birthing

word up,

with the ::techno wonder boy:: back from india, we are finally back up and running online in the mullingson commune... at last! so, what comes next is a couple of heartfelt postings i would have made live last week if i had been technologically able and then we'll be back to today and see where this day finds my heart... this is likely therefore gonna be jumping through a range of emotions and tones and will be lengthy... sorry. nature of the beast...

i hope this last week has been a tender one, or a fulfilling one.
and if not, i hope you found a little something of what you needed to make it through...

LB,x ::

18 January



I am an aunt.
I have a niece.
Sequoia Catherine.

Welcome to the world little girl... you bring so many unfolding possibilities in your wake.

I dreamt intensely this morning of my brother and his wife. They were in the birthing room. Turns out, that’s exactly where they were. And so, despite the miles between, I feel connected to them and to her arrival, in a strange mirror to the connection I felt to my own mother’s departing.

How strange the synchronicities in this world. What cosmic conduit is this?

Like having a conversation in your head with a person. Intense. Filled with things unspoken and then they call…
what are we to make of these moments? Do they matter? Are they mere coincidence? I do not know…

But this, I do:
Birthing is a celebration.

There’s someone I’d like to see. i feel them birthing. i feel myself unfolding too...

and in celebration of Sequoia's arrival i played this in my headfonz real loud:

and if we're all for someone and if we're born for someone when will she come that someone and put things in their place?

::

Someone's come...



::
19 January

There’s someone I saw. And they were birthing. Unfolding their inner limbs. Dragging themselves with grief stricken brutality and tentative tenderness into the light of wholeness, with the groaning pangs of the earth from which we came and to where we will return.

Birth is violent. Painful truth: we can’t be birthed without feeling it...

::

InComing

He saw her crown. She seemed small.
He saw her head and face. She seemed large.
She forced her way out into the air
Pushed by her mother’s groaning body
Sending her out
Into the welcoming
This departing that is greeting.
He saw her whole and he overflowed, crumpled, fell into awe-filled worship.
As her lungs sucked in all the air
The room was filled with the pulsating waves of the power that is love
She is beautiful.
She is birthed.
And they cannot stop gazing into her.
To see her
Is to feel love course through their veins.
She is sign.
She is gift.
She is grace.
She is two become one.
She is a beginning.
And she always will be.
The arriving never ends.

We desire. To be born again.

She is birthing.

He is birthing.

I am birthing.

We all are always birthing,

If we are feeling.

Welcome child...

I will do my best.

Love.
Love.
Love.
Love.
Love.
Love.
Love.

::

Today

iTunes makes for some interesting and curious alphabetical juxtapositions... crystal gayle's don't it make my brown eyes blue and talking in your sleep are promptly followed by damien rice's rootless tree...to be followed by david gray's what are you? a whole lot of hurting and anger... it was something of a relief to get to the light.

::

and now for an announcement of a totally different kind...the launch of an art exhibition that i have just completed a piece for...

what? ikon co:ordinates*
where? waterfront hall, 2nd floor
time? 7-9pm
date? tuesday 6th february

you'll be very welcome if you're in the neighbourhood. i believe there may be a free glass of wine in it for ya. pictures to follow once it's been curated and my piece is in situ...

it's a quintet of (for me) uncharacteristically (but i think pretty ikon-esque) minimalist abstract images, which i've titled:
...what has been our loss has been its gaining... (parts i - v)

the title is a lyric. it should be in your collection. if not, get it sorted. google will help you out i'm sure.

explanation of some sort will come with the fotos next week...but needless to say, i'm quite excited to see the piece alongside whatever jewels the other contributors have come up with... i've spent months thinking about what i wanted to create and rejected about 20 different concepts... but this one, quite late in the day, just clicked... things fell into place...

::

so today marks me no longer being a home-owner. as i try and sift through the wealth of emotions that run through me like the boxes of my life and those before me waiting to go into attics, they entwine and tumble with thoughts of others... of a friend and family saying fond farewell to their beloved, who has left this world for some other place... of the goodbyes that this life makes us endure... of the welcomes we wish we could give or receive and can't... of the someone... of waves... of competing desires... of being caught between...of emotional puzzles making uneasy days with no obvious easy answers, of wanting things to be in their place... of home... of homes made of walls and homes made of relationship...broken homes, by which i think we mean homes where hearts get broken... of the nest i now want to build for myself...a home made of walls... and the expectation, the longing for a home made of relationship... and not knowing if one would know that someone if they came... of feeling our feelings...

::

rootless tree would fit, but i decided the following would be song of the week and i'm gonna stay loyal to that choice:

"Living In Twilight"

You look darkly on the day
With memories to light your way
A little sad but it's all right
We are always living in twilight

No one knocks upon your door
Until you don't care anymore
A little alone but it's all right
We are always living in twilight

Living in a dream, walking in between the sunrise and sunset
Living in a dream, walking in between sunset and sunrise

You get tied up in your day, so I let go and walk away
And now we're loose ends of the night
We are always living in twilight

So it goes, though no one knows you like they used to do
Have a drink the sky is sinking toward a deeper blue
And you're still all right
Step out into twilight

So I stumble home at night
Like I've stumbled through my life
With ghosts and visions in my sight
We are always living in twilight

- The Weepies.


LB, x

*ikon has 5 co-ordinates. it is: emerging, heretical, failing, apocalyptic, iconic. you can find out more on wiki...

absence

hey

i've no online access at home due to a change in service provider.

i'll be back later in the week.

in the meantime, take care of each other.

LB,x

it's hard for me but i'm trying*

... later that same day...

sitting in clements, botanic and listening to a just purchased copy of Midlake's 'the trials of van occupanther'... i just know this is gonna be on constant play for days... it feels like the best music always does, like you've always known these melodies, these words, a soundscape that has been long forgotten but now comes flooding back in a greeting that is more like a reunion than an introduction...
thinking of someone i love who i'd love to hear this but they're not here and yet the 'protagonist' of this album is so like them...or perhaps like the me i see in them... the lyrics infused with so much to share in their beauty and honest poetry... where to start...a landscape that tells the story of the inner life we share... of togetherness that seems just out of reach... like two houses on either side of a ridge separating two valleys, each little cabin overlooking their valley while the other is there just up and over the hill behind them... one facing east, the other west... one watching the sun rising, the other sees its descent...with longing they hope to one day see a sign of life in the land below them...the practices of their days so similar... busying themselves in staying warm and not going mad from not being known...writing conservations like love letters to an unknown other who understands... sometimes catching the smell of wood burning on a fire and yet never seeing smoke rise from the landscape and so thinking it's just their imagination... their longing come to life... there they stand back to back on that hill as the seasons pass and see no one coming... and so they wait...dwelling in isolation... if only they had ventured up into the woods above them... but no... they only see the land outstretched before them... from the perspective of the great expanse of the universe they are so close their shoulder blades are almost touching and to have found the other out would be as simple as a glancing move of a hand backward to feel the fingers of the other... but the lonely always think themselves alone, never imagining another could know what it feels to be always waiting for someone to come and love them...

::

what is the feeling of your feelings...?

::

i spent the weekend on the north coast in company and conversation with members of the Corrymeela community and james alison... it left me drained in many ways... hours spent wearing something like my most capable face... yet conversely a strange bubble of the unfamiliar... a known quantity of folks away from my ordinary days... separate from my world... and so to return was more anxious than to have gone... to come back to the day to day and recognise how much is filled with doubt... to return and recognise the things that grieved me last week grieve me still... but this time of learning gave me much to think and feel my way through... and friendships were forged in its midst...

::

if church was more like A.A. would we turn up...?

::

returning, i shared something like the danger of confession of daily doubt with friends who feel the same way... made mutual commitment to weave with tenderness the kind of friendship where we don't pretend we're not scared by so much in our days... a stranger? no stranger moment full of quiet courageous intentionality...

::

...we cannot think our way out of feeling... to avoid emotion is like scaling the bare cliff face to avoid walking through the valley...

::

head home - midlake

no one seems to be around
today they must have all gone off
without me again
i think i'll head home
maybe i'll find them
gathered 'round my doorstep
oh to sleep in a comfortable bed
i think i'll head home
no one seems to be around
today they must have all gone off
without me again
i think i'll head home
i think i'll head home

bring me a day full of honest work
and a roof that never leaks
i'll be satisfied
bring me the news all about the town
how to struggles to help all the farmers out
during harvest time
well there's someone i'd like to see
she never mentions a word to me
she reads Leviathan
i think i'll head home

::

put your boots and courage on and run*

LB,x

(*songs and lyrics by tim smith)

music is my hometown*

don't you just love it when little dots appear on the page...

your therapist excitedly recommends a band of which you've never heard. he says he's only just discovered them and their music has been making him think of you. he can't wait for you to hear them, because he knows beauty moves you, and he thinks you'll love it, and promises to lend you a cd on your next meeting. before that can happen, out of nowhere, one of your best friends sends you a compilation cd. track 13 is that very same band, Midlake. as i type i'm listening for the first time. and i do love it. instantly.

thanks jude. stunning compilation, babe. has improved the posture of my mood no end. :0) these tracks have made me grin within 4 bars and my feet dancing 'neath the table inside 8.

LB,x

* from music is my hot hot sex by CSS, also in the mix.