Soft.

I'm in my last few days as a 28 year old. In my mind, it was the year I was supposed to have a baby; and my entire being is telling me to do that (thanks hormones) because mum had me at 28 and nana had her at 28. New chapters in the family line. So, to kind of combat this strange maternal feeling I came up with a plan, maybe someone can tell me what's going to happen in my life so I don't have to worry so much about designing it. I went to see a woman whose most appropriate descriptor would be 'intuitive' (or psychic). The thrill of sitting with a 72yr old from Florence in a tiny room of her home, incense streaming directly into my sinuses was the perfect way to spend an evening. She told me that I was going to have a son and that I didn't die in a car accident in 2017 because I was meant to come back and write a book. A book to be precise, about my childhood. I was bemused because I have this very strange ability to remember moments in time with extreme intricacy, it's stunning. At the same time, I have entire multi year black out periods where I have no memory of anything that occurred. I don't remember where we lived or who my friends were or where I sat on the bus- I suppose I was just living like a regular kid. So someone telling me to write about my childhood seemed odd. Especially considering it might result in just a bunch of short stories about building grass floor plans of my dream house with the clippings from the lawnmower and a series of unfortunate sleepwalking events. What I do remember vividly was my thirst for new words. I had favourite words, and I would ask other people their favourite words. I would request the answer from practically everyone I talked to because I was convinced the words they chose were a reflection of their inside self. Here are mine; allow 8 year old me bring you back to the year 2000 when the world hadn't ended like everyone thought and the only thing your computer did was play solitaire. Package Tropical Facetious Exhilarating *Mango made a brief appearance on the list but once I tasted one it was stricken off, never to return. I think words have a fantastic way of bridging the gap between the emotive/inner world and the tangible/outer world. I almost wrote the 'real world' there but I think that would be an untruth to say that the emotional world is not the real one. It certainly feels the realest to me. I know there are a lot of words missing from the English language that other languages do possess. Strongly emotive strings of letters designed to really get deep in there and describe the feels. But we are quite simplistic in this language (so much so that we use the same word with 5 different meanings, could we not think of more sounds?). Somehow, poetry is born from our little pool. Songs come out of it. Vows, speeches, endings, beginnings; all with the word in all its forms. Here is a poem that I truly believe is an example of how words can make magic. My friend wrote this on paper for me when I left to move overseas and it lives in my wallet to this day. Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things. I mean honestly, Mary. You're a magician. What I love most about this poem is that I can see exactly what she's describing, it's almost to me like watching a movie. At the start I'm getting all these visual metaphors about not having to break your back exercising all the time, not having to do the most every day, not needing to give so much of yourself to others that there is nothing left for you. She's reminding us, that we can just let the soft animal of our bodies love what they love. I relax when I read that, don't you? Permission. Maybe I'll feel even more impassioned about loving what I love when I'm on the precipice of turning 30 but leaving 28 feels so big and scary whilst simultaneously feeling much more grounded and calm. I know myself well enough now to go through daily life with a direction and purpose set by me, not by others. It's comforting beyond belief from the hectic confusion of being a teenager. Writing and reading and listening to words helps me every day to remember that everything that is meant for me will unfold in the right time. A short one for today ceremony tribe. Go and find a poem you love, write it out, chuck it on the fridge with that magnet your aunty brought you back from her overseas trip and then do whatever it is that you love. No rush, time isn't real anyway... M

Here's me as a kid. Clearly I did have the exact 'soft body' that Mary Oliver describes haha Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.