misplaced mama

five whole months of fullness.  i have been trying to get these images up for days, but the time it takes me to actually sit down at the computer other than a quick email check, logging on to my bank to see how broke we are, and maybe jotting down a bit of journaly type stuff seems to escape me.  it takes too damn long to download photos and then upload them and then insert them where they need to go.  am i doing something wrong?  or are people patient and i am not? i wish i had a personal assistant who could this kind of shit for me.  i like scissors, glue, paper.  i can make one fabulous collage by hand; painstakingly cutting and pasting for hours. but this compterized deal makes me spin.  how i am feeling right now is that I would like to never have to l og on to this wild web of illusions and time swippers. i would like all the totally fabulous writers and beautiful people i know with blogs to send me paper versions of their creation.  i would love it if i only had to get online to shop. i do love to internet shop. not sure if it’s the high in finding totally unique things and then buying them with a click or if i like the actual receiveing of those things via the real mail. my life is simple; a knock on the door from the postman with a package is pure ecstacy.

these shots tell me how time wizzes buy, like the dragonflies down by the banks of the water.  you catch moments, glimpses, and then zzzzzzzip; gone. with only the memory of the color; irredescent and luminescent, shades of oranges, blues and reds.  i mean it seems like yesterday i was smiling with my little belly a secret to the world, keeping the fact that life was bursting inside only inside.  it seems like yesterday i could still fit into my jeans and do twists.  it seems like yesterday i was waiting for sula to be born.  for mia to be born. wasn’t it just yesterday that my kids were only a fleeting thought, an idea that someday, maybe, if i was lucky, i would get them?

this will be the first pregnancy-time i have really take photos of my belly self.  i never did it with the other two. but because it’s the last, I am trying to keep those glimpses close by, hold the color and the wings of beauty right near my eyes so ii won’t ever forget. regardless if i feel huge, or hot, or tired.  i pat my body-knowledgee full on it’s back, it knows what to do to grow this life.  even if it means getting pregnant everywhere from my ass to my earlobes, and i truly do.  writing just this reminds me of the time i was wondering around a reagge festival in long beach, ca.  bill and i went up to a vendor, he was belizian as i recall, and he could not stop staring at my bare belly with the biggest grin ever.  pointing at my baby bump, he looked at bill and said in very thick patois: a real mon do dat. a real mon do dat.  Well a real womon do dat, too.  I am proud of my inner-wise creatix who knows exactly how to form me to make precious space for this child. large or small, it’s perfect.

I am full, five months, five full moons (this is how the girls and i keep track of when the baby will come; they get moons they can see, not dates they know nothing of yet) of baby.  i have dove deep in these waters, i wade through these moments, splashing between not wanting to feel so much and feeling total  completeness in my range; the good, the bad; the ugly. i am raw in pregnancy.  i am open to all my creatures, the horned and fanged ones that teach me through pain and stress and the ones with angelic silouettes that gift me wisdom through ecstatic pleasures.  the rawness of it all, i do love and embrace.  there is never a more palpable me; this baby is allowing me to feel and choose who i need to be right now.  while lives inside i see an array of choices, these inevitable changes that i am asked to make to become a new person.  sometimes this feels uncomfortable and hard.  sometimes it feels really easy and graceful. i just know that these shifts of being are to slowly mold me into mother of this child.  I am to become someone this child needs on earth.  to imagine; i am already the mother of two different people, each one of them needing intricately different mamas at different times.  and yet another person, right now, is teaching me what they need, what i need to learn to serve them.  i never knew a human was capable of wearing so many different faces of love. it is overwhelming and beautiful what we are capable of.  we can all love so much in so many different ways.  it makes me realize there is not type of person we can’t become to show love to every person that walks on this earth.  we can all open up to that unconditional part of our heart that erases what we know and fills us with no other knowledge but love. we can have no enermy or oppostion then.  that is miraculous.

these were all morning shots.  we sat outside. i drank cold nettle and mint  tea filled up with more agave nectar than  nettle while the girls guzzled down apple juice with ice and mint, a treat for this hotter than hot morning. we watched the sun rise up high enough to create light and shadow and felt the dry heat swell above and through us.  i’m sick of this heat, my mia says.  my mind jumps to judge: why does she sound so negative?  then i am smashed in the face with who she is echoing.  i won’t mention names but lets just say the voice sounded way too close to home.  i make a note to stop complaining about Grandfather Sun.  but embrace His light and heat. to try and  drive with the windows down.  to go sweat at the park and choose a non-shady spot and smile all the while. even in it’s extreme and exessive brightness and temperature here, it still should be revered and celebrated.  we could not live without it’s ancient light and energy.

mia is excited to take my personal photographer this morning.  i told her that was the plan and she got very giddy.  i decided not to brush my hair or anything.  i did put clean clothes on for a change, but since my laundry is backed -up so badly, they are clothes that do not fit anymore.  she wanted me to wear her play silks, but i am not ready for that kind of exposure yet.  mia handles the camera well.  she is careful and has a steady hand for an almost 4 year old. she knew how to angle the camera to get all of me in, tilting up ever so slightly.  i appreciate that she chops off my head, though. i don’t like to give my eyes away often.

she asked me to do some yoga so i pretended to prepared to go into a backbend (this is not the safe way to start).  which i eventually did do for her, without warming up (ouch).  she got a good photo of me in wheel,  but the yoga police may come after me for backbending at 20 weeks, so i won’t post it.  personally, i know baby likes to be aiming up high.

she actually asked me to pose like a princess.  not sure if she got the moment she wanted, but i did my best for her. princess with aching back from folding in half backwards, perhaps.

it’s funny, even with my own daughter taking the photos, i was self conscious.  i so do not feel right posing (unless i am in my panties and drunk with my husband ) so i took over the camera and snapped a few of me on my own.  much more fun and i felt much more at ease.

reflections….. 

rock n roll.

and i must end with the my attempt to allure with f-me eyes and totally stinky, hairy armpits.  

today has been a darker one in the midst of record high heat. i am too drained with emotion that i can’t even bring myself to hit shift so i can type in caps.  yes, that drained.  i can feel the moods of the Earth; the fires on sacred lands, the quakes, the floods.  like Her, I want to revolt and have a totally devastating outburst.  scream fire and shake until the ground cracks.  like i said, being pregnant makes me slither like a serpant at times, low, low to the ground, catching dirty moments from the underside. then i rise a bit and fly; like a phoenix, i love for the burn, but i have to stay down here once in a while to earn my wings. this is just today. and instead of causing earthly disasters, after dinner, we found perfect drumsticks within our drawer full of take-out chop-sticks and each of us pounded every surface in our living and dining area for a good 1/2 hour.  wood, glass, ceramic, books, nothing was saved from our tribal rhythms.  we had a drum session that could wake the dead.  i think i pounded those demons out and then i drank a jamaican ginger beer and burned lots of sage.