals, and our wild landscapes, and our sexuality, and our birthing, and our dying, and our collective human spirit. 

And we’ve done the most incredible thing, all of us together, that has never been done by any other species on the planet.  The scope and magnitude of which is absolutely mind boggling.  We’ve pitched our wills against the compelling force and energy of the synergy and symbiosis of the entire universe.  Against the tidal flows of the natural world that cycle constantly and eternally all around us.  We’ve gritted our teeth and dug in our heels and refused the pull of all the natural eddies that shiver around us, and we’ve suppressed our animal self and free born inner purpose based on ideals, and belief systems, and hierarchies, that demand trustworthiness of us.  And routines, and schedules, and rule following, and standardised time, and stability, and settling down, and dream repression, and personality shaping, and a character and nature that stay…….one……..way.  Otherwise you’d be having your cake and eating it too, and sitting on the fence, and confusing people, and too potentially dangerous and flexible and adaptable and changeable and that’s just too damn scary. 

We’ve known for a very long time now how to shape and control the human nature, how to encourage our young to put on their own blinkers, segregate and divide, and become consumers or warriors for the great monoculture in the sky.  The Spartans used to throw a baby to the ground after it was born to create warriors, the Mayan’s would bury the placenta on the battlefield, and we circumcise our baby boys and separate baby’s from families as soon as possible.  And mothers from fathers, and brothers from sisters, and divide into age groups, and abilities, and likes and dislikes and the scene is set for a rollicking good old war drama, as we play out on the world stage all the inadequacies and fears we hide inside.   Fear of death and mortality becomes a war on terrorism, evolution, and drugs.  Fear of sex and birth becomes a war on homebirth and honest, trusting, relationships.  Fear of sickness becomes a war on cancer and a multibillion dollar industry in medicine and insurance.  Fear of our essential human natures becomes an open slather war on the entire natural world.  

So we buy our beliefs, and our basic characters that all our choices refer to, and our sexuality and our birthing capacity, and our fear of death, and all our little labels and belief systems and uniforms and badges and find the right groups that represent who we are, and then we insure everything we have to prevent mishap or grief, and if we just follow all the rules and party lines, then everything will be all right, everyone will be easily identified and catalogued, and grief, death and great illness will all happen to someone else, but if they do happen to us, it’s all right cause there’s someone else to blame and someone else to pay for it, and thanks to those greater and wiser than us, all will be looked after.  And we all send in postal votes when it comes to the big decisions in our worlds and environments, because we need our energy for the little human worlds we’re creating, and trust the biggies to those that we agree are responsible for it. 

We’ve been convinced that if we just keep on heading towards the sky, and father gods, and off world aliens, and science, and our relentless march towards total separation from each other and our universe………..that we’ll come up with answers, or saviours, or other planets, or solutions, or final solutions that will prove us all right, that we were never one of the dusty earthy animals afterall, but a superior being sent here to safeguard, mine, farm, domesticate, tame, order, organise, shepherd, control, shape, and dominate. 

And now the far reaching tendrils of science have squeezed themselves into impossible spaces, and witnessed events on unimaginable scales that are leading us on a great cosmic fool’s journey right back to our roots, to where we all came from, and the symbiosis that’s been spinning along quite nicely out of our reach.   And as I stand all drop jawed and awestruck at the magnificence of the universe……….I realise that all roads really don’t lead to Rome, they lead to the understanding that everything is truly connected.  The sun has a heart beat and sings it’s sweet song to the universe, and our land is in a state of constant convection from the lava deep roots of our world to the dry and crusty surface.  Which reflects the convection of subterranean sea to the beaches and shores, and the convection of our air and biosphere.  The earth has about as much water on it as there is water in our individual bodies.  And when I started learning about all the fine tuned balances on which all the multitudinous forms of life on our planet rely on to survive, like the Biosphere, and distance from the sun, and formation of weather patterns, and all the pests and weeds without whom we’d perish…………it’s impossible not to realise that there’s an inherent balance and connection between everything we know how to observe.  Reflections upon reflections upon reflections show us time and again that what we do to the world around us, we do to ourselves.  Quantum Physics has measured and danced with mind numbingly minute particles and energies that show time and again that thought creates reality, everything is intrinsically connected, and reshuffles itself through infinity and back with every thought we think and movement we propel.  

And all that stability and those routines and our static belief systems haven’t been serving us afterall, in the chance filled magic of the universe that favours flexibility and adaptation.  We collectively decided to pull away parts of the whole on which to experiment, destroy, probe and explore, hoping that in understanding all the different parts of the creature that is everything we are connected to, we’d ultimately come to understand ourselves.  In endlessly dissecting the alien life form of the natural world all around us, we’ve understood the lifeless parts, but not the connecting web between it all that animates it.  Till now.  And it was what the indigenous folk and spiritual belief systems were trying to say all along – that it’s all connected, like the massive mallee scrubs that are at their roots the same tree.  Like the ocean that is vast and made up of billions upon billions of tiny drops.  Like snowflakes that are infinitely unique at the same time as being indistinguishable.  What we’ve done to the world ‘out there’ we’ve done to ourselves.

And now we’re the most domesticated animals on the planet.  We’ve learnt to suppress our natural urges, and be as polite as every other caricature in the cartoons we create, where animals trot around gaily in clothes having cups of tea…..  Following our road rules and our council rules and our government rules and our church rules and our school rules and our fire season rules and and our self imposed rules, and any other rules we can find.  We neatly tuck away our grottier more animalesque rituals of birth, sex and death, and we don’t like to talk about great love, grief or illness in polite company.  We cover over our signature animal scent with designer perfumes and keep our naked born bodies nicely clad and covered.  We build pretty houses in neat rows in a standardised way that would do any factory farmer proud. We’ve replaced our reverence for life with the love of money.  We’ve used our collective creative energy that used to grow food and make and learn, and build homes, to create media that focuses on our dysfunction instead, while we perform our seemingly innocuous button pushing jobs that destroy our world from afar.  We’ve built machines and weapons that could annhialate us over and over, in desperate search of the enemy without, when it’s within us all along.  We’ve separated ourselves so far from each other that we treat other cultures and belief systems as different species, which justifies our numerous genocides.   Yet the earth and all it’s inhabitants are literally our bodies…….what would you like on your skin?  In your air?  In your veins? Under your skin?  Going into your body?  As your thoughts and relationships?

We seem to be caught in a loop, where we’ve largely forgotten with our short memories that we’ve created it all ourselves.  Literally.  A few weeks before 9/11, I watched a movie where some Muslim terrorists flew a plane into the twin towers.  We’ve become so entranced, enthralled, and horrified by what we’ve created that we’ve become stuck in a repeating cycle of showing ourselves to ourselves, showing our horrors and our fears and our hatreds to each other in television programs and movies and books and music and computer games and ideas.  Created a self perpetuating war with ourselves that we project out to the screen of the world.  Most of it based on our long ago creation of our gods, and our morals, and our life purposes.  Somewhere along the line we forgot that we created them, and instead have allowed them to morph into the great one god of greed, power, hierarchies and control, using money and dogma as it’s figurehead, and like the Great Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, a huge and smoke belching machine has been ordering us about, with a few sleepy old men behind the curtain at the back, who have probably forgotten why they’re doing it anymore anyway.  And we’ve let them preach to us and lead us into a future that no-one is consciously caretaking anymore………

We’re the only species ever on the planet, that has thought that it has to be something other than it is.  Something other than living, breathing, birthing, dying, creating, destroying, procreating, surviving, suffering, laughing.  When we talk to each other about ‘who we are’ we mention jobs and possessions and groups and ideals and belief systems……barely ever the tick tick tick that keeps us alive and our spirits enriched.  Barely ever the deep cycles within our lives that link us to every other living thing. 

Which brings me back to my original point.  We’ve separated ourselves so far from our natures, our planet, our creative potency, and ultimately ourselves, that it comes as a earth shattering shock to us, that we did it to ourselves all along, and that our scout that we sent out to make sense  of it all in the form of Physics, has returned with the answer and solution of Quantum weirdness, where everything is connected, is created by our thoughts, and a reflection of the ageless spinning cycles of the universe.  We got so far away from our source, that our method of separation – our sciences –have found that they were eating their own tails all along.  And now have to teach us how we can reintegrate.  We can take our star stuff to the ball now, no-one needs to miss out, and re-create ourselves and our world in a vision of community, love, respect, peace, and freedom.  This is the point in our collective evolutions where we step up to the plate, pick up our minds, use those frontal lobes that we traded easy births for, and start spinning an encompassing web of beauty and growth, lessons learned deeply, and a respectful and creative enhancement of all life.

Now Currawong and I have talked much about this subject over the years, and we both agree that there needs to be a Human Animal Liberation Foundation or the HALF movement….cause you’re only half alive unless you acknowledge you’re an animal.  Or a soul in a human’s body.  However you choose to look at it.  ( Incidentally, if we are spirit in body form, truly massive and omnipotent sparks of the universe, chosen to trip a lifetime or two in a human body, wouldn’t the point of our journey be to truly experience the human capacity?  Wouldn’t it be anti-sense to try and spend that human life attempting to transcend and overcome the very body of our lessons? )  And we decided we needed to set up Human Animal Wildlife Santuaries.  Or HAWS.   Where humans could release themselves into the wild.  If Osho could get rolls royces gifted to him, we could get land donated to everyone. And along the lines of understanding that the earth is our skin, we’d disassemble the buildings, put on some composting toilets, fruit and nut trees, a big tin roof with no floor and walls to collect water and be shelter in the open, and gardens.  Maybe a few gypsy vans with computers and scientific equipment so the human animals drawn to technical creation can keep playing with alchemy to create environmentally friendly technology.  Maybe some beautiful temples built on rock and caves to combine a new spirituality to include everything, and help us to keep adventuring into the unknown depth of our world and the far off reaches of space. People could come and stay in whatever they wanted, as long as it was moveable so the earth could get sunlight.  Respectful trespassers would always be welcome.  Few rules, no dogma, no organisation, no evictions, no money involved – just folk wanting to honestly release themselves into the wild, or as wild as we could create on our domesticated planet, as we tried to discover our true human natures.  What would David Attenborough’s documentary about the Human Animal look like?  What are our rituals, habits, environments, survival techniques?  How would we survive if all the tools and materials of our separation were taken away?  How would we survive as another respectful species on the planet?  How much are we really capable of if we decide to use our monumental powers for good?  What amazing things could we tickle out of our combined creative powers?

There’s a fella called L. Robert Keck who wrote a book called ‘sacred eyes’, in which he compares the evolution of our modern culture to that of an individual.  In our infancy we were held close in the arms of a mother goddess and close to the cycles of the earth.  And then we hit our teenage hood and our era of bachelor father gods.   In which we threw our focus on a heavenly future and an off world solution to our worldly woes.  And now we’ve all collectively reached Saturn Return, where we study our past to remember our forgiving and destructive mama earth, and our present where we’re tumbling towards unimaginable destruction that we’ve wrought while focused on our father god, and bring the two together.    Which you could read as bringing the genders together, bringing the polarities together, bringing us and our universe together, bringing science and religion together……  Bringing our evolution and our spiritual natures together. 

He also wrote a paper about how he didn’t buy that humans had always been violent, and that it was a fundamental part of our natures.  He stretched back to a time when we did indeed reflect the cycles and symbiosis of the planet, and lived in harmony with it.  And there’s plenty of examples of indigenous tribes that lived and live in equality, peace, harmony, and freedom.  And I know this is possible too from personal experience.  Currawong and I have 5 years co-creating a market back in SA that was a home to fringe dwellers, and helped create manifestly unique possibilities of being, in a totally sovereign and anarchistically harmonious way, under our belt.  As well as our experience of life together, of introspection, dealing and healing.   

And I believe now with every fibre of my being, that the very best, most revolutionary and world changing thing I can do with my life, the most fundamentally healing mission I can begin to restore our planet to it’s majestic perfection……..is to be who I am, to love my family and my man with all my heart, to treat every person and creature I come across with respect and as an equal, and to use my vast creative energy to envision, write, sound out about and manifest a future for us all.  To tell my stories.  To be as honest as I know how.  To contemplate every action I make and assess whether it will move me and the planet towards love or not.  To explore and tease out the great learnings from my true life experiences. 

And I call on every single one of you reading this………to be true to your inner nature.  If you’re slaving away in a job that’s soul destroying, while a hidden dream keeps whispering in you ear, dream it.  Find a way to pave a path for your passion and purpose inside.  If you’re an artist, create with all your heart the things that you want to create.  If you’re a poet, craft words that will inspire, and create a path forward into a future you want to inhabit.  If you’re a musician, compose the soundtrack for the triumphant return to ourselves.  If you’re a craftsperson, bend your will to crafting your dreams, no matter how impractical they may be.  Never leash your passion to money.  Never create something because it will make you money.  If you’re a gardener, tend your gardens like you’d tend your hair and body.  If you’re a wordsmith, flesh out the possibilities of returning to sense and harmony with the worlds around us.  If you’re a builder, search for ways to build homes that reflect the synergy of our embracing world surrounded by a protective atmosphere…..and spare a thought for what you’d like on your skin.  If you’re a hunter, strive to remember how to work within safe parameters to ensure survival and thriving of species.  If you’re a networker, create networks where people can use their only power in a money based society – their money – to support local artisans, food growers, builders, animal caretakers.  If you’re a recycler, invest your energy in creating from rubbish, and turning everything we make and then throw away into usefull reincarnations.  If you’re a mother or father, think about what skills are going to best help your children survive in the world as it is NOW, and do your best to show them, learn with them, and honour their unique ways of walking through the world.  If you work with other animals as a shepherd, work out how you can honour both your own and their natures, and pay due homage for the gifts they bring.   If you’re a scientist, explore the amazing places on our planet and in the universe that we don’t understand yet, and help the rest of us understand the intricate interconnections between us all.

Let’s all use our magnificent energy to craft a future that will be inhabitable for our children.  Let’s step to the side of the madness we’ve created whilst taking no personal responsibility, and take the ultimate responsibility of creating societies based on who we really are, rather than our fantasies. Let’s simply outcompete the rabid beast of our modern and senseless civilisations by making more sense, stepping back into the flow of natural cycles, and adding the weight of the universal attraction to life and creation to our cause.  Let’s tell each other our stories, our lives, our experiences, and talk much and earnestly about our taboos of birth, sex and death, and how we can respect them and learn from them better.  Let’s learn to respect and heal our ecosystems, our food, our water, our shelter, our deaths, our births, our sexuality, our sovereignty.

Let’s craft ourselves a new world, where being true to our deep natures is our only imperative, where diversity is celebrated, and where the humans can roam with equal freedom, love, peace and respect as all the other beings. 

Are you in?

And here's some chapters of Balthazar and Nimue to continue on the serialisation of the book.  To start from the beginning and the first two chapters, go here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/love-story.html then for chapters 3 + 4 go here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/chapters-three-and-four.html for chapters 5 - 8 here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/last-installment.html for chapters 9 + 10 here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/law-of-repulsion-and-more-book.html for chapters 11 + 12 http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/yes-you-read-right.html and now you can read on........

Chapter 13 -  She Spreads Wings

She took to eating ripe watermelon and kiwi fruit, peeled apples and carrots, steamed potatoes and snow peas, and wooded herbs.  As she walked she felt tall and light, nobly stepping like a horse.  People started to watch her as she walked.  Noticed her energy enfold them like a warm caress and drift on by.  Men, the brasher of the breed, began to talk to her in public places, inviting her for drinks and fine chats.  Then other people started commenting on how she looked and the figure she cut, tried hard to word the glow that shone round her.  She dealt calmly with life tasks, and rode the gentle swell of whole.

She started being asked advice and knowledge, to bring her calmness and rational thought.  People looked to her for strength and her leading role, as they danced down the path of self knowledge.  When away from their gaze, she sculpted figures and crafted talismans, wrote her soul out and wove webs.  Her time with Balthazar was a daily respite from the strength and the clarity she kept at her side.  They kept talking their future, and early one morning as the sun crept the hillside, they planted a thought.  The thought of a new one, a small one, a wise one, to come to their circle and marry their clan.  She felt that a new soul would give them some lessons to share from their world. 

Chance meetings and serendipity breezed through her story, dripping bright jewels of lore.  She began writing snippets of the life she was living, loosely based on her new found love.  The webs started weaving, and she slowly realised she was writing herself in a new born light.  Then somehow, someway, a tale that she’d thought of years gone came to mind.  It dreamed and it twined it’s way through her head, and she knew it was time to begin.

And the ancestors grinned their approval.

Chapter 14  -  He Starts To Fly.....

He started waking in dimlit hours of the morning, to play music with his instruments.  Played and relayed lilting melodies, that transposed and transformed and opened.  Tunes that travelled on feelings and dust motes, coffee and sex, played through his earholes and pulsed through his hands.  He was caught up in the trance of his dance to the world, to his woman, his lifeblood, his magic, his worth.  He moved down the path of this fragile reality, and started to open to a soft new world.

One asked him to play at the local pub, mixed with beer smells, smoke, and drunken despair.  One asked him to play in a cool wooden studio, with techies and gadgets to cut a cd.  One asked him to sign with his international company, and make his music exclusive for them.  The monies rolled in like the patter of jaffa’s hurled down the carpet of passion and life.  He could dredge up his soul from his demon to demigod, and pulsate it out in a weaving cord.  He spent his time with her trancing and talking, wishing and dreaming, and planning their babe.  And his new child, her girl child, her heart’s soft caress, went on gleaming and loving and spinning in light. 

He thought that his life couldn’t get any better, but still it did.  Thought he surely wouldn’t know deeper, yet it still became.  He worked with the men round him, and opened their eyes to the wound within.  He talked with Nimue, and discussed all the aspects of who they were now, and where to from here.

And the ancestors took notes.





A note to the menfolk......

Once upon a time I was a radical lesbian feminist.  I’d come to that position from having indifferent, dodgy, and invisible connections with men in my childhood, having been molested as a child, and probably partly being really pissed off that my dad had left me and died when I was 7.  After being brought up a fundamentalist Christian, I rejected the concept that men were better than me because they had a dick.  And when I birthed my first daughter I realised that there was a whole lot more to this mother/birthing/woman thing than I’d been told.  I read ‘Women Who Run With The Wolves’ and Mary Daly, Barbara Walker, Alice Walker, Dale Spender, and a host of other feminist writers, and got really really mad.  Furious that my lineage of strong women had been kept from me.  Enraged that men had taken over the world and turned it into warfare and cruelty.  Brandished the word ‘patriarchy’ as a bludgeon, and attended women’s groups.  Not long after my re-education, I had a fling with a woman and slowly but surely morphed into a lesbian feminist that teetered on the edge of separatism.  I seriously entertained the notion of living a life surrounded by women only, to give my energy to my sisters who had been so oppressed.  I read books on lifting the curse of menstruation, coming to terms with the crone of menopause, and understanding the backlash against feminism in the fashion and cosmetic industries.  I learnt about ancient strong women who had been crucified for their difference, and many a treatise on the ancient matrifocal role models that needed rekindling.  I knew that fat was a feminist issue, and abortions and child care.  I heard about the glass ceiling and the tall poppy syndrome and read books about how the science of gynaecology was rooted in the barbaric acts of footbinding, sutee, the burning times, and genital mutilation.  I knew about equal rights and equal pay, how contraception was a feminist issue as well.  In fact, I learnt that everything to do with a woman and her sexuality were feminist issues – except birth and motherhood – unless it was about throwing off the shackles of them. 

Men were the enemy.

They were shallow and aggressive and abusive and rapists and liars and adulterers and threatening and sexist and privileged and everything that was wrong with the world.  There were always a few men that I considered to be ‘worthwhile’, but they always had to endure my rather pointed opinions about their gender as a ticket to my world.  Listen to my conversations with my sisters about the state of the world, with liberal doses of the use of the word patriarchal sprinkled on top.  And I knew an incredible amount of little anecdotes about amazing women who had been fucked over or ignored by men.  If only the goddess would come back and put women in their rightful place as the bosses of everything, then we’d all be a lot happier.

Much to my dismay, I soon learnt that the women’s utopia I’d leapt into wholeheartedly wasn’t all that groovy afterall.  I saw just as much alcoholism, abuse, hypocrisy, gossip, backstabbing and power play as I saw in all the other minority and mainstream groups I’d been a part of.  My relationship broke down, and I had some flings with women and men for a while, and then decided to leave the place where I’d paraded a lot of my different uniforms and badges.  I started off fresh in a different place to try and work out what I really thought about it all.  And one of the first things I realised was that I’d never really had brothers, fathers, or men friends, cause I’d kept them out for years after realising they were all fucked. 

And then I met the love of my life. 

The first man I’d ever come across who treated me with the utmost respect even though I was ‘easy’.  Who wasn’t afraid of my strength and sexuality.  I was in love.  I went back home and decided I wanted one just like him, but not him cause he was far too damaged.  So I wrote about our time together.  And when the book was done I took myself off on a trip through the desert in January, in my beat up old Gemini that couldn’t go faster than 80km’s an hour or it would overheat.  And I met men and father figures and brothers the whole way up, made peace with my father, and discovered my feminine side, that I’d never felt safe enough to explore before.  I had a cleavage!    And sometimes it proved very handy when it came to getting help and advice from the opposite sex. 

On the way home I bumped into my love again, our love story started weaving itself through our lives, and I determined to find out more about how I could love and trust men again.  One of the first things I did was read ‘Manhood’ by Steve Biddulph, and it taught me a lot.  I’d never before pieced together the perception that after the industrial revolution, boys had lost their fathers, brothers, uncles and grand fathers, as they’d all gone off to work.  And in the vacuum of role models they saw in their immediate experience, had to put together these cardboard cutouts that were a pastiche of movies, and books and magazines they read, rather than actual experience.  Whereas women had mothers, sisters and grandmothers showing them everyday how to be a woman.  Which I’ve got to say right now, is often how to emotionally manipulate, withdraw affection to get what she wants, steer things in an unnoticeable way, and create a supportive gossipy network of other women to keep fingers to the pulse of their worlds.  At the same time as exploring emotional depths, learning how to keep men happy whilst hiding bits considered unattractive, and creating a supportive network with other women to make sense of the world.  (Please understand that I’m talking in broad generalisations here, mixed with my personal experience, and I’m not suggesting this is always the case for women or men, and I’m also talking about myself as well) 

When my love and I really seriously got together, we would neither of us have thought we were sexist….yet  I was definitely more pro woman, and he was definitely a bit snarky about women and the way he felt branded as a rapist just cause he had a penis.  Both of us had horrid childhoods that we needed to heal and grow from, and both of us started as we continued, with the policy of no secrets, and the aim of complete personal and couple honesty between us.  I love this man more than any other person I’ve ever come across in my life, and he makes sense to me more than any other as well.  He’s warm and hairy, he’s soft and smells better than anything in the world to me, he’s intelligent and witty and has deep deep thoughts, he has a strong sense of justice and equity for everyone and thing on the planet, he gets angry and grumpy, and he was pissed off with the characters available to him as a man in this period piece, and also with a lot of the attitudes he comes across in women just because of his gender.  The theories I’d spouted for years about men and women were suddenly caustic and prone to causing bruised feelings.  At first I gentled a lot of my theories about men and women just to avoid annoying him, and cause I loved him so much I wanted him to feel good about himself.  But then life stepped in the way to give me some experience.

I was there when he was trying to put together tricky irrigation for a market garden, and had a massive tantrum about how he didn’t know how to do it, and how could he go and ask someone for advice without looking like a dickhead?  He spat about how as a man he was expected to know how to fix a car and a house and put together machines and do all these odd jobs and take charge with sex and work to ‘provide’ …….all without anyone ever really showing him.  He felt like he’d always just been expected to ‘know’ because he was a bloke.  And looked down on if he didn’t know how to perform a ‘manly’ task properly.  We had another fella staying with us at the time, and they both had a session about how hard it was to be a man in our society. 

I was there to witness his pain and isolation when as a survivor of abuse from both men and women, he remembered trying to buy a book to help him with his issues, and found they were all addressed to women and agreed that men were the abusers. 

I was there when he was crying and howling and beautifully eloquent about how much he loved the planet in all it’s intricacies, yet was the gender associated with despoiling it. 

I was there to hear his heartbreaking ache that there were no men in his world that he could look up to and admire.

And around then was when I stopped being sensitive to men because I loved my man, and started being sensitive to men because I was seeing things that didn’t add up.  Like how men are portrayed as unbelievably aggressive, dominating and ‘manly’, or totally bumbling buffoons that never quite get anything right, but are lovable nonetheless.  All the hundreds of little ways that men are told that they’re a bit dumb, as portrayed by main stream media in a ‘mere male’ kinda way.  How we’re meant to be a male dominated society, but there’s no acknowledgement of realistic archetypes for men beyond being the provider, warrior, king or hero.  No equivalent of the cycles of maiden, mother and crone that women experience.  Men often don’t have the emotionally deep friendship networks that women have, so when faced with relationship issues, sexual problems, or struggles with identity, they endure it on their own.  How there’s little importance placed on men as fathers, beyond donating sperm, and then going out to work to pay for what it created.   How thousands of men are scared of touching their children, rough playing with their kids, and showing physical love and comfort for fear of being suspected of being an abuser.  And I could never quite get that we lived in a patriarchal society, supposedly dominated by men, yet men who didn’t fit in with the prescribed roles and were feminine, gentle, alternative, anarchistic, or deviated from the very narrow allowances for what men were…….were shamed and given a drubbing as bad as any given to a woman or child.

Where is the representation of fathers in the world of birthing, and why are the fathers often invisible in birthing stories?  Where is the representation of fathers in bringing up children, and how can their importance and gifts go largely unacknowledged?  I’ll never forget reading a description of manhood by Vicki Noble in the Motherpeace tarot cards, that described men living in a tribal situation as the hunters and musicians, the inventors and the crafters, the even tempered conspirers of fun with the children.  And I’ve bounced this concept off men along the way, and virtually every one could relate to this kind of approach rather than that of lord, king and rule maker.  Shrugging off the assumed masculine mantle of power is not a difficult journey for many.   

I started talking about these things with other men, and was surprised by the effusive gratitude they had for a strong woman being kind to their gender.  We were locals in a country pub, and having a drink one day, a fella named Hairy Dave told me to go read a joke on a board at the back of the pub.  He told me I’d love it.  So I did.  There was a sheet of paper, that read “Men are like a deck of cards.  You need a heart to love one, a diamond to marry one, a club to beat them with, and a spade to bury them”.  I thought it was horrible.  When I came back he was already laughing, expecting me to join in.  “What did you think?  Funny eh!” he said.  “Nope” I said.  “I think it’s terrible, and if anyone said stuff like that about my man I’d slap em”.  You shoulda seen the look on his face.  “Really?”  he said.  “You really didn’t think it was funny?”  He couldn’t believe it.  He ended up kneeling in front of me and kissing my hand, he was so overjoyed that a woman could possibly not snigger at the chance of having a dig at men.  Which opened up a great discussion about men and women and all the rest of it.     

And I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy the ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus’ trip.  I think it’s just another brick in the wall of our disease of separation.  And from life experience, I don’t think there’s any difference between the genders (apart from their bodies) that contemplation, honest communication, and deep introspection couldn’t bridge, for both genders.  And that whole ‘if women ran the world there’d be no more war’ thing gets up my nose too.  Tell that to the Amazonians, and Boudicca, and Kali the Destroyer, and Fu Hao of the Shang Dynasty, and the Spartan Princess Arachidamia, and Margaret Thatcher, and Condoleeza Rice, and Bronwyn Bishop, and Australia’s current Prime Minister, and Ghandi, and Buddha and Christ……they were all dudes that said not to kill people weren’t they?  It’s not gender that creates war and the separations between us all, it’s hierarchies.  By their very nature there’s someone at the top, and a whole bunch of disempowered folk underneath, that are ordered to do things they would not necessarily do if left to their own devices.  We could all choose instead the model of the wheel for decision making and creating order from the chaos in our societies…..a wheel where every spoke is equally important and necessary to the whole, and none is above or below the other.

At this point I need to mention that I personally also feel let down by the womens movement when it comes to my experiences with birthing and motherhood.  After 8 birthing experiences and learning from my children and witnessing the incredible influence of a father in a family that hasn’t been seperated, and through observing the vast amount of self awareness, contemplation and pattern busting that’s ensued, I just can’t buy the feminist opinion that motherhood and birth are ‘lesser’ paths, and that if I was really empowered I’d be Prime Minister.  Instead I believe now from my own experience, that motherhood and fatherhood and birth and children are actually as valid a path to enlightenment as any other, and in my opinion at least, far superior to most.  In actualising my evolutionary mammalian imperative, I find my perspectives on a vast array of matters and my self awareness, fears faced, and internal tool kit to be well worth the effort of taking the path less travelled.  And I’ve witnessed a similar journey in my love and the father of our children.

And more recently I’ve been really tripping out about circumcision.  It’s Male Genital Mutilation.  And it happens within days of being born.  99.9 percent of the willies that I’ve seen in my life have been circumcised.  (And I’ve seen a lot……I had to fuck my way out of total fundamentalist Christian sexual repression don’t you knowJ)  Without anaesthetic.  A sexual, intimate, uber sensitive part of a man’s body and sexuality is cut off.   Like a male friend once said….”How could I not have a problem with men?  The first man I met pulled me out of my mother and slapped me on the arse, and the second one cut off my foreskin….”  I’m still totally stunned and overwhelmed by the fact that as a general rule, and with everything that is discussed about Female Genital Mutilation and the repercussions of it……that there is no fuss made about circumcisions which no-one can deny is the same thing.  The same thing.  With no help groups and books and seminars and news reports and documentaries created about it.  Barely any men are given sympathy for the mutilation they endured as a baby, a totally sentient, sensitive, and hyper aware little person, days after emerging from the womb.  That shit totally trips me out. 

I’ve also had this theory for a while, that movements happen in three waves.  The first movement is the radical extreme that people are shocked by, the second movement is the main stream that takes a little longer to get it, and the third movement is the people who were dead against it when it happened, but get it last as everyone else around them is already there.  So if you applied that theory to feminism, the first wave was the Suffragettes leading up to the radical 60’s, and then the concept became more mainstream, and now it’s common to see even the radical right roll their eyes and snipe a bit about their menfolk.  And the result is that men have received body blow after body blow after body blow about who they are, what’s expected of them, and what they ‘should’ be. 

And I’ve known a lot of sensitive and deep thinking men who are really disturbed and distraught by this.  And can sometimes suffer the death of a thousand cuts, a thousand barbs about the thuggery of their gender, and how much they have to be ashamed of. 

Through my life experience and interest led research over the years, I declare that I think the term Patriarchy is misleading.  I don’t believe that the enemy that we’ve all sought out in each other all these long years is gender related, or religiously related, or sexually related, or environmentally related or anything at all to do, with anything other than the attitudes of power hunger, greed, control and hierarchies, that started to hold sway around 2,000 years ago, using many different vehicles, but the main one being the body of the Roman Catholic church, created in 325ad at the Council of Nicea, when the flagging Roman Empire voted on which religion to use to establish firm hierarchical control of the state.  We started to get split up from our family groups and communities, taught to give loyalty to those based on ideals rather than heart, and then during the Industrial Revolution got further splintered into men going off there to work, and women going there to keep house, and children going off there to school.  We haven’t been under the rule of Patriarchy, but of Powerarchy.  And because we’ve been so busy hunting the oppressor behind the guise of men or religion or science……..we’ve neglected to notice that the oppressor was within us all along in the form of our attitudes.  We’re all disempowered in a society that doesn’t accept us for who we truly are.  Because we are all unique sparks of the universe, living an earthly life to express infinity.  Men, Women, Children, all of us have our hurts and our repressions, suppressions and oppressions, and none of us are free until our true and authentic selves are respected. 

So as a woman who was once upon a time a radical lesbian feminist…….

I’d like to say I’m sorry.

To the men who feel so alone and isolated within their pain that they see no other course than to end their lives.  To the men who have dissolved into fear in the bottom of a beer glass.  To the men who have to go off to work when their heart stays at home.  To the boys who listen to their mothers talking to their girlfriends about the latest bastard thing their man did.  To the men who listen to a thousand reports about another man somewhere who did something bad.  To the men desperately wanting a boundary and never getting one.  To the men who feel closed out and blamed by a sisterhood of tight knit women.  To the men that desperately want to be fathers, but are kept away from it by one or another heirarchy……..

I see you and I love you and I know you really wish it could be better. 

I’ve got five sons and I want them to grow free and respectful of themselves and each other, and with a sense of purpose and of being who they really are.  In fact I think I’d really like that for everyman.  And woman.  And child.  And living creature.  And planet.  And universe, within which we are one…….. 

This piece is dedicated to my love Currawong, and in memory of the beautiful Michael Lusty.  Who took his life before I could have this conversation with him.  May he find the peace and love that he thought he’d lost…….

Midwives are Cassanova's......

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

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

Now.

That being said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 11 - The next time.....

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

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

She smiled, she big gap tooth grinned.

“Glad to see I’ve got company then.”

He looked at her closely with questions in mind.

“Had any wild dreams lately?”

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

“Wanna go somewhere quiet?”

She smiled her agreement, too shocked yet to speak.

.........

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

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

He couldn’t contain his wonderment.

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

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

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

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

.........

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

She looked at him sweetly.

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

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

.........

They travelled the train to the hills together.

And the ancestors travelled with them.

 

Chapter 12 - New lives.....

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

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

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

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

.........

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

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

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

.........

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