For the uninitiated, childbirth is nothing like you think, for the very reason that you are attempting to think, to imagine, what it is like. The actuality is, in childbirth, there is no think. Only do.
There is only one truth.
I shall give birth to a child,
truth driving outward from my inwardness.
Neither good nor bad; real, no sham about it.
With the first labor pains,
suddenly the sun goes pale.
The indifferent world goes strangely calm.
I am alone.
It is alone I am.
— Akiko Yosano, “Labor Pains”
Before the antibiotics and antiseptic procedures of the…
A liquid jewel/held in the sacred chalice/upon which rests/the pierced spoon — Peggy Amond, “Rimbaud’s Poison”, 1998
. . . I love preparing it in the spoon, drawing it up into the needle, putting the tourniquet on. Sliding it into my vein. i love that part. . . — anonymous heroin user
Some days I enjoy the act of brewing more than drinking the coffee.— anonymous coffee lover
Absinthe, heroin, coffee. The substances vary, but in one way they’re exactly the same. The preparation is nearly as intoxicating as the drug itself.
Standing on his deck on a late summer afternoon, the physicist Alan Lightman had an unexpected encounter.
Two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time. . . . All summer long, they had watched me on the deck as I watched them. . . . On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed.
. . . something held me to my ground. When they were within twenty feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away.
But before that dazzling and…
A quest is a journey in the course of which one advances spiritually and mentally, as well as physically travelling miles. . . . It is an excellent plot device and ideally everyone’s life should have a plot. — Robert Irwin, author of Memoirs of a Dervish
Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Musashi, Frodo, Dorothy, Arya Stark . . . the list of epic questers is long — and so too their journeys.
Quests have a special resonance in times of peril. We are compelled indoors. Entertainments that range far inspire the cloistered. …
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. — Attributed to Joseph Campbell
Stay-at-home guidance may be enforcing a different, more subtle kind of togetherness, one that we’re not even aware of. This is entrainment, an incredible physical and physiological mechanism that sees the rhythmical synching of two different entities.
The artist Phan V demonstrated it in action in a gallery exhibition. Here pairs of visitors entered a darkened room, holding stethoscopes to their hearts. The beats were transformed into bars of light, projected onto a screen…
To this crib I always took my doll. Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. — Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
In times of confinement, focus and care given to restoring an old thing is a special form of therapy. Renewal is hope, and improving a material thing brings a surprisingly deep-seated sense of accomplishment.
In less challenging times we give lip service to the virtues of thrift, sustainability, and resourcefulness in making a repair…
The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice;
talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender . . . ― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
The current situation sees us all swiping, swiffing, and swabbing like never before. But within the shelter of home, one can only spic ‘n’ span so often, before it begins to feel OCD.
If, as Henry Ward Beecher once said, “the art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things,” then a slightly chiller attitude toward household chores is a good place to start.
Are Valentine’s Day Flowers the Apex Seducers?
Come Valentine’s Day, US buyers will give and get some 250 million roses, on this the busiest day of the year for the floral industry.
Flowers and lovers are natural allies. So is a beautiful bouquet just a means to a romantic end? The hidden annals of flower sex say otherwise. These tales from the hothouse make it clear: we’re all getting played. Flowers are the ultimate stemmes fatales.
Hey Honeybunch
Consider this rite of spring, as told by Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God:
She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into…
how to turn a liability into an asset
Man does my mouth run on. It’s weird for an introvert, but there you have it — my gums flap faster than my better judgement can keep up. So I gaffe. A lot.
Recent example — when with a crowd of friends, talking about shared history, I said brightly to one: “we’re dinosaurs!”
Instantly, I regretted it. This woman is vibrant, attractive, chic. Being likened to a stegosaurus is nowhere near the top of anyone’s wish list for positive self esteem. Cringe.
Another time — ok, later the same day — I…
Christa Menegas
Author and creator of primal-pleasures.com — all-natural ways to use instincts, inklings, and our animal nature to hit refresh.
