Forest Child :

I grew up in the forest.
Far far away.

Like most children of the forest, I had the ability to talk to trees. and small woodland creatures. Like others, I could sense time without a clock and would never tire of playing in the woods. But unlike the children who grew up in my forest, I, as a forest child, possessed the unusual ability to talk to a mysterious and strange God. A God, that for many years, was created and re-created, as childhood shifted and transformed. A shape-shifter. A voice. A spirit. I knew it and felt it. And sometimes the memory of that connection, is the only thing that continues to connect me to it now.

I grew up among pagans and tired ex-catholics. (that's why im still 10% pagan, and 10% Catholic).
I grew up in a forest that had no church. We had a building--a tinylittle wee building, that once was alive with song and word, but had closed it's doors, like most things did, by the time I was three. It lived there, among the trees, dying. Its wood rotted. Its windows boarded. It, like the tiny boarded up one room train-"station", lumber mill, fire-hall, and eventually even school, became abandoned. My home, has now become a ghost-town.
So, as a forest child, the concept of "church" was quite foreign to me. Until puberty struck , I was fairly certain that churches only existed in America- in Big Cities and on Tv. It was a concept, almost as mythical to me as a mail man, or street-lights.
I grew up in a two-room school that had 30 kids, total, on a good year. I had a fairly unconventional education, to say the least. I also had a teacher who loved this guy named God. She spoke of him often and I was intrigued, so from very early on, I stayed after-class, on Tuesdays for Searchmont's equivalent of "bible club". This became my only "formal" introduction to this thing called Christianity. I latched on. Fiercely. While most forest children stayed primarily for the greasy chips on a napkin /purple Cool-Aid, and to watch the fat on our teacher's arm jiggle, as she did the actions for "Whose the King of the Jungle", I stayed because of mysticism. (though the chips and the arm fat, were defiantly a motivation as well).
I took the basic teachings of the Bible, and invented my own pseudo-religion (or denomination, to be fair). One with no authority. One based on feelings, rather than logic. One that saw God not as an elderly white man sitting in heaven, but rather one that understood God as love spirit. That floated and spiraled within and around all of life. Without a church, everything became church. Land, not buildings, became sacred spaces. The forest became infused with this love spirit. Prayer became a language, learned but not taught. It grew fluid, not because it was a rule or a compulsory, but because it grew out of desire. A desire to connect with this love spirit, I could feel inside of my tummy. I could sense in others. I could see in the earth around me. I wrote songs for it. I spent a good six years or more of my life,quietly singing myself to sleep every night. In those quiet moments, I felt like my entire body was in the presence of this thing called God. This thing that held me. That knew me. That loved me.
My "faith" was mine, though I was admiate about sharing it. The main recipients of my then evangelism, were my snails. I taught them all I knew. I decided, when I was seven, that this thing called heaven wouldn't be worth living in forever, if it didn't have snails. So, I baptized, ALL 200 or so, of my pet snails. A drop of "Holy" puddle water on each of their tiny little snail heads, and a prayer of love for each of them. It took about a day. But I was at ease from then on. I even had a mini silver statue of Mother Mary, for the snails to slime over, once they were "saved". (In case you were unaware, The Virgin Mary cries tears of joy, when mollusks accept her son into their hearts)
Because my parents were, at that time, "born-into-it, but don't-practice-it" Catholics, they felt it necessary that their daughter experience the catholic rituals of "First Communion" and Hail Mary chants . so, they drove me an hour into the "Big City", where I wore an over-the-top frilly white dress with matching white lace gloves, held a rosary, regurgitated some Catholic propaganda, and had my very first Holy bread wafer.
At this point, I did not know the world had Protestants and Catholics. But I rebelled anyway. From what I understood, the Jesus meal should be offered to anyone who feels/honours the love spirit. It shouldn't be limited to city boys/girls who dress up in fancy white, and call their priest Father. I declared myself officially NOT-catholic before I even hit third grade- and reverted back to my initial DIY ways.
Though I proclaimed Catholicism to be hypocritical and spiritually uncouth, at an early age, it's influence still informed my own practices/interests in weird ways. For a while, I really dug mini statues of saints. My teddy bear still wore a little rosary, and I still had a thing for holy water. But most importantly I was infatuated with nuns. When I wasn't pretending to be a teacher, or day-dreaming about being a sex-therapist, I was quite insistent on becoming a nun. In fact, the very first thing I EVER googled, once the Internet was invented, and in my home, was "nuns". I had a major crush on them, though the whole celibacy thing through me for a loop, since I was an unusually sex-obsessed/aware kid. (but that deserves its own blog-entry). Looking back now, nuns were the first "Christians", I ever read about, that seemed to be doing this whole God-thing right. Unlike most of the people around me, they were actually doing what Jesus said. They were radical. After Mother Theresa died, I use to ask God to pass along messages to her, when I prayed.
I use to have this reckless trust in God and in Love. I use to cry when I prayed because the feelings of their presence were so intense. I use to believe that the world wasn't broken yet-that with a little love, anyone could change. I use to have the unusual ability to talk to a strange and mysterious God. When I was a forest child.

Looking back now, I realize my version of spirituality hasn't changed all that much. and I'm sort of glad. I've gone through periods of denial and shame. I struggle often with burdensome amounts of doubt and skepticism. I go through intense droughts of anger and recluse. But at the end of the day, it's the memories/life of my childhood connection to the love spirit, that often pulls of through. It's that level of intimacy I yearn with all my heart to be able to experience and allow in myself again.
It hasn't been until recently, that I've realized my story/history with "God" is a bit off-beat/unusual. Unlike my "protestant" peers, I didn't grow up with little old church ladies, choirs, hymnals, sermons, camps, bible verse finding contests, organs and church etiquette. I'm unfamiliar with traditional "chuchie" language, rhetoric, songs and "worship". A lot of things my partner takes for granted having been born and raised in the church, feels really unnatural and at times even offensive to me. Somtimes it causes tension, because our stories so greatly inform how we experience and know God.
Im realizing now that growing up in the forest, and being unchurched has its definite pros and cons. I'm lucky I was able to avoid being burned by the church. I never felt forced or guilt-ed into connection. I don't feel overly brainwashed. Creativity was a big part of my understanding of the Spirit and Creator. I wasn't jaded/broken by other Christians. I held onto my innocent naive hope longer. I owned my beliefs and remain a fairly free/independent thinker. But on the other hand, I developed a really unbalanced attitude towards Christianity. I find it really hard to appreciate and respect the church. I have A LOT of issues with authority. I lack logic, and base most actions/beliefs on "feelings". Christian-eese makes me panic. If I start to talk like a Christian and use words like "Jesus Christ", "Salvation", "evangelize", "missioning", "The Second-Coming", "The Good Lord" and "secular" etc. etc. I get desperately ill inside and want to vomit. I have a reallly reallly tense relationship with my Bible. I harbour a lot of resentment towards other Christians. Corporate prayer still creeps me out. and I'm quite stubborn and critical.
It's a difficult process transforming a very private/individualistic faith into one that embraces and is subject to community. I'm glad that shift is happening, and that I've found Next, as a home to explore and experience these changes. I'm really thankful that's its become a "thin space" where I can be honest about my story- where i can struggle openly yet still experience love. A space where people, not walls, define church. Where I can slowly reclaim and re-learn this whole church thing, without sacrificing who I am. Where to be a "Christian" and to follow the teachings of Jesus is radical. Is subersive. is counter-cultural and revolutionary. Next for me, is a sacred place where God is once again mysterious and mystical. A place where I can encounter the traces of this love spirit, and hear the voice, I once felt and knew, as a young forest child.

there's always room for creativiTEA

My old bedroom has successfully transformed itself into a creativiTEA room-- a sacred space for art to be dreamt, felt and born. A sanctuary of sorts, for herbs to grow, for tools to hang, glitter stored. A place where wood is carved, poems bled, cards imagined and loose-leaf drunk.

And today I sat hunched over our new, yet old, vintage wooden desk, sunlight pouring through the shutters; nibbling on grilled eggplant drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and sipping away at a perfect Chai, with the perfect amount of maple syrope in it, Louis Armstrong's perfect voice dancing softly through my air, 2 bottles of brown glitter in hand, and desktop full of cardstock.

Suddenly all was right in the world again.

Like Life you flow through me/and yet/my own veins and body remain oblivious to your powers.

Heart beats/and you listen/ because you are there. In me. There.

Heart aches/ and you listen/ because your job/ was to mend/not break.

But you do break/ Though your pieces/ remain the pieces of myself/ i cling to most.

These pieces/they float in me/ and like tumors they ground to the walls of my insides.

I feel you in the pain/ I feel you grow/ cell by cell.

Until you become a fear/ too BIG to remove/ too much apart of me to decipher where my flesh begins and your pieces end.

To cut you/would be to cut me/ and that is the tragedy of this love.

You become in me, a second life/ tiny and beating/ alive yet dying

No doctors could detect you/ No surgery could dissect you

but still like a tumor, you swell in me.

And instead of despair/ my fear embraces/cuddles/nurtures and delights in you

because to the world you were a secret/ but to my body you were real.

They tell me you're diseased/ They say to live without you is to heal.

But if to heal means to live without you/ than i'll remain ill/ so not to lose you.

Because in losing you/ I would be lost/ and that's the worsedisease of all.

So you grow/because I let you/ because I am bound/ in/and/to you.

You grow as I cry out your name/ You grow until your name cries out in me.

Until each breath seems to pass through you

Until each heart beat rhythms to keep you alive.

But these are lies/ the lies I create myself/ for myself

because I fear who I'll be/ once your gone.

So you grow/ you grow until you rupture/ and i am left with the mess/ of the mound you used to be.

You are the mess that oozes through me/ painfully/ through leery veins/ past a hurting heart.

Slowly you find your way out/ blood/tears/vomit and urine.

Soon you'll be gone entirely/and I'll be here mourning the loss of the space you filled in me.

But I'll let go/ Soon I'll let go/ of the pieces of myself I swore were you.

And in this loss/courage will someday find me/ and without you I will breathe/feel/step and live

without you.

and as me.

For 22-years, I made my world in her womb. There I lived. There I breathed. Sheltered and dreaming, I waited. Waited for the Life that would find me after birth. Afterbirth. A bloody, tangled mess. It pours out of you, and I follow. I flow through you, and into a space that is not my own. I follow because it is time.

It's time, but im not ready. Not ready to breath this air. So thick, it gets caught in my lungs- it steals my cries, replaces words with shallow inhales.

This is not my home.

I am not home.

But they tell me I am.

my Agenda as an Unemployed Post-Grad.

out my back door.

ORGASM Inc.

Les and I saw ORGASM Inc. http://orgasminc.org/ tonight, on campus. It's a really great documentary about the medicalization, (and i would argue invention of) "Female Sexual Dysfunction" (FSD) and the role pharmaceutical companies play in defining and marketing "normal" female sexual pleasure. It got me really riled up. The entire film, I sat there writing about 10 different essays in my head, all at once and daydreaming about which of my potential thesis statements I preferred. It made me realize how much I friggin miss school. I miss feeling outraged after a good debate. I miss that pulse of passion that circulates my core, whenever new ideas evolve. I miss the creative energy I could pour into crafting arguments with a punch. I miss my old language-- as I was ranting to les after, words I'd forgotten about started pouring out of me--- my feminist Lexicon. Words like "hegemony" and "foucauldian repression" "commodification" and "methodologically flawed". I miss uncovering corporate conspiracies. Or at least pretending to. and having an enemy. I think I might miss that the most.

Some of my old favorite enemies to pick on were: capitalism, essentialism, sexual repression, "science", and of course, co'optation. This movie happened to touch implicitly on all 5 of my fave foes, so I'm just going to rant about it a little.

Basically the documentary traced the race for pharmaceutical companies to develop a drug to treat alleged (yet mythical) "Female Sexual Dysfunction"-- the inability for "40% (though I'd question that) of women to achieve orgasms". Film-maker Liz Canner uncovers the connection between the medical industry and marketing campaigns that effectively invent, define and capitalize off of the medicalization of female sexuality (or lack thereof).

In other words, let's tell women their "abnormal" so they spend lots of money trying to get "fixed" and be "normal" again. Let's make another billion dollars of profit off of sexist socialization that teaches young girls their "naturally" less-sexual than men, and should fear or be ashamed of their own friggin vagina, and let's milk this for all it's worth. Let's invent an illness, under the guise of "science" and pump out ridiculous "facts" that were gathered through flawed and slanted methodology, and then...let's make it accessible on public broadcasting, so women all around the world can be reminded by celebrities like Oprah, that there's something wrong with them if their not having explosive orgasms after every screw. I know, let's not stop at that. Let's reduce and simplify female sexual pleasure and desire to being merely hormonal and completely negate the complexities of context, culture and socialization. While we're at it, why not completely reconstruct limiting and exclusive concepts of "good natural healthy" desire and sexuality, in order to make even more money off of the fears and sexual anxieties of unsatisfied women everywhere! and then market it with a semi-comical commercials? Or better yet, on Dr. Oz..

What the hell!?!

I love this. First of all because it blatantly points out the role of both capitalism and "science" in socially constructing sexuality. In the Victorian era, in the West, the illness called "female HYSTERIA", was invented--- a diagnosis which thrown on women who were merely irritable or tired, or causing problems. seriously! common'. What was seen at the time as a legit medical female problem--was really a creative way for the "man"-- medicine/science-- to exert control over women, and regulate/police/fix their "way word" expressions of "femininity", in order to reinforce a very limited, passive and socially-constructed regime of woman-hood that would complacently serve and honour the patriarchal society at the time.
Remind you of anything?
Interesting that one of the treatments for this "female hysteria" was "pelvic massage"-- basically the doctors would stimulate the hysterical woman's "genitals" until she had an orgasm, or as the medical industry called it, a "hysterical paraoxysm". Interesting that a simple orgasm could allegedly help "cure" female hysteria (aka irritable woman).
MAYBE THEY WERE IRRITABLE because the only place they could reach orgasm was at the hands of a doctor, since Victorian sexual repression brainwashed women to believe that sex/self-pleasure was morally corrupt, sinful and evil.
Perhaps Female Sexual Dysfunction is the modern-day equivalent to the Victorian Hysteric Woman. Perhaps in the same way that "hysteria" was invented to regulate/control and limit women, so to is too is FSD. The pharmaceutical companies race to find the next female viagra, is a clear example of their power in producing and perpetuating new definitions of "normal". Perhaps instead of a pill to create a blood-flow to the clit, women should be told to go squat over a friggin hand mirror, and figure it out where it even is. (we're not taught to explore, know or love those part of our bodies...and i think this is seriously the leading cause of this alleged diagnosis, NOT hormones) Instead of expecting a pill to increase libido/desire, maybe they should focus on pressuring the school-system to adjust their sexual education programs, to teach females to be empowered sexual agents and give them permission to actually HAVE a damn libido. Maybe we should stop lying to our women about their "natural" sexual passivity--maybe we should stop normalizing men's sexual appetite by giving them uncritical permission to be horny sexual-beings, because of their "nature", while regulating, sensationalizing or stimitizing libidous-women. Maybe we should question the next time we see male-masturbation as a normal, healthy part of coming-of-age, and female masturbation as inappropriate or non-existent. SERIOUSLY. As far as we've come as a "sexed obsessed culture", we're still deeply entrenched in the sex-negative ideals of our history. I believe 100% that the remnants of guilt/shame produced by religion, essentialist-science, abstinence sex-education, body-image-insecurities, high rates of sexual/physical abuse (1 in 6 women) and history, are the the leading reason why "40% of women can't climax regularly", not some invented Sexual Disorder.

The real cure? A cultural shift that teaches our women to love, appreciate, know, explore and celebrate their bodies, especially their vaginas. Without guilt, shame, insecurity or fear. To live and advocate for a more expansive understanding of sexuality-- one that affirms the complexities of desire as relative, flexible and fluid. (not merely hormonal) To shift away from our societal obsession with the coital imperative and instead define and experience intimate pleasure as something that extends beyond orgasm. To love and advocate for a world that seeks to create egalitarian and consensual sexual relationships between women and their partners. (a world that does not use sex as violence/power/or punishment, through rape) For men and women and everyone in between or beyond those categories, to be seen and honoured as equally sexual-creatures.

There. That felt good. It's nice to beable to rant again.