#21. This Moment: Hello Nine Month Old

Hello Nine Month Old

 

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour, and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same

leave your link in the comments 

then go to Soule Mama and do the same.

What is Burning Man about? I'll tell you.

Yes, I have been to Burning Man. And the number one question I hear is, "What is Burning Man about?"

I'll tell you.

No, Burning Man isn't a giant rave in the desert. Despite what you've heard, it isn't really about music. It isn't about sex or drugs or nudity either.

Burning Man 2009 - Open Playa

It is about people. It is about community. It's about coming together and creating a city void of social status, void of judgement, void of consumerism and greed.

A 3-Story woman made from cables.

It is about pushing ourselves to the limits just to see what we can do. It is about respecting our peers and giving them the space to be and do what makes them happiest. It is about realizing your own personal abundance and gifting the excess to everyone and anyone who happens by. It is the realization that everything we do - a hug, a shared story, a smile, a gin and tonic for a friend - is an experience, a gift of its own right. It's about Art. Or the idea that creativity doesn't live within the boundaries of success and failure.

Yes I made this costume myself.

It is about always striving to be a participant and never just a spectator.

And this year I am staying home. I stayed home last year, too, seven months pregnant and no way in hell was I interested in the physical toll that is living in a tent in a dried up dusty desert-hot lake bed. But my Handsome Mandude wasn't going, either, and I was content in taking a year off.

This year I am not pregnant. I am a Mama. And my Handsome Mandude is venturing down into the desert without me. And he is bringing two of my closest friends.

Yours truly, FireHooping before we lit up The Man

It's true that I could probably go. Other Mamas with babies as young as mine (or younger) find a solid babysitter and make the trip. I'm, personally, not ready to be away from Squeaky D for that long. And I'm breastfeeding and that relationship is more important to me.

And maybe it is possible to bring a baby to Burning Man. But I wouldn't, and I would advise anyone thinking about it not to do it. I'm just not sure it is fair to bring a little person into a world so dusty, hot, overstimulating, borderline dangerous, and overwhelming with no real means of escape. At least not until they can communicate to you about it.


I guess I'm just feeling nostalgic about the whole thing. About the freedom of it all, to be myself and to be fearless about it.  Nostalgic about the people that I've met there, the friendships I have made. The incredible art that people work so hard to drag into the desert for me to climb on, experience, and enjoy.

This Cape used to be a tablecloth.

The ability to wear whatever I want; a tutu, a fur bikini, a bad-ass road warrior leather ensemble, or a giant red cape made from my friend's old silk tablecloth. I'm remembering the cool desert evenings filled with rushing to eat, clean, dress, be ready for the chill and excitement of the dark dark night. The laughter and spontaneity of riding our blinky glowing art bikes through dunes of playa dust, veering from structure to structure, covering miles of rock hard earth just to seek out a little bit of adventure and exhilaration. I'm wistful over that feeling at the end of the week, covered in a dust so fine that no amount of washing seems to take it off, bursting with desire to create, create, PARTICIPATE, climbing the highest art piece and shouting my poetry into the dust storms. Seeing The Man explode with fire, the culmination of all our excitement and experience, until he dwindles down to nothing but embers, ashes, nuts, and bolts.


I'm feeling nostalgic about The Temple, the most quiet and sacred space at Burning Man, built carefully with intricate details, then flooded with emotion literally stapled, written on, and pinned to its wooden walls. Then on the last day, fifty thousand people gather silently - absolutely silently - and solomnly watch it burn down. Let me just say, there is something beyond magical about being one of fifty thousand quietly contemplating all that it means to see the week end and the temple burn to the ground.

Temple in Daylight

Temple at Night

I was going to write a post about how experiencing Burning Man - how being a Burner - has made me into a better parent. But instead I was feeling nostalgic and wrote this. So, in the spirit of art and community and sharing, I will leave you with a poem that I wrote after my first year at Burning Man, a poem that will be pinned up to this year's Temple which, eventually, will burn down to the ground. Simply because it must. And I'll talk about parenting another day.

=================

Handsome Mandude and I

there were good things and magnificent things 

and bad things and horrific things and i saw them all, 

i experienced them all, and they made me different. 

i blocked the sun and i made it shine, 

i helped and hindered time 

and allowed this mass to hurtle onwards. 

i rolled my eyes and rolled my tires 

over dunes of pure dust, through walls of it, 

rolled in it, slept in it, basked in it. 

i climbed on creation and filled my eyes 

and my hands, my mouth. 

my heart. 

i was part of an awe-filled silent crowd 

and i joined gangs of animals 

surging out loud. 

it seethed and was frigid, 

it was comforting, chilling. 

i swung and was flung, 

and we laughed, we wove stories, 

we shimmied, we shared, and we cried. 

we created community and we burned it all to the fucking ground
just to see if we can do it again next year.

xox

Farren Square

#20. This Moment: Sunny Days

Sunny Days with Squeaky D

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour, and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same

leave your link in the comments 

then go to Soule Mama and do the same.

Breastfeeding is a crazy (wonderful) thing.

You know, breastfeeding is a crazy thing.

Forget the fact that it is a hot-button issue these days. Forget that it is often disrespected and women are shamed for nursing publicly. Even forget the fact that people who don't understand it, often, for some INSANE reason, sexualize it.

Just think about how, for thousands and thousands of years, it was the only choice. It literally IS how our species has survived infancy since the beginning of our time. Wow. Not only that, but think about how truly complex and fantastic our human bodies - our mammal bodies - are for being able to not only create and store milk, but to transfer it to our babies in such a loving and comforting way.

Before I go any further, I want to make a disclaimer. I want everyone reading this to know how I feel about breastfeeding and mothers who do otherwise. There are no hard feelings here - and I want to stress that we all love our babies and we all share, cultivate, and bask in this love in meaningful ways no matter how we feed them. It is true that, unfortunately, some mothers have more success than others. But to all of you who have put a baby to breast, who have breastfed at all - think back to the calm quiet moments, even if those moments can be so few in those early weeks. Think to yourself - My body made colostrum, my body made milk and I gave it to my baby. I did that! 

Breastfeeding Then.

Maybe it is just that, in all my life, I had actually never considered my body's potential in this way. In the last decade of my life I have noticed a very profound appreciation for my body's potential in many different ways. I could jump, and climb trees, ride my bike pretty fast. I could swim fairly well. I rode horses and ran races and drank an obscene amount of alcohol in my early twenties. My body was great.

In the last four years of life, my appreciation grew deeper. I started sharing my poetry. And people other than me liked it! I met a handsome mandude who taught me how to view each experience as an opportunity to see art and creativity. I went to burning man and experienced a real community, a life lived without fear of judgement - FOR REAL - for the very first time. I realized that the most single important and incredible thing that we could do as humans was to create. We can create something from nothing at all - a painting, a poem, a novel, a dance, a warm moment, a hug, a crazy wild experience - from nothing but the pit of our minds and maybe a bit of legwork. My body was amazing.

And then I became pregnant and I realized that, though we both had a hand in it, I was completely on my own in growing and creating this tiny little life inside me. I couldn't help but ponder, as it squiggled around in there, how fantastic it was that I had a factory inside me for making more of me. I felt very connected to the women who came before me, who had carried the beginnings of humanity. I could sense the juxtaposition of how far we have come laid against what has not changed, will never change. But mostly I ate. And grew. And ate and grew, and the baby did, too, and my mind expanded along with us. This is crazy, I thought. I made a HUMAN BEING with thoughts and preferences and an idea about the world someday. And I'm going to push it outta me and then what!

Breastfeeding Now.

And then what? I started breastfeeding. And my baby emptied my colostrum. And my baby brought in my milk. And then, through those first days, that haze so thick with love, and soreness, and obsession, and sleep deprivation, and love - it struck me. Breastfeeding is so intricate; a mix of hormones, knowledge, support, instinct, circumstance, confidence, and science. Breastfeeding is at once complex and natural. It is so easy and perfect and yet at times it can be a struggle. And you know? It wasn't all easy for me, and I think it is okay to be honest about that, but I grew to love it. Ultimately, I was sustaining human life. An entire life, outside of mine. I was nourishing his every need with my body. This blew me away. Here he was, my son. And we could lay, stomach to stomach and doze. And he was being fed.

And then I realized. Our bodies are good and amazing. They are fantastic and spectacular! And breastfeeding is a crazy (wonderful) thing.

Happy World Breastfeeding Week.