he ain't heavy, he's my brother

(to my brother, on his almost birthday, with his permission)

take care of your little brother

she said

maybe she did

maybe she didn't

but i heard her anyway

and took it/him to heart

so i fed him bits of bird and stone and bone 

and gut and cloud and tongue

protect your little brother

she said

maybe she did

maybe she didn't

but i heard her anyway

and took it/him to heart

for lack of sword, i sharpened my gaze

for lack of armour, i iron-sheeted my chest

for lack of dragons, i made some up

so i could scare him good

then save him

carry your little brother

she said

maybe she did

maybe she didn't 

but i heard her anyway

and took it/him to heart

when he bathed, i gathered his bruises 

from beside the tub, 

and tattooed them under my skin

when he slept, i breathed in

his sadness, his rage, his bewilderment

and remembered to  never exhale

he grew

i failed

maybe she said it 

maybe she didn't

but i heard her anyway

nothing short

of swallowing him

would have done

i failed

so glad

i failed

so glad

i failed

he is heavy

of a weight 

his own 

that i could never

and therefore

never

had to

he's my brother

side door

i want to tell you
a secret
they may not have told you
(they didn't tell me)

like all secrets,
it's been hiding
in full view

(you will most certainly
recognise it
from harry potter,
alice in wonderland,
sleeping beauty,
and other great
modern artists)

the secret is a door

that keeps changing shape

(a hole in a tree, the arch between two legs, an opening in the forest that looks nearly like a path, the space between your baby's teeth)

but is always there,
recognisably itself

on the side, and small

it is a door to love, patience, time, peace of mind, joy, acceptance, connection, truth, freedom

or...

... whatever else you are seeking

(have lost, wish to find)

unlike other
better
known
doors
ports
highways
paths
bridges
labyrinths

that lead to all these things (love, patience, time, presence) (lost, found) and more

this one does not

require you to have

read the small print, followed the steps, found your teacher, taken the medicine, practised the sequence, chanted the mantra, gone through the moves, taken your time, solved the problem, formulated the question, found an answer, discovered a solution, accepted the inevitable, developed a theory, gained experience, made peace with your childhood, examined your soul, fixed the leaks (in your bucket or your heart), resolved the tension, worked through the anger, embraced the sadness, or any

of the other things you could (you can, you might, i know i will)

spend a lifetime doing (and oh, it would, it will, be life well-spent)

it is open to
all
at all times
without ticket
id
or proof that you are

worthy, ready, or deserving

just turn your head
one quarter (or so) (this ain't no newton physics)
to the right
to the left
whichever way you fancy

there.

see it?

you can open it (it's never locked)

and any time,
walk through

letters

just in case you all think i stopped writing: i haven't.

i've been writing on umbilical cords, that's all.

i wrote a letter to my daughter, and watching her read it from first to last word was an act of courage and self-love.

then a letter to my mother started shadowing me. i could hear it rustle behind me in the dry forest leaves, but every time i turned around it was gone. i could feel it lying close to me in bed at night, but it turned transparent and disappeared slowly as the dawn turned to light. also, it kept changing. its contents. its shape.

i sat myself down to write it anyway, come what may, and all i got was a painful little poem. it went like this

      Chère maman,

                 a letter to my 
                       mother.
                too scary.
               
               wait a little.
                 Try again?

                        Au!

nothing but the truth will do. no matter how little. no matter how painful. as long as it's true.

start small then. small but straight.

the truth is that i don't remember how to tell the truth to my mother.

and now for the courage to tell her, rather than you...
                 

more goats

i was a tad obtuse, there. sorry.

i do know the answer to all of the questions in the previous post.

they are, respectively, 'both, everything, everything, both, all three, yes and no (and thank you mum!), yes and no, yes and no, yes and no, everything, everything, yes and no, both, yes and no.'

there, i think we can safely say that we have now fully covered this sensitive topic.

(or... maybe, maybe, maybe, these questions were never meant to be answered, but lived.
and maybe, maybe, maybe, that living might well take a life-time.
and maybe, maybe, maybe, that is just as it should be...)

sea-sick goats

well, well, well... there is a topic....

all right, i confess, the title is a decoy. i just want to talk about sex without attracting anybody's attention (that's why i do it online, of course, as opposed to, you know, in my living-room) (but the people in my living-room don't really want to talk about sex) (with the exception of the starry-eyed teenager) (and the hungry-looking man). oh oh oh...

anyway, i prefer to talk about it here, under the guise of goats. without the risk of being interrupted, contradicted, looked at askance, or drowned in follow-up questions...

so, sex. a tricky topic, wouldn't you say?

yes, i could not agree more. i'd love to say it used to be real simple, but got complicated when i became a mother. that would be food for thought enough, but no, it was always tricky. and keeps getting more so.

the plot only thickens, as we used to say.

the thing is: i simply do not understand sex.

(yeah, yeah, get funny on me... after boyfriends galore, two husbands, four children and forty-two years on this planet, i must know something about sex...) (maybe, but not anything that matters...)

i don't understand what sex is. i don't understand what it's for. and i am clueless as to how/what to do with it.

it's as murky and dark as it ever was. possibly more so...

...

when i was eight years old i decided to think seriously about my future career (well, 'decided' is a big word, it was just that any conversation with a grown-up i didn't yet know like the back of my hand would, sometime in the first thirty seconds, include the question: "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?". Little did I know they were only asking because that same question was haunting them and their unrealised destinies day after night, after day after night. In my innocence, I believed grown-ups were, you know, 'grown up' and that they were already 'doing something'...).

in the span of one year, i decided that i would 'later' become a) a missionary Catholic nun in Burundi, b) a prostitute, c) a general in the Russian army, and d) a writer.

of these, (d) is the only option i confess to these days when people ask me, as they still do, "So..., what did you want to be when you grew up?" (yep, still the same haunted people...)

with the amazing 10/10 vision of historical recollection, i can now see that (a)-(d) were all attempts to understand sex.

(a) was born of my first real crush, Soeur Marie-Sophie, 27 years old, brown as a tanned nut, with a laugh like a secret waterfall. To me she looked and smelled like pure golden sunshine. She descended upon our grey northern village school with tales of lions, jungles and gorillas, and photographs of little dark children sitting on her lap or helping her build 'their' school. i gave all my savings away to Soeur Marie-Sophie and her project, and for years wrote her long letters filled with dreams of the day when i would finally be able to join her.

(b) was what my mother called 'a small misunderstanding'. i had discovered a shelf in the village library devoted entirely to Harlequin romances. based on this abundant source, i became convinced that prostitution was a higher divine calling with good money, flexible working hours, and highly enjoyable duties. i guess someone must have 'put me straight' on that one at some point, but i still feel that in an odd way, this was the closest i ever was to 'getting it'...

(c) what can i say? uniforms are sexy... and i always had control issues.

(d) although this here post is probably the first time i write 'about' sex, i would not, could not, have ever written a word 'without sex'. it is from sex that all writing is born. i know that...

...

so much for archaeology. somehow, all the pieces of the puzzle are right here (have always been here), but i don't know how to put them together.

since those early days, i must have read millions of words about sex (from the bible to leonard cohen lyrics, from pornography sites to academic feminist treatises, from tantra manuals to rumi's poems)

and all i have to show for it are questions. lots of questions.

for example:

is sex something that one does, or something that one is?
and what does sex have to do with god and the divine?
for that matter, what does it have to do with creativity?
is sex something inside me, or is it something that happens between me and someone else?
is it a thing of the mind, of the body, of the soul?
what about sensual pleasure? is that sex?
does that mean there is sex (loads of it) between me and my babies?
can you have sex without touching?
can you have sex without thought?
what happens to sex in motherhood? how is it transformed in the bodies and souls of mothers?
what does it mean to be sexually awake, as a woman, as a mother?
is it possible for a human being to not be sexually awake?
what would that mean? what consequences would it have?
what about orgasm? is it a good thing (like giving birth) or a bad thing (like too much alcohol and sugar)?
is sex something you can give to someone else, receive from someone else, share with someone else? or is it only something you can experience in parallel?

i could go on... i don't know the answer to a single one of these. i don't mean i don't know the answer intellectually (even though i really don't), i mean, much worse, that i don't know the answer in myself.

....

as i was writing this i suddenly remembered myself, aged 13, in the dead of night, scribbling a feverish note with some of these very same questions, addressed to my mum, who would be leaving for work before i woke up, return long after i would have left for school, scribbling away with a sense that it was a matter of life or death that i should know, right now.


i also remember her answer, waiting for me in the morning on the dining-room table, in her beautiful round handwriting, with a thick grey marker and in capital letters. 'Yes and no!', underlined.

....

yes and no.

....

29 years later, and i am still not a farthing wiser...

fox and bear

There is an old Russian tale (or maybe it's one of Aesop's fables?) about Fox and Bear sharing a field. The first year, one day in early Spring, they meet by the edge of the field to discuss what to plant, and how to divide the harvest. Fox's eyes shine with mischievousness as he says to Bear, "Brother, I have such a good idea. I have a sack of grain here, let us plant it in our field and divide the harvest equally among ourselves." "How?" asks Bear. "Well, how about I take all the bits above the ground and you take everything that grows underground?" Bear thinks about it for a while. It sounds fair enough. Come harvest time, Bear slowly shuffles to the field to collect his part of the harvest. But Fox has already been there, and taken all the grain, leaving nothing but bits and pieces of flimsy root for Bear.

Winter comes and goes, comfortable for Fox, hungry for Bear. The next Spring, the two meet again by the side of the field. Fox is carrying a heavy sack of potatoes that he drops at Bear's feet. "Here, Brother," he says. "I have taken care to bring our next crop". Bear is in no mood to thank him. "You cheated me, Brother, but that won't happen again. No, this time you can have whatever grows under ground, and I will take what grows above it...". Fox pretends to look contrite. "Whatever you want, Brother, me, I just want it to be fair and square...".

When the time comes for the harvest, Bear makes his slow way to the field, just in time to see Fox take off towards the forest, laden with bags and bags of potatoes... leaving behind piles of useless toxic greens.

The third year... well, who knows what happened.... the tale doesn't tell. my personal hunch is that Bear found Fox and gave him the beating of his life. Or worse...

i remembered this tale this morning, thinking how often we look for nourishment in the wrong place, at the wrong time. how often we trust the cunning mind when it comes to feeding us. feeding our body, our heart, our soul. and how often the cunning mind cheats us, leaving the body and soul hungry.

where is your food growing today? what would it mean to harvest bountifully from this day? do you need to dig among the roots? search among the greens? do you need to plant something? water something? let your field lie fallow?

what will feed both Bear and Fox in you, today?

shoebox

A few years ago I posted on facebook this photograph of myself as a child. This is what I wrote about it at the time:

'From a treasure trove of never-seen-before (at least not by me) photographs found in my grand-father's house after he died. I think I never realised before to what extent my childhood identity is constructed on the basis of the photographs of my childhood that I know (have always known). These unexpected 130 new 'images' simply do not fit into my idea of who I am/was. Looking at them is an unsettling and deeply delightful experience.

It reminds me of something I read, I think in Knausgard's 'Love', about how as a father of young children it dawned on him one day that his children would create the story of their childhood from a small handful of memories and moments, and that as their father, he would never be able to predict which of the millions of ever-changing moments in their days and years they would pick for this narrative.

Anyway, here you can see that I could dance.'

i felt a need this morning to look at this photograph again. Something to do with the spring weather, the sweetness in the air, the way the woodpeckers are courting each other above 'my' tree. 

Something to do with my baby's unadulterated delight in the sunshine, a straw, my dirty trousers on the floor. 

Something to do with missing my grand-father, who not only held on to so many photographs, but was also the first and main photographer of my early years. Finding these photographs when I did felt like a gift from beyond the grave.

This morning, it also felt like a wake-up call. I arose from a dream of walking with my grand-father through the forest, compelled to find this photograph, his voice still lingering in my head. 

'Look,' he said. 

'Look carefully now. What do you see?'

I see bliss. 

I have often wondered about the red thread. What is it that has kept with me/by me through the years, the lands, the dreams, the masks, the endless cell regeneration. 

What is the thread connecting the pieces, from the child i was to the woman i am? 

Based on mind memory, i would have said 'mind', i would have said 'memory', i would have said 'pain'.

Based on my grand-father's dream wisdom and magic eye, i would say bliss.

Bliss is the thread that runs through my life.

(just writing this down makes my heart expand to the size of the Sun)

'Anyway, here you can see that I knew bliss.'

thrive

i made a wish earlier this year. my wish was to learn to thrive.

thrive. a word i cannot translate into any other language i speak. one that articulates an intense longing, to find the treasure hidden under the roots of this very life of mine.

i made this wish and sent it off into the world, on the wings of birds and breezes, in the dark moist earth beneath the roots of my garden, among the screeching of seagulls and rustling of shells on the beach.

and then i became quiet, as quiet as i could, and i listened. for an answer.

... it has been coming, finding its way to me, in dreams, in whisperings, in shards, in threads, in shimmerings...

at times it is like peeling an onion, at other times like reconstructing the skeleton of a strange old-forgotten creature, or laying a mosaic, or darning socks.

here are some bits i have collected so far:

Rest and play, all of life nothing but rest and play, wrapped in each other, as a figure-eight, the sign for infinity, a snake eating its own tail. two times rest to one times play. those are the right proportions.

Safety. 'Our sense of comfort and safety arise directly from our experience of our body's ability to regulate its own energy,' says Peter Levine. A revelation...

Enough.... is not as comfortable as one might have hoped (at least at first). and it keeps moving (annoyingly). it's a constantly shifting place between the too little i would give myself and the too much i constantly crave.

Time. Decompressed. Stretched out. Allowed to breathe. I do not understand time. I only know it is not as i was taught. it is not what i was taught.

Fresh water, fresh food, dance, cuddles. Always... but this i already knew.

so much to explore. i think i might write a post about each of these. and whatever else arises. as it does.

but not today.

today the sun beckons...
today time warms up and slows down...

today this can wait...

jumbled ode to the night

For three months now, i have been going to sleep every night at 7 pm and getting up at 7 am, spending twelve hours out of every twenty-four lying in bed, in the dark. You can read about how this came about here and here. Along the way i was joined in this adventure by P. and all four children. A month ago, we took it one step further and decided to make do without electric light after dusk. Without electric bulbs and screens of any kind, our evenings have become gentle candle-lit affairs, of a rather brief kind. Turns out candle-light makes people sleepy...

This adventure, born of necessity (as all real adventures are...), has been a complete life-changer. So much so that i hardly know where to start in sharing with you what this lifestyle tweak has meant for me.

So while i'm collecting my thoughts, indulge me for a moment and let me take you on a tiny excursion through time, back-tracking a little (or way way back), to when the world was young, and we were...

... fishes, crawlies, tree-climbers, four-paw wonders, monkeys, our ancestors... Long before and all the way through the history of our planet, we have all had a profound, indestructible and inalienable relationship with the night.

How could it be otherwise? Night held our lives lovingly cupped in her hands, like parentheses around our beginning and end (Who was not born in and of Night? Who did not return to her in the end?).

And as if that were not enough, Night fell. Every night.

And every night again, she carried us away. Every night she restored, repaired, refashioned us, at her will. There was nothing we could do about it. Nothing but give ourselves over to the mystery, surrender to the waves, and trust that our little boat would make it to see the rising sun. So we huddled together, for warmth, for comfort, we huddled together in the night because the dark can be frightening.

We did not understand the night (who does?), but we knew her. We knew she was dark, rich, moist, mysterious, unknowable. We knew her as our alpha, and our omega, our past and our future, and the shaper of our now. As the dark soil we grew out of and were replenished by. She could steal us away, and miraculously return us to ourselves, seemingly unchanged, but ultimately undone and redone.

We understood her as the great shape-shifting power that ruled over our lives.

For the longest, longest time, our relationship with the Night was like our relationship to gravity. Utterly unavoidable. Utterly dependable. Utterly necessary.

...

But then things went a bit awry... (they often do, have you noticed?) (in fact, you might argue that human history is one long series of things gone awry, for better or for worse...)

Books on the history of sleep disagree (as books do) on exactly when, how and why this happened, but they could have all saved themselves a lot of bother, and just asked me. it happens i know.

It was in 1791. With Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

This fantastic tale recounts how Prince Tamino and bird-catcher Papageno are sent on a mission to save Princess Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, from the clutches of the evil Sorcerer Sarastro, only to find out.... that Sarastro is in fact Pamina's father (the original Star Wars plot...), who only abducted her in the first place to save her from the clutches of her evil and murderous mother, the Night.  At which point, all male protagonists join forces, the Night is destroyed and the beautiful Princess saved to be married to Prince Tamino and live forever in the light of day in her Father's Kingdom.

It was not called the age of Enlightenment for nothing. European cities acquired street lighting, rich people began to throw balls and parties in the dark (imagine!), and our rational logical anthropocentric world view began to actively encroach on and slowly conquer the dark.

In the Magic Flute, Sarastro stands for the male principle, the day, the light, the sun, ratio, logical thinking and life itself, versus the Queen of the Night, who represents the female principle, the moon, murkiness, death, intuition, superstition and magic.

(and of course, if we are to believe Amadeus, Mozart wrote most of his stuff late at night... while fleeing the dark, running for his life from the terrible nightmares that haunted him......)

We all know how the rest of this story goes. Bit by bit, we collectively reduced the night to its bare minimum, and then took a bit off that too... (figures on the current sleep crisis in the western world suggest that very few people you or i know spend the bare minimum of 7-8 hours in the dark every night).

The night became associated with laziness, wasted time, lack of productivity, an unnecessary death-like disconnection, an anachronism, the last problem to be solved before we can finally take off and soar free (to Mars?).

I remember how it happened for me as a child. When i was little, the night was a massive experience, but as I grew, it slowly shrank back, its wings clipped at both ends. I remember I couldn't wait to be allowed to join the grown-ups in the coveted sanctum of the evening. I knew that was where all the fun and important stuff was happening. So i leaned forward, towards the time when i would be allowed to stay up, until 7, 8, 9, 10, midnight...

On the other end, too, the night was forced to give way: by age 7 my alarm-clock had become chiselled into my life and body, ensuring that i did not lie in bed a minute longer than the system allowed.

In this way, chip by chip, i lost most of it...

...until all that was left was a solid block of uninterrupted deep sleep. Because when you chip enough away from the night, in the end all you are left with is the physiological imperative. The dog-body that must, that will claim its due, whether you like it or not.

Somewhere along the way, i too came to the conclusion that the night was a bit of a sad waste of time. necessary, maybe, but no fun. No significance, no meaning, no treasure.

Fun and treasure and meaning were elsewhere: in the day, and as i grew into an adult and later a mother, increasingly concentrated in the last bit of it: the holy evening.

(...with motherhood, the night itself had been forced into even tighter quarters, and had turned into a hellish struggle for survival as my exhausted body battled with my confused mind for its most basic needs...)

As a mother of babies and young children, my entire life became focused on the evening, my holy of holies, me-time. Time for social contacts, for rest, for creativity, for growth, for learning, for relationship. I filled my evenings (when i could catch one) with interesting watching and reading, yoga, knitting, sewing, writing, painting, sculpting, meetings with friends, games, sex, conversation, meditation, prayer and work.

All activities ultimately intended to help me find that which i longed for and found increasingly and incredibly elusive:

Inner peace, well-being, emotional resilience, joy, equanimity, creativity, deep connection with myself, others and god, purpose, meaning, and magic.

My efforts and iron self-discipline were rewarded to some extent, but i often (often) (too often) felt that i was somehow stuck playing with god's fingers, while missing the moon altogether.

Little did i know (how could i? it was lost so long ago...) that the moon in that metaphor ain't no metaphor...

...

Here then, in the disorder, is everything i have discovered in the past three months about the Night:

- The night is not for sleeping only. Although absolutely essential, sleep is but the tip of the iceberg of what the night has to offer. Once this primal physical imperative is satisfied, the night can have its magical way with me.

- During the day i may 'do life', but at night, there is no doubt that 'life does me'. Agency and control are cancelled. Night is the ultimate surrender.

- I remember how proud i used to be when i remembered a bit of my dream upon waking. I would hungrily write the broken bits and pieces down in my journal, and chew on them during the day, trying like a drunken archaeologist, to reassemble the bones ('the foot bone's connected to the shin bone, the shin bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone...'). It rarely made sense, but i always felt as if i had stumbled on some jumbled treasure, a rare exotic bird briefly glimpsed through the foliage, its shape indistinguishable, but still, the pride in having 'caught it by the tail...'

Now i know that these sightings were nothing. As i spend three sometimes four hours every night with the exotic bird sitting quietly on my shoulder, whispering long stories into my ear, I understand at last that dreams are not meant to be remembered or interpreted in the light of day. They make no sense there, because their language, their meaning is other, and they can only be grasped processed understood incorporated integrated in the night that has borne them and that offers them to me, on a silver platter, night after faithful night. For nourishment.

- A living relation with the night is essential for a living relation with the day. The night, with its timeless expansion and contraction, fuels the day. The two cannot exist without one another. When i skip the night (as i have done for decades) the day slowly loses its colour, its texture, its yumminess, and becomes grey, dull, painful and meaningless. I have found no better (and no other) antidote to this existential malaise than re-entering into a primal living relationship with the night.

- Meditation, therapy, yoga, tai-chi, and all the other amazing techniques i have learnt along the way, when practised regularly and assiduously for a long period of time, all point to the same state I enter effortlessly every single night once my need for sleep is satisfied. They just take a lot more effort, and a lot more time. (Remember the guru asked by one of his students: 'Teacher, what do you think about meditation?'. The guru answered: 'It can't hurt.')

- The Dalai Lama goes to bed at 7 pm every night. Need i say more?

(actually, i do. Need to say more: he was also quoted saying that 'sleep is the best meditation'. And if there is anyone in the world i trust to know the difference between the essential and the superfluous, it's the Dalai Lama...)

(of course, i now understand that the secret behind his (the Dalai Lama's) ability to know the difference between the essential and the superfluous is that he goes to bed at 7 pm every night)

(this is not as circular as it looks...)

- The night repairs and nourishes my body, awakens my sensuality, restores my social relationships, heals my wounds, injects my entire system with magic and creativity, connects me with god, restores my faith, my hope, and my ability to act and be in the world, regulates my emotions, and greatly enhances my ability to shine my light.

- Also, and relatedly, giving the night back its due has allowed me to cancel two thirds of my to-do list. For one thing, anything to do with solitude, me-time, introspection, reflection, writing, creativity, self-development, etc. can now be safely left to the effortless dark. The day has been returned to its original purpose: to jot down the night's harvest (done in a jiffy), and engage in and with the world. For another thing, the night is teaching me to distinguish between the essential and the superfluous (remember those fairy-tales in which the heroine is given the impossible task to sort a pile of dirt and poppy seeds. she always has to do it at night. and the night always sends a helper), and to make a long story short, a lot of stuff on my to-do list, when seen in the light of night, turns out to be more dirt than poppy.

- Relatedly, again, i have experienced an incredible decompression of time. There is now always enough time for everything, seas and seas of it in fact. A strange experience after decades of feeling constantly rushed and late for something (the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, that's my calmer twin brother...), especially since technically speaking, there is a lot less time in my day now.

- All you need to wake up is go to bed.

- Oh, did i mention bliss?
...

this post really wanted to be entitled: How I Cancelled the Evening, Discovered the Night, and Received the Gifts of the Day. but that would have made the above bit of writing redundant, so i didn't let it have its way.

* for some of the science behind the what and why of night magic, see here and here. these are just my first dippings into the incredible wealth of literature and science on the subject. i'll add more links here as i read more.

40 days

Every year around this time, my teacher sends out an invitation to join her in something she calls '40 Days of Sobriety'.

Inspired by Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Hindu traditions, it is a beautiful modern take on the traditional fasting intended to move us from winter slumber into Easter celebration, a kind of modern-day lifestyle detox.

It involves ten guidelines to be followed as faithfully as possible for 40 days (from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday):

1. Do something for another person (in deed or financially)

2. Spend at least fifteen minutes meditating, reciting a mantra, or praying.

3. Listen with full attention to a beautiful piece of music (such as an excerpt from Bach's Mattheus Passion)

4. Refrain from killing any living creature (including flies and mosquitoes), and therefore eat vegetarian

5. Refrain from lying, gossiping, saying unkind things about another person, and cursing

6. Refrain from eating sweets, snacking, mindless eating, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs

7. Do not take anything that is not given to you

8. Refrain from watching TV

9. Limit interactions with internet to that which is strictly necessary for work and other obligations

10. Limit spending to the strictly necessary

...

For the last seven years or so (as long as i've been getting the invitation), i have done my darned best to take part every year.

I say 'my best' not because i failed (how can you fail a series of intentions?), but because taking part has required an unusual dose of will-power and inner bullying. While my degree of compliance has varied with the years, as you would expect, my basic resistance to the entire procedure has remained constant, aka MASSIVE.

The thing is that somewhere along the way, it has dawned on me that huge amounts of will-power and inner bullying are not, despite what it says in the advert, the best way to move through life... And that maybe resistance of such magnitude is to be kindly acknowledged and explored, not squashed under foot...

In the wake of which discoveries, i had kind of made up my mind to not even attempt the lifestyle fast this year.

But then something happened, something a big magical, that made me change my mind.

A few days ago, the usual invitation arrived in my mailbox. Except, it wasn't the usual invitation at all. To be specific, two words had been added to it:

It was now called '40 Days of Sobriety and Sustainability'.

and that, believe it or not, has made all the difference.

What can i say, i am a language person... words mean the wor(l)d to me.

And i find 'sobriety' remarkably unmotivating. at the risk of misusing my lapsed catholic identity here, the very word 'sobriety' has always sounded a bit too sinfully calvinistic to my ears...

Mostly, though, i find sobriety unsustainable. Something i can achieve, with the above-mentioned dose of will-power and inner bullying, for a very short period of time, before relapsing straight into all my former 'bad unconscious habits' with a vengeance (a process referred to as 'backlash').

....

But this, this made me think. What if these 40 days were an invitation to sustainability? Now that had my inner ears pricked...

What if this was an invitation to create something truly sustainable? First and foremost sustainable for 40 days. But above and beyond that, a template for a sustainable life. A life that will sustain me, and a life that i can sustain. A life that will sustain my family and one that my family can sustain. And even further beyond, what if this was an invitation to a template for a sustainable world?

What if by taking the time to precisely define and then implement this sustainable lifestyle, i would be making a real contribution (possibly the only one within my power) to a more sustainable world?

Wow.

...

So i sat with it for a while. Under a tree.

...

And considered the ten guidelines. What they point to. How they meet my life where my life is at. What sustainable means, for me, for us, in each of these. And i have come up with a template for the next 40 days, that feels sustainable to me.

i am so excited...

(very mild levels of resistance being registered on the local Richter scale)

Here it is, for inspiration, for sharing, mostly so that i remember ;-).

40 Days of Sustainability Guidelines

1. Refrain from shouting at people (children, husbands, friends, family, cashiers, etc.)

(this requires extremely high and consistent levels of self-love, for i have discovered that i only (ever) shout at people when i am being shouted at, by the bully inside)

2. Eating sort of vegetarian

(i.e. vegetarian with the exception of fatty fish once a week and bone broths whenever needed for strength and nursing)

3. Dance to, hula hoop to, or attentively listen to a beautiful song every day

4. Meditate or pray for at least 15 minutes a day

(adding a compulsory fifteen minutes of meditation to my to-do day is not sustainable. however, i do spend an inordinate amount of time in bed, from 7 pm to 7 am, and if i let go of the idea that one must 'sit' to meditate, the time in which i could potentially meditate without having to squash time goes from 'noppes/nada/niente' to two hours or so. i think i can fit in fifteen minutes...)

5. Limit media

This requires some detailed explanation: TV and Internet are easy enough (none, and limited to work and this blog, respectively), but then there are books. And books, i have noticed, can be a great thing or not such a great thing, depending on how you use them. here are some of the not very good ways i have been known to use books: to beat myself over the head and try to bully myself into changing (my life, my body, my relationship, my kids, etc...), to escape from reality, to binge, and to generally overwhelm and hurry myself.

Sustainable reading probably means limiting my reading to the following categories of books: world literature, poetry, biographies and auto-biographies of interesting people, educational books (history, anthropology, sociology, etc.) and stuff written by holy people.

Specifically, in the next forty days, i plan to keep the following on my night-table (to be read from at will): The Book of Joy (Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez), On the move (autobiography of Oliver Sacks) and a wonderful historical book on the peoples of Europe in Roman times, with Asterix and Obelix as guides.

(Can't wait!)

6. Doing something for another person consciously

As a mother of four i spend most of my days doing things for other people. however, i often feel a martyr of this phenomenon, rather than a grateful partaker. for the next 40 days, i want to bring my attention to how i do things for others. how do i feel when i am asked to do something? when doing something for another person spontaneously? when do i say yes to requests, when do i say no? what would it take for me to be truly grateful for the fact that i can do so much for so many (little) people?

7. Turn my tongue in my mouth ten times before speaking (i expect this will greatly reduce any lying, gossiping, and other unpleasantness that makes its way into the world through my mouth)

8. No sugar and mindless snacking, but eating enough at meals instead

(i tend to eat too little at mealtimes because it's so busy, or i'm serving others or i just don't take the time to eat quietly, and then have to binge/snack to compensate for the two litres of milk i produce on a daily basis)

9. Do not take anything that is not given to you

(i think i only steal movies via pirate bay, but this is something i might have to look at in more detail...)

10. Breathe deeply and do a body check-in before any monetary transaction

(this is more interesting and far more sustainable in the long run than simply closing my wallet for 40 days, only to re-open it, unexamined, afterwards)

The 40 days start on Ash Wednesday, 1 March.

Who is joining me?

feetnote

(strange how my posts recently seem to have a tail (or in this case a pair of feet) that slowly raises to the surface after a day or two…)

Speaking of unconscious money patterns, here is another one i discovered (with data to back it up):

The budgetary body-mind rift.

aka: although I unhesitatingly spend thousands a year on my mind/spirit, my body has to make do with ten bucks or so.

Do you think this may be a fossilised remnant from my Catholic upbringing? The glorious mind, endlessly reaching up to its Creator, the lowly body, trying to dig itself into a premature grave through sin and depravation, and therefore better ignored or done away with altogether...

Sounds extreme? Let’s look at some figures.

As you may remember from my last post, last year i spent in excess of €5000 on personal self-development (none of which had much to do with creature comforts), plus another €200 or so on books and literature. So much for my mind.

What about my body? Total clothing and grooming expenses for 2016: €82 (unless you count the dentist).

hmm.

As it happens, for some time now, my feet have been dreaming of shoes. And not just any shoes, but new shoes, and not just any new shoes, but these beauties…

*i know, i know... taste is a matter of... well, taste, i guess... 'But mum....you will look like a gorilla!', said my eldest in an exasperated tone 

i don't care. i want them anyway. because i spend most summers walking around barefoot, and my feet love it, because with every passing year these same said feet are more and more reluctant at the end of summer to re-enter their leather prison, because happy feet make a happy woman, because i tried them on in the store around the corner from my house and never ever ever wanted to take them off again, because… damn it, because i want them.

The price tag: €130 (on sale).

i swear to you, if these were not shoes, but an online course on how to create a fantastic website for my new business while high on a combination of ayahuasca and transcendental meditation, or an illustrated leather hand-bound medieval treatise on the relation between human gut flora and the secret life of gorillas and flowers, I wouldn’t even blink. Not. Even. Blink.

But these are shoes. 

So it’s been four months.

Four months in which i sold former shoes of mine to ‘save’ money for these, ploughed the internet relentlessly for a better deal, explored second-hand alternatives, hesitated, hesitated some more, decided it was much too expensive ‘for our family’, poured over extensive and detailed studies of exactly how long these shoes are supposed to last before they have to be replaced...

(by all accounts, the answer to the latter question is ‘one year or so’) 

(WHAT?!!!?????!!!!!??? ONLY ONE YEAR!!! WHAT A RIP-OFF!!! You mean I’ll have to buy a new pair EVERY YEAR??!!!! Do you realise that means €100-150 A YEAR? For shoes??? What madness is this? I have been managing just fine on my €15 shoe budget!) 

(plus, that online course i recently took on how to create a fantastic website while high on gut flora and gorilla flowers offered LIFE-LONG access to all materials...!).

Four months, people, and still no shoes…

This makes me a bit sad… Because feet are a bit like a dog, aren't they? Unconditionally faithful, loving, forgiving, joyful. And always up for long walks... no matter the weather. 

i always say i love my feet. But if ‘love’ was a verb, where would this loving of mine be showing? 

…

Maybe I’ll be brave, and loving. Maybe i'll redirect some of my as-yet-unspent personal development budget for this year to get my feet a lovely shell for all those long free hours in the forest.

…

uncoiled

a friend invited me to a fun course on Shamanism. it looked great. i said i wasn't going to do it, seeing as it was my new year's resolution to do fewer fun things...

well, that seemed like a pretty awful new year's resolution, so i tried to explain...

'i mean fewer fun things that still end up costing time, energy and money, and for which i don't actually have time, energy or money, but of which i hope they will dispel my persistent feeling that i don't have enough time, energy and money for the fun things in my life.'

it sounded like an interesting flippant thing to say, but the more i thought about it, the bigger it grew. until this morning when i finally understood how HUGE it actually is.

for those of you who don't know me, i work as a freelancer. which means that every single day i receive e-mails from people offering me assignments, and every single day i have to decide how many of these assignments i take on.

now, don't these sound like absolutely bloody fantastic working conditions? that's because they are! (and i won't even brag about the fringe benefits, such as the fact that i do most of my work lounging on my bed in my pyjamas, and get to stop often for naps, snacks and cuddles, not to mention forest walks...) (seriously, don't know of a single company that offers their employees such a good deal)

and yet... over the past seven years (which is how long i've had this business), i managed to give myself one full and three mini burn-outs.

HOW?

you may well ask... it stumped me too... for a long long time... i could sense the iceberg of it, but couldn't see it for the life of me...

until...

until the HUGE insight hidden in my flippancy to my friend revealed itself as a detailed map of the devilish circle i'd been dancing in.

this vicious circle looks like this (yes, you get to see more of my lovely scribbles...)

it begins with a (subconscious) decision to overwork. Now, by overworking i don't mean working a sixty-hour week, or at 3 am, or on Sunday afternoon. luckily i am saved from such lethal practices by motherhood and husbandry. no, overwork in my case is more subtle. it basically consists in taking on more work than i strictly speaking need and/or is good for me.

having pondered this for some time, i reached the conclusion that my overworking is always driven by  a subtle form of greed (as in 'i could use just a little bit more cash today/this week/this month') and a subtle form of fear (as in 'there may be enough for us all today, but what if the source dries up tomorrow? i have to make sure we have enough for tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after, and the day after...)').

this overworking of mine always (always, ALWAYS) leads to stage two of the circle, which is overwhelm. Although the experience varies greatly in intensity, its quality is quite consistent: this is the feeling that there is no room (no time, no energy) in my life for me. if i dig a little deeper, it invariably turns into 'i cannot feel my body' and/or 'i cannot hear my inner voice'. it's a dry, uninspired, grey, busy, tense, time-obsessed, empty place.

to escape from the misery of overwhelm, i use a strategy that seems promising, and happens to be advertised all over my Facebook feed, which is overspending. this brings us back to my conversation with my friend, because my specific overspending habit consists of splurging money on lovely profound, in-depth, high-value and amazing retreats, workshops, and online courses, paying wise, lovely, profound, amazing, in-depth people to help me reconnect with my body and hear my inner voice again.

every time i do this, however, the price tag on my life goes up. After all, this soul work (the therapy sessions, the retreats, the workshops, the yoga classes, the online courses) is so essential to my life, and really when you think about it, you might say it's the most essential thing of all: that which makes it possible for me to feel my body and hear my inner voice.... Wow! Clearly, this has to be included in our family budget. In fact, put like that, it should be right up there with food and water as far as our family priorities are concerned.

but hey, that's not a problem. i'm lucky. i'm a freelancer. i get to decide how much i work. i will just add a few hours to my working week, and i'll be able to afford this therapy, retreat, workshop or course every single year (trimester, month, week...) and bob's your uncle.

phew... saved by the bell...

hmph.....

did i mention that this is HUGE???!!!???

because... i could also... let's see.... well, maybe not immediately take on that one extra work assignment, but instead go spend an hour in the forest, leaning with my back against an old old tree, sitting with my fear, sitting with my greed, sitting with the general discomfort arising from both. there, in the quiet, i might, no, i know i would, i will, feel my body, and hear my inner wisdom (for free and without the help of a wise, amazing workshop facilitator), and my body and inner wisdom will sit with me and my greed and fear until the greed and the fear abate. then i would know, because i would, i will know, and hear, that maybe i don't need the cash from the extra work assignment (because there is enough, because the source has always been plentiful), so i wouldn't take it. as a result of which, i guess, maybe, i would have more time, to spend in the forest...

like this:

how about that...

* far from me any intention of crapping on amazing workshops, therapies, retreats and online courses, but i have been wondering for some time, in a quietly-nagging-at-the-back-of-my-mind kind of way, how it is possible that we all seem to need all of this therapy, yoga, retreating and workshopping so badly, so badly... like water and bread... how did our mothers, grand-mothers, great-grand-mothers and all previous generations survive without all this stuff... how did they do spirituality, well-being, inspiration, body, inner wisdom? How did they dance? because they did, didn't they, they sure did, they left novels, paintings, poems, recipes, and dance steps, and the blood running hot in my veins, and the tilt of my hip, they left evidence in my kisses, in my children's dreamy eyes, that they too, they knew, about inner hearing, about wisdom, about the body...

** you know where they went, don't you, for wisdom, for inspiration, for the body, and the dance... to the forest, to the sea, to church, to synagogue, in the early morning, to public libraries, museums and art galleries, to their garden, to their kitchen, to their women, their men, their children... and all of it unmediated and for free...

*** in the interest of science and credibility, i did some data research. in 2004, the year i first started therapy, our family budget for the first time featured a fixed cost category 'V mental health and well-being' of 420 euro in additional healthcare costs to cover bi-monthly therapy sessions. it has grown every year since. and not a bit either. the projected budget for this category in 2017, a financial year officially labelled by P. and me as 'lean', amounts to 3860 euro. talk about inflation! and this is a projected budget, which means that it does not include any 'impulse purchases'. the actual costs of this category for 2016 were well over 5000 euro. That's almost two months of 'full-time' work .... wow! that got me quiet right there...

****  the fact that i can easily retrieve such data, and look at them without flinching or occupational apneu is all owing to Bari Tessler's wonderful year-long Art of Money program, which P. and i are gratefully following for the second time this year.

***** no, the irony has not escaped me. what can i say? the human condition is a complex thing.

footnote and reference

how do you write a footnote to a blog post?

a few hours after publishing the 'February' post, i received a book in the mail. i want to say this was a magical intervention, because i've ordered this book four times since late October, and four times it failed to arrive, and then it did (arrive), with perfect halleluja timing...

here is an excerpt from page 9:

"This is uncharted territory. It's dark, moist, bloody, and lonely. I see no allies, no comfort, no signs out. I feel scraped open and raw. I look for the dismembered parts of myself - something recognizable -  but there are only fragments, and I don't know how to put them together. This is unlike any struggle I've had before. It's not the conquest of the other, it's coming face to face with myself. I walk naked looking for the Mother. Looking to reclaim the parts of myself that have not seen the light of day. They must be here in the darkness. They wait for me to find them because they no longer trust. I have disowned them before. They are my treasures but I have to dig for them. This journey is not about some fairy god-mother showing me the way out. I dig... for patience, for the courage to endure the dark, for the perseverance not to rise to the light prematurely, cutting short my meeting with the Mother."

That.

Reading it i realised this is not just the best description of February ever . It's where i am, have been, still am, will remain for a while. At least two years now, of moving down, down, down, deeper into the darkness. and although i am tired, and bruised, and lonely, it's too soon, too soon to rise towards air and light.

so i dig... here too, in these virtual pages, in your deeply reassuring presence, i dig. for patience, for courage, for perseverance.

up close and personal

i have a confession to make: try as i may i just can't seem to figure out a way to enjoy February. 

and now we are on the subject, one of the things i really (REALLY) don't enjoy about February is how it sticks in my face my inability to enjoy things i don't enjoy.

hmmm....

seriously, i have done everything i could: i've read all the right chirpy sounding books that tell me exactly what to do to be happy, i've applied all the ancient Eastern techniques (both gloomy and chirpy) to find and securely attach myself to the bliss of the present moment, i've tried to sink my teeth into my kids' necks and draw from their young blood all the joy of life so sadly lacking from my old brittle bones, i've tried gratitude journalling, standing on my head, eating less sugar, eating more sugar, exercise, fresh air, taking on less things, taking on more things, listening to inspiring people, dancing, artistic endeavours, a media fast, and a media feast... oh, and of course sleeping right through the whole thing (see earlier posts).

i stopped short of recreational and other drugs (unless you count a few weeks of daily paracetamol to reduce the effects of dental surgery (old and brittle my teeth are too...)), but only because a) i am too chicken and b) i am too chicken.

but no... i still hate February. Or rather, i hate myself, my children, my husband, my work, my friends, my house, my city, my century, and life in general... and it just happens to be February? 

Nah.... long, long (old and brittle i am...) experience tells me that this too shall pass, right around mid-March.

here is something: i told you that i go to the forest nearly every day, right? and how amazing it is, to see the forest, and hear it, every day anew. what an incredible, time-dissolving experience it is, and the magical encounters i have with the forest creatures, and how just being there, immersing myself in this living flow day after day after day heals me to the core of my being, and makes my soul sing. 

right?

well, this morning i sat on the forest floor, leaning against the usual tree, under a vague drizzle of a rain, ruminating for what could easily have been half a century on some dark train of thought, when i became distracted by a terrible racket. seven or eight tits had flown in out of nowhere and settled in a bush right next to me. believe it or not, those bloody birds just sat there chirping like there was no tomorrow, being so f...ing noisy... Unbelievable! i tried to concentrate on what i was doing (which was?...), but there was no way i could, not with that racket, they were making so much noise, i swear, i could feel white hot rage rising in my throat... in the end i just stood up, and shooed the little bastards away. 

seriously, stupid birds, can't they leave me alone???!!! like ever???!!! can't the world ever ever just leave me alone for a f....ing minute???!!!!!

there. that's February. discontent, rage, despair, hopelessness, lack of meaning and purpose, feeling lost, martyrdom, sadness, more sadness. February.

and it stubbornly (stubbornly) refuses to get fixed.

a wise woman came to visit this morning. i was annoyed with her because of how inconsiderate she was, dropping by like that when the baby has such a cold, and the teenager is still sick, and none of us got any sleep at all all night, and i have so much to do, and....

(i was the one to invite her) (i was so glad she came)

she said there is no need to fix February. or me. 

she said (or rather i heard her say) (so maybe she did...): maybe this is always there, underneath things, and it's only in February that you get to be with it. 

only in February, only after the very last leaf, and even the snow, has come and gone, only then, just then, can you feel and see what you spend the rest of the year trying to cover up.

only in February do i get to sing over these bones. 

hmmmm..... 

let's just say it's not a chirpy song.

a schematic overview

(We've had a bit of a tug-of-war about this post, my creative genius and I. It went more or less like this:

She: 'Here, this is what I want you to write next.'
Me: 'You must be out of your mind!'
She:  'Here, this is what I want you to write next.'
Me: 'No way!'
She: 'Here, this is what I want you to write next.'
Me: 'But it's a blog about mothering!'
She: 'Here, this is what I want you to write next.'
Me: 'But, but... I will make a fool of myself, nobody will ever read a word I write anymore, I will look like an idiot, people will point and laugh at me in the street (the two and a half who know it's me, should they ever pass by my street, at a moment when I am out too, and not be my mum, and happen to see me, and have nothing better to do), people will be irate, or bored, or ...'
She: 'Here, this is what I want you to write next.'
Me: ...

So, having settled that to everyone's satisfaction, and at the risk of sounding like a cross between six-year old Saint-Exupéry and a demented Brigitte Kaandorp, here we go...)

I recently made a discovery, about life and death (you know. the usual), that is kind of rocking my world, and which I would like, schematically as it were, to share with you today. But first, allow me to back-track a little.

When I was a child, and in response to my queries (I was that kind of kid), this is what grown-ups told me about life and death.

First, there was nothing (people were extremely, extremely vague about this bit, despite repeated attempts to obtain information). Then there was birth (here my mother and biology teacher rather helpfully provided the details). Then there was life, which hopefully would be long, prosperous, and full of adventures (can't say about the long yet, but check and check on the latter two). And then there was death, which all agreed was the end of life as we know it, and involved some or lots of pain, followed by rapid bodily decay.

After this point, opinions diverged widely.... from a return to the original vague nothing, to choirs of angels on clouds fiddling arias while deserving souls frolicked about and stuffed themselves with sweets, to a great many in-betweens (the variety expanded as I grew and came into contact with other grown-ups).

Lo and behold, turns out it's not like that at all.

(drum roll)

(I'm going to let you sit with that for a bit)

I guess this is what Galileo must have felt like, as he stared at the horizon of what he had known his entire life to be a flat pancake.

(drum roll)

(all right, enough sitting)

The rest of the information in this post is based entirely on something a fat robin in the forest near my house told me a few weeks ago.

(On a funny note, this was the same week I was doing a long (loooong) translation on psychosis, with extensive descriptions of early warning signs and precursor symptoms...) (nothing to do with discussing the meaning of life with small birds, obviously...)

One day, he (the robin) flew down from his usual perch in a bush on my left, hopped towards my foot, put his head to one side, and told me this

(drum roll. last one, I promise.)

'That in you which is alive has always been alive. 

That in you which was born and will die 

has been dying (and being born) all along.'

There. That's how it actually is.

('how it actually is' turned out to be a lot harder to draw that 'how I used to think it was'. But schematic or not, it is a great relief...)

Have a lovely Sunday.

Talking about the p...

Today I want to talk a little about the predator. I say 'a little' because what I do not know about the predator far far outweighs what I do know. But... I did manage to pick up a few bits of information here and there, which I'd like to put to paper (well, to white surface anyway), for future use, for sharing...

First off, what is the predator? The predator is a part of my psyche, an internal construct if you like, whose mission in life is to destroy me. That's right. The enemy is inside the gates (was it ever anywhere else?)... By destroy I mean eliminate from my life any joy, peace, serenity, satiety, satisfaction, inspiration and connection, and ultimately directly or indirectly cause my death. Over the years and my contacts with the predator I have come to the conclusion that it is not particularly interested in my physical death (it suspects, I suspect, that my physical demise might bring its own). Rather, it is the candle of my soul life that it wishes extinguished, and it is particularly disgusted by and hateful towards the child in me (the gentle, innocent, creative, inquisitive part).

What does the predator look like? I have found the classical European fairy tales I heard as a child to be particularly useful as a guide. You know, the way you take your mushroom book with you on a mushroom picking hike (unless you are like me, and only ever pick the two kinds that you know for sure for sure for sure will not hurt you) (or you are like pretty much everyone in this beautiful country I live in, and you believe mushrooms are both terribly dangerous AND terribly fragile and must be protected at all costs, i.e. you don't pick  mushrooms) (enough about mushrooms already) (wish I had chosen another nature guide category... Berries! You know, the way you take your berry book with you on a berry picking hike...).... Well, on my hikes through the landscapes of my life, I have found fairy tale books to be extremely useful guides for identifying and tracking the predator.

(speaking of fairy tale books, have you seen this fantastic wordless take on Grimm's tales? It's quite quite wonderful, and to be found in the public library)

In my life, the predator takes on the following shapes:

- The Big Bad Wolf: This is when I wake up in the dead of night from a terrible nightmare of running, fleeing, hiding, being hunted down, arrested, tortured, quartered and murdered, etc. When my mouth is dry, when my heart beats wildly in my throat, when my chest feels numb and cold and empty as if the terrible beast/dark creature/evil man of the dream had come straight out of me and torn my heart from my chest, probably to serve it raw to the evil queen. Sometimes, I feel that way during the day, without even closing my eyes. This too is a sign that the predator got me....

- The Snow Queen: 'Stop that crying right now, you big baby! Stop it! Stop all this slobbering feeling nonsense right away! Stop it right now! Or no more kisses for you! Never, ever, do you hear me?!?! No more kisses for you...'

- The Evil Step-Mother (usually with help from her daughters): 'Who told you you have a right to rest, to sleep, to eat?? To enjoy yourself??!!?? My girl, you must be utterly mad. You are here to serve, to serve, to serve. To serve me, and her, and her, and her, and him, and him, and him, and him. Serve. So keep your nose to the stone, keep your hands moving, there is much to do before the ball!!! What?!!? You want to go to the ball??!! My poor child, who would ever look at you? You look like shit. Have you seen your hair, your face, your dress!!!?? You, at a ball??!??? How silly... well, don't just stand there!!! There are sandwiches to make, floors to sweep, I want my nails done, come and read me a story, move, move, move. We haven't got all day!!!'

- Blue Beard: 'Listen kiddo, if you get curious, if you look under the carpet, if you dare to ask the living question, or look where the blood is seeping through, I will take away everything you care for, and tear you apart, limb by limb by limb.'

- The Cunning Devil: 'Oh you poor thing! You are having such a hard time... Let me help you! I have something here (red shoes, gold, a shining mirror, a magic carriage), it will make everything easy for you. You will never again feel (tick as appropriate):
 *hungry/*tired/*thirsty/*frustrated/ *confused/*sad/*angry/*disconnected
You will never again have to work hard, or walk long distances. I will make your life perfect. Right here. Right now. With my magic wand. It's not expensive, it's not difficult, all I need is for you to (tick as appropriate):
*sign right here (without reading the small print)/*give me your soul/*give me your child (oops, that was the small print, sorry, printing error, printing error, printing error!!!!)'

....

How do I know I have my paw stuck in the predator's trap? This is a most important question, and the fairy tale books don't talk about it much. I don't know the whole answer (far from it), but I know some...

I know that whenever I feel empty, hollow, overwhelmed, despairing, hopeless, victimised, terrified, stressed out, numb, anxious, frightened, angry, enraged, disconnected, rushed, in a hurry...

Whenever I think that I am no good, I am too weak, I am too slow, I am too little, life is too much, I have too much on my plate, I have to do the impossible, there is no way out, there is NO WAY OUT, we will all perish, the end will come soon, the end is here, I will lose everything, I am in danger, my children are in danger, I have reached a dead end, there is no hope for me, I will never manage, I might as well be dead...

Whenever I believe that the problem/the issue/the danger is out there: it's the system, the government, my upbringing, my mother, my father, the neighbours, my friends, the city council, my boss, my clients, my children, my enemies, my clients, the tram driver, the jew-haters, the communists, my ex-husband, the voters, the non-voters, the healthcare system, the educational system, some other system, my son's best friend, the kitten (YES, damn it, I knew it, IT IS THE KITTEN!!!!!)....

Whenever I believe that the solution to the problem/the issue/the danger is also out there (in the system, the government, etc..) (won't even mention the kitten...)...

... then my paw is in a trap.... some part of me has been captured, taken hostage, by the predator.

What else? The predator does not want me to experience genuine love, joy, peace, vitality and connection. Instead it wants me to constantly tweak my body, my relationship, my days, my children, my home, my career, my friends, my Facebook page in search of something vaguely shiny and always shifting that looks from a distance (the only place you ever see it from) like it might almost (especially if the light is right) resemble some poor artist's drawing of love, joy, peace, vitality and connection.

The predator does not want me to look at the predator (clearly (as in 'look at it clearly' AND 'clearly, it doesn't want me to look at it'... oh, language!!...), so it keeps my eyes steadily focused on 'out there' stuff.

How to defeat the predator? Clearly (again?!?), this is not a one-time battle. Luckily the book is specific and precise on what you need to succeed:

Gentleness, innocence, kindness (in the stories the child, the main target of the predator, is also the only one who ever manages to get the better of it), in spades and buckets.

Curiosity.

Clear seeing.

Love, much of it.

Faith, and divine or magic protection.

Help from the body. Help from the animals. Help from the trees. Help from the moon, and the sun, and the sea. Help from the witch.

Courage.

Strength.

Suppleness.

A good friend or two.

Enough sleep. Enough food. Enough water.

How do you know you have managed to escape (for now)? Because life will be life again. Some lovely, some yucky, all of it manageable. Because there will be a scar, but you will not be broken (you did not die, you did not die...). Because the body will be joy, or sadness, or peace. Before moving out of that, into whatever it will be next. Because you will feel yourself breathe. And breathing will be delicious. Because nothing will have changed and everything will be different. Because the monster will turn out to have been the shadow of the curtain, the big bad wolf the neighbour's grumpy puppy, the evil queen your mother-in-law with a cold, the devil the insurance company guy, blue beard your tired husband. For now. Because there might be a dance, a tune, a drawing, a painting, a song, a poem, a blog post, an idea, that will bring delight. And that you will not need to hold on to for dear life. Because the babies' heads will smell like wild flowers, and wild flowers will look like babies' smiles.

Because you will feel yourself breathe. And breathing will be delicious.

(to be continued... as soon as I know more)

Cueillette des champignons

A beautiful video has been going around on Facebook, you might have seen it. It shows in three minutes what happens in a forest over the course of an entire year.

On a background of soothing classical music, pine cones open and release their seeds, snow appears and disappears, to be replaced with snowdrops, May blossoms, summer flowers, wild strawberries, and finally mushrooms... All in three minutes. 

This video made me a bit sad. 

I didn't know why.

This morning in the forest, it came to me that I am reaching for the opposite.

For two months now, every morning, I have gone to the same corner of the same forest. In fact, not just the same corner but the same tree. On the same side. Sometimes I'm there at 9 am, sometimes at noon. Good enough. Every day I sit down in the same spot, with my back leaning against the same fold in the bark, and I sit. 

I don't meditate, I don't pray, I don't do mental yoga. I just sit. I don't try to think, I don't try not to think, I don't watch the birds, I don't try not to watch them. 

I sit. 

To some, this might sound easy, or boring. To me, it's a radical and delicious act.

I sit.

Over the days and the weeks, I am getting to know some of the creatures living in what I already think of as 'my neighbourhood': One obscenely fat curious robin, three tits whose concerts are well worth attending, two woodpeckers who companionably eat from the dead branch of 'my' tree at 9:10 am every morning, two squirrels whose morning exercise routine includes chasing each other up and around  my' tree (and once over my shoulder), and one very (very!) shy wood mouse. 

I would like to say that I see the forest change as the season advances, but I don't. It's all going much much much too slow. Things do look and sound different every day, though. As if I'm there for the first time. Every time. I guess it's hard to synthesise. Or summarise. Or put into three minutes. Or in a blog post.

I'd like to say something wise about it all, but I don't think I have anything wise to say. I just know it's good. What I'm doing. It's good for my soul. And that it takes time. Lots and lots and lots of time. And that for me, right now, taking time for lots and lots and lots of time, to sit in this nothing much that is so rich.... 

... that this creates other oceans of time.

in which to sit some more.

If you go to bed with the children... (continued)

So.... where were we?

Ever since I was precipitated into the maelstrom of motherhood a little over a decade ago, two questions have repeatedly surfaced like scum on the surface of my grey and exhausted mind:

1. How can my babies, who have the exact same nights I do (i.e. broken, broken, and broken some more), wake up in the morning looking and obviously feeling amazingly refreshed, rejuvenated, rested, cheerful and ready for a long adventure-filled day, whereas I (who have the exact same nights they do, i.e. broken, broken and broken some more) wake up feeling like I was run over by a bus, a tram, a train and a construction roller, consecutively and repeatedly? 

(And what idiot ever coined the expression 'to sleep like a baby'???)

2. How could Mother Nature have gotten something this important this wrong? I've mentioned this before, but seriously: How did we manage to survive this long as a species? Our babies require consistent and intensive care for at least four years before they are ready to hit the town on their own and bring home some bacon, yet our babies' mothers drag themselves through life barely able to lift their feet or remember their middle name, let alone forage for and find food ('... Hey, is that a sweet pussy cat or a sable-tooth tiger peeking at me through the bushes?... Don't know. Don't care. I just want to close my eyes for a minute, OK, just one minute!!!!').

Seriously? How, people, how? We should have become extinct aeons ago, all grand-mother hypotheses notwithstanding...

It goes without saying that I did not ponder these questions for very long, due to general bleary-eyed exhaustion, but they did recur. 

Anyway, back to my recent despair, and going to sleep at 7 pm. As soon as I started doing that, things got better, dramatically better, fast. In fact, within a week I felt not just OK, but absolutely bloody fantastic. I would have been the last to admit it, since one can, I have discovered, get quite some brownie points for 'heavy night baby duty', and I was reluctant to let go of my advantage in the perpetual war of the sexes, but looking around, I began to suspect I was feeling 'more rested' than most regular 'rested' people of my acquaintance (the non-baby owners among them).

Which is when we took ourselves and the 'formerly good sleeper' to the local baby check-up station (known as the consultatiebureau). The wonderful woman who runs it looked at the baby, looked at us, and asked: 'How is sleeping going?'. 'Terrible', I said. 'Terrible!' 'He stopped sleeping altogether about two months ago now... Wakes me up every 45 minutes. On the dot. We were hoping you could tell us what is wrong with him...'

She looked at me in a way that made me feel that maybe she had not registered for the secret brownie point system, and said, not unkindly: 'You don't look very tired...'. 'Well that's because I've had to take drastic measures', I blurted out. 'I've been going to bed with him...'

She smiled, folded her hands, and told me the following story: That starting around age 9 months, babies begin to dream in the same kind of way that we do, and that from this point onward, their nights tend to take on the following pattern:

They fall asleep sometime after sundown and sleep very deep for 2.5-4 hrs, without waking up. This first deep-sleep phase is essential to restore their physical functions, repair anything that got damaged during the day, and grow (babies and children grow almost solely at night). This one stretch of deep sleep satisfies all their deep sleep requirements for the night, and they spend the rest of the night doing their other important work, which is to dream their way into processing and integrating every single bit of new experience they had that day. They do so in dream cycles of 45-60 minutes, and most babies, although not all, require some soothing and a dose of sleeping drugs to help them move through the crest of each dream wave into the next one (hence the 45 min. nursing cycle that had gotten me down on my knees in the first place). 

'Ok,' I said. 'But what about  me? What about my needs for deep sleep? What about my basic requirements of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep???'

'You are not going to like what I tell you next.' said the friendly lady with a friendly smile. 

But she was wrong. 

I loved it! (and readily gave up all my saved brownie points for the privilege of hearing it...)

She said that I (and probably you too, if you happen to be human) have the exact same sleep needs as babies. That I too, need to start the night shortly after sundown with a single period of deep sleep (of 2.5-4 hrs) to repair all physical damage, etc. And then I too need a series of lighter, dream-filled sleep cycles of 45 to 60 minutes to process and integrate my socio-emotional development of the day. 

Here comes the magic bit: In my cheeky workshop materials, I was unwittingly telling the truth when I said babies teach us to sleep, and help us sleep better. Amazingly, they really do. When I synchronize my sleep with my baby's, by going to sleep at the same time that he does, we have our deep sleep phase at the same time, and we ride the waves of dream sleep together, emerging from each at more or less the same time. Every time I nurse him at one of these junctions I get a good solid dose of endorphins, oxytocin and whatever other hormone cocktail night-nursing gives me, which puts me right back to sleep, allowing me to stay in bed, asleep for a full 12 to 13 hours. 

And wake up feeling amazing. Ready to forage and fight the sable-tooth tigers of the modern world...

There, that was quite a lecture, but this has been such a life-changer for me that I had to put it down somewhere, for future use. And for sharing.  

Here is to sleeping like (and with) a baby! Cheers!

If you go to bed with the children... (a medieval formula)

If you go to bed with the children

you will hear the birds sing twice

(in Greek)

Once when the day slips away

and once when it returns

Grey, and drawn, and tired

from wherever it is

that the day spends its nights

I wrote this little poem seven years ago, which is apparently how long it takes my life to catch up with my words...

Does that happen to you too? I say random shit sometimes, here and elsewhere, on bits of paper, through old-fashioned wired telephones, on long windy walks through the dunes, sometimes on screens too... I say shit and I hear myself say it, and I think (occasionally) 'Wow! this is deep shit!' (and deep it often turns out to be, in more ways than one), and then... 

then nothing happens, or so it seems, for a long long time, until months, or years, or decades later, the rest of me finally catches up with the weird futuristic prophet who occasionally visits my head. 

At which point I remember... and go 'Huh???!!!!', and 'Ahaaaa!!!!! That's what I was going on about in the summer of 2010!!' 

(The non-prophetic rest of me is not particularly eloquent by the way, as you can make out from the grunting)

I like to think of it as my Soul dropping shiny pebbles on my path, to goad me on, perhaps. Pretty shiny stones, in brilliant colours, that I collect in my pocket as I walk, and later, much later, take out and go: 'Oh my, but these are rubies!'

It's not a bad way to live. Garnering treasure. Sharing it with people. So here comes...

......

A few months ago, I felt compelled to write, organise and offer a workshop for moms of babies and young children, on sleep. It was called 'Sleep-training for moms 101'. 

I thought I was being funny. As in 'Ha ha!'. 

In a provocative mood, I threw out pronouncements such as 'Instead of trying to teach our babies to sleep, we should learn how to sleep from them.' And 'Babies are the best sleepers in the world!' and 'The baby phase is the time of your life when you can and should feel most rested!' and 'Would Mother Nature have gotten something this important this wrong????' (in reference to the fact that babies would be unlikely to survive for long in the wild if their mainstay dragged herself through the bush bleary-eyed, stuffy-nosed and dysfunctional from exhaustion). 

As I said: I was being provocative. 

The more so as I was feeling a little (tiny itsy bitsy smudge) superior to the poor women who would come to my workshop, bleary-eyed, stuffy-nosed and dysfunctional, since my own baby (the last in a longish series) was, and always had been, what the world would call a 'good sleeper'.

So I offered my workshop. Twice. To a reluctant audience of two.

(this is probably worth another post altogether, but I have noticed that whenever I develop teaching materials from that tiny itsy bitsy superior place, the throngs of interested participants I expect to show up politely ignore me and my offerings. Seriously, what is that??)

A few days after the second workshop, the shit hit the fan... the good sleeper (aka Baby), turned into a demon from hell. Just like that. Overnight, you might say. Except there was no such thing anymore. The night had been cancelled. The night was for wusses. We (the 'formerly good sleeper' and I), were not wusses, he assured me repeatedly. We didn't need no night... Relentlessly, night after night after bloody night, he required my services on the dot, every 45 minutes. I thought it would pass. It did not. I thought it was his teeth. It was not. I thought it was his belly. It was not. I thought it was his psyche (shit knows what goes on in there). Maybe it was... I swore. I prayed. I swore some more. I got tired. Then exhausted. Then bleary-eyed, stuffy-nosed and dysfunctional. In a matter of weeks. 

I cursed the gods. I felt justly punished for my sins (if only I had not been so arrogant teaching that stupid workshop, drawing down upon myself the wrath of the skies...). 

And more of the same. This went on for a month. Until I reached the end of my tether. (You'd think with age, and experience and all that, your tether would get longer. But no, mine grows shorter every year...)

And once I had gotten there, to the end of my tether that is, I did the only thing people ever do in the end: I gave up, and did something insane. 

I went to bed with the baby. 

At 7 pm. 

Not once. Not twice. Not three times. But every single night. 

This was back around Christmas time, an eternity away... and to this day I still go to bed with the baby. 

And this seemingly random, utterly desperate act has changed my mind and life in profound and diverse ways that I can barely begin to describe. 

(... 'barely' indeed... this intro is getting  so bloody long, I'm afraid I have to leave you hanging from a clifflet here, while I go and have some breakfast...)

(to be continued...)