I am here

Three years later

So much has changed.

My words are clunky

Unyielding

That which they are

trying to describe

seems indescribable.

The sun patch dances

It is me.

 The wind moves 

bright green leaves

dance in front 

of a turquoise ocean.

Where does the denseness

of self,

her fears, her grooves,

so deeply felt,

end?

and where does the lightness 

of being begin?

Perhaps they are already one.

dancing the body

my late adolescence was both extremely challenging and strangely beautiful. i spent much of my time feeling alienated, yet, often felt deeply associated with the spaces, surfaces and textures around me. disacosiated from my own feelings and body i projected a deep longing for union onto place, object and moment. 


yet, there was a time that i did feel completely present. when slowly i absorbed back into myself all the wonder and magic glimpsed in moments of peace.


floating on air, my feet sunk deeply into the earth below the concrete. allowing my body to be moved by a current other than the disjointed static of my mind, i felt safe in the moving flowing river of me. 


My hair swirls, my toes grip, my arm float on a wild free current. each part of my body stretches as far as it can and then return to hug itself closer and closer. In, out. Up down. Shaking, shaking. Flying. 


I throw my hair back, take a deep sip of black label and grin at a boy admiring my dance. i am free.

glories and graces.

searching for an achievement to celebrate i turn around in the moment and look back towards my birth. What do i see. I see a succession of landscapes. Some are deep green meadows, slumbering under a blanket of light, some narrow concrete corners chewing on dust. and through them all a narrow ribbon of light and a coyote shadow. together these two represent all the small victories and failures that make up the achievement of my life.

grabbing the ribbon in my hand i dive into the shadow. a memory appears.

it is a bright clear day in the Karoo, 1979. Sun reflects from the sky found in a kidney shaped pool. Light dances through the water streaming down the backs of children breaking from the pool's blue surface and plunging back into its coolness. outside me laughter and movement. inside me doubt. desperately i scan the scene looking for patterns to emulate and become part of the whole. my face feels stiff, my mouth dry. Time slows down yet i am unable of the moment until i am able to unlock its secret.

the moment shifts into another. my first LDS experience. Laying on the soft grass of a local park i am unable to hear the sound of the stream nearby or sense my companions. i am locked into three interlocking thoughts visually represented by three moving kaleidoscope patterns. the first is. i am fine. the second: its just the acid. the third: it will end. but the thoughts are impatient. instead of waiting for each to fully appear they jostle into each other merging their patterns before their meaning has time to crystallize. Five hours later they finally fade away.

these experiences are repeated over and over. the shadow stalks me through failures like surrendering my self respect and body in a desperate plea for love, through hiding from myself and others in drug experiences and through running from the stresses of the corporate world. The ribbon glides The ribbon glides through the achievements of joining a martial arts school and discovering the strength and flexibility of my body, in overcoming my addiction and in finding the stamina to finish my degree with the highest marks in my class. the ribbon is woven from three strands. the ability to keep on trying, to have compassion for myself in my deepest hours of self doubt and self loathing and the belief in a deeper more joyously mysterious reality than the one i often feel stuck in.

i come to honor the warrior maiden leaping forth from the ribbon's light. sometimes she runs screaming towards the shadow brandishing a arrow of light. sometimes she slowly stalks the shadow until it falls asleep and she can quietly sit next to it watching its history swirl through its powerful wild body. she does not give up. i do not give up.

i strain to be born into a new reality. i collect new age mediums, Buddhist meditations, chi-gung breathing techniques, kundalini chants and the songs of the wind breathing from the sky. i open up to my pain and i focus on my breathing allowing a reality beyond my pain to shyly reveal itself. slowly i introduce movement to flower from paralyzed moments.

help comes from many places. a wise chi-gung master opens my eyes, a gentle Taiwanese nun opens my heart. my friends listen to me and tell me why they love me. members of my family holds me in acceptance and lifts me with their prayers. voices speak from books, sings from cds and whisper from the delicate petals of flowers.

again and again i slip behind the barriers i erected in my mind and around my heart. a fear of others, of getting things wrong, of rejection, of freezing and becoming unable to belong. i keep on hunting. running towards and away from myself.

when i return from the hunt, tired, discouraged, angry, scared and sad I release the need to know. i gently call myself back, wind the ribbon around my little finger and fall backwards into the vastness of the unknown. in letting go of reason i can also let go of its deep mistrust. out of the unknown a presence emerges. she holds me in her arms and sings of unconditional love and hope. at her feet my shadow snores. above us the bright free sky, below us the warm safe earth.

i am grateful.

birthing myself

i am unsure when the me who wants to be present in this world was born.

i do however remember the exact moment this self miscarried. at the age of nine i first became aware of my power to be. to become a self who is deeply rooted in a wish to be seen, acknowledged and heard when speaking of that which move me. the sound of the wind through trees. the sun catching a leave and then slowly letting it go as it travels onward across the sky. the home which every night awaits it beyond the first evening star. i also became aware of the pain born from not being acknowledged. from not being able to assert my power. from being swept into the conflicts, feelings and fears generated by a family of six. from failing to create a place of safety for us all.

sitting next to a river, flowing past a small stop and sleep-over bed and breakfast, i invited my newly forming self to leave my body. to flow from me and into the round smooth stone beside me. i then gently placed the stone into the river and asked it to take care of this small part of me. to sing to her and lull her until i was ready to claim her once again.

when did i claim back this seed from the river?

did it first take hold in my womb when i allowed myself to dream of creating a future rather than just dreaming of a true home beyond the stars?

did i become aware that i was pregnant when i woke up one morning in my own flat, after rushing away from the disorganized and demanding presence of my first long time lover, only to find myself missing him more than i missed the security of not missing anyone?

and when was i born? when i surrendered to a cesarean rather than a home birth? when rather than drifting above the room in order to escape from the humiliation of a shaved vagina pried open to the bright operating lights and a catheter, i pulled myself back into the room, my body and my chant so that i was fully present to the wonder of my daughter's first breath?

or during the visit to a sexologist when i whispered my deeply private sexual history and fantasies past the flush on my face, the lock on my throat and the frantic lock around my heart? forcing my sexual voice through layers of shame until it burst into this world, this moment, shouting its joy and defiance?

and am i born and reborn every time i hold my friend, my sister, my mother, my lover, my daughter in my heart? when a need to hold and rock my daughter pulls me into this body, this world? My breasts get tightly full, dripping milk on my clothes, my pillow, my sheets. in the first months i found myself singing to her in a freezing bathroom at three in the morning, holding her naked body close to mine and trying to ignore the small puddle of milk forming around my feet and the cold which her small blanket cannot protect me from. now i build a life each day becoming a stone which holds me steady as her small stream joins with those whom i love and become a river which surrounds me.

my birth.

We come spinning out of nothingness,scattering stars like dust.Rumi

when did i first get born?

was it in the instance when finite matter became an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense singularity which in turn inflated, self imploded into the universe we now know?

or when rda molecules bloomed into dna, starting a chain of ancestors who all came together when my parents eyes first met?

or did i get born when i gave birth to you my lovely daughter? when under the knife of the surgeon my heart opened and i loved you from a place where i always before felt alone? the place which previously made me long to return to a place and time before my birth?

and will i now infinitely get born and reborn through your eyes meeting that of another?

for as long as i had memory there was a myth surrounding my birth. my father had to fetch the obstetrician from a new year's party. meanwhile, back at the hospital my mother's screams cut through the bullshit of medical bureaucracy. after being bullied, for a month, by a new doctor, his carefully impenetrable birth calculations, and his faithful nurse to shut up, hold back labor and wait until they said the time is now, she had enough. not another minute would she wait. her birth time was now.

so my father dramatically entered the phalaborwa new years ball, crying out that his wife was in labor and in need of her doctor. in my child's imagination, women in bright silk dresses and men in formal black tuxedos parted, allowing the doctor, holding a martini glass and a thin brown cigar, to step through. then, with my father leading the way, thoroughly embarrassed by the laughter and his simple safari suit, the two men stepped into the very first, very early morning of 1972.

As with most myths, a curtain remained drawn across the more intimate physical and emotional processes of the actual birth, the logistics of who took care of the other children and the political turmoil splitting open the country of birth.

why i write

words.

how can words

ever define

birth,

love,

the fiercely delicate

shape of your eyebrows

your eyes

which see me

without reflecting words

back at me.

your smell,

the warm solid softness

of your neck

where my nose

and your shoulder meet.

with each beat

of my heart

the space around me grows

until

the room,

the yellow indian quilt,

your delicately shaped skull

and the soft fine hair

which covers it,

the sound of your breathing,

dog sighs emerging

from down under

the bed,

the warmth of you,

the hiss of the heater

and

the loud beating of my heart

...

swirls around

and becomes mystery.

the mystery of this moment.

of you.

words are not moments.

they are only markers

which in time

could lead me back

to this.

this moment. this love.

a gift

this is just a small post

because i want to start blogging

again

but don't always have the time.

at present i juggle time

between my new love

and my old

the dishes

the wusels

learning the tarot

going to yoga

starting a women's writing circle

exploring links between children, nature and spirit

researching career development in biodiversity

writing about food security and community gardens.

some days i feel like my life have never been

as rich and full

of love and joy.

some days i feel like my life will never be

what it can be.

today i received

the gift of a few hours

all by myself.

i cleaned the house

made some lunch

am doing a bit of blogging

rushing so that

now....

now i am ready to step

into this beautiful day

with a camera in hand

and a heart which seeks

out beauty*