Historically, I’ve found it hard to identify what I want. I think many would agree this is a common affliction among women, in particular, and maybe among modern humans at large: so vast is our spread of options, and so disembodied have we become that we often don’t know where to begin.
Although, I’ve always felt myself to be less decisive, less clear, than other people. I’ve had flashes of brilliant clarity – like the moment I realised I needed to move from Melbourne to the Peninsula – and I’ve known, since I was very little, that I wanted to be a writer. But when it comes to goal-setting, for example, I’ve usually struggled to come up with specific goals, and any goals I do conjure feel loose and arbitrary. I’ve quietly wondered if I’m confused, content, or simply lacking in ambition.
Now, I’m pregnant, which has led me to an interesting place (as a side note, I was never 100 percent sure I wanted to have a baby; I just knew I wanted one more than I didn’t want one, so I leapt). The thing that surprised me about the first trimester was the unpredictability of it all: one day I felt fine; the next I would spend hours nauseous in bed. How do people manage this? I wondered. How does any pregnant person plan or commit to things? It’s chaos!
And then I had an epiphany. Pregnancy belongs to nature more than culture; it is primal; it brings us into contact with our animal selves in a way most of us are not accustomed to. The working world, the world of capitalism, exists in opposition to this. Because pregnancy is nature; it cannot be controlled. It is wild. It is bigger than everyday plans and meetings and deadlines. To resist it is like trying to reason with a storm.
My epiphany was helped along by these words from Lucinda McKimm, host of the fantastic Ready or Not podcast, in an interview I was editing for the Peninsula Hot Springs blog:
“In a society where capitalism still reigns supreme, I am deeply fascinated by what happens when the natural world (that is, growing and birthing a baby, no matter if science assisted the process or not) with the modern world (that is, a place powered by ego, where we assign our worth and purpose to what we do and how much money we earn). These two worlds are at complete odds with one another, and mums – in fact, parents in general – often find themselves existing in both.”
The only way to respond, I realised, is to surrender. To go with the flow. As a lover of Taoism, I thought I was already pretty good at this. Apparently not. There was another layer; a deeper layer of surrender; a false floor to tumble through.
Then came the next phase, which felt like a revelation. If I was to surrender, then instead of trying to work and hustle and keep everything churning along, I would do what I feel like doing. I would keep doing the work that comes to me, but in my spare time I would step into desire and deliciousness and delight. In the grand scheme of things, pregnancy is short; a brief voyage in the liminal space between the before time and the after time. I want to spend it exploring, in the words of Mary Oliver, what the “soft animal of my body” loves.
Like I said, I haven’t always been good at identifying what I want. So an idea came to me: I made a list of things I want to taste, feel, hear, see and smell. It was remarkably easy. And the things on the list were remarkably accessible: I wanted to hear jazz, rainfall, thunderstorms, wind-chimes, the wind through the poplar trees. I wanted to smell rose-scented oil and the spray of a mandarin. I wanted to feel sheepskin, a torrent of water, sand beneath my outstretched body. I wanted to eat yoghurt, dahl, ice cream. I wanted to see towering eucalypts, a gushing river, impressionist paintings. Boiled down to their essence like this, my desires were surprisingly simple.
Many of these items were already in my house. That’s where the idea for a Desire Picnic came in. I could gather them and lay them out on my lounge room floor: a mandarin, a sheepskin rug, a speaker playing the sound of storms.
And I could go out in search of these things. I might write more about this next time, but I’m re-doing The Artist’s Way at the moment, which is a 12-week program that involves lots of different tasks. The two ongoing tasks are Morning Pages (three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing every morning) and Artist Dates (a weekly date with yourself, and no one else, that excites your inner artist, or child). My list of wants gave me ample ideas for Artist Dates: trips to art galleries, rivers, beaches, eucalypt forests.
Dreaming up Artist Dates has usually been tricky for me, which I believe is a sign of being disconnected from your inner artist/child (meanwhile, I’m pretty good at sticking to the ritual of the Morning Pages). But writing out my desires in this simple, sensorial way gave me immediate access to that sometimes-difficult-to-reach part of myself. So did one of the tasks assigned in Week Two of The Artist’s Way: making a list of 20 things you enjoy doing. And then choosing two to do that week.
And when I took myself on an Artist Date to the city last week, where I frolicked around the Botanic Gardens, Smith Street and Lygon Street, I listened to jazz as I drove around the city drinking sparkling water (specifically, it was this Spotify playlist called ‘Jazz in the Rain’, which ticks two of my Desire Picnic boxes). My point is that writing down my desires helped me to recognise opportunities to engage with them in the course of my everyday life (to #romanticisemylife, if you will).
Now, I do want to say that a little part of me (an inner critic, I guess, or Freud’s superego) rears up sometimes in the midst of all this and shouts, ‘How indulgent!!!’ To that part I say, ‘So what? What’s wrong with indulgence?’ If we really want to get into it, the word ‘indulge’ comes from the Latin ‘indulgere’, meaning ‘give free rein to’ (how exciting! Like a runaway horse!), and means ‘treat with excessive kindness’ (who wouldn’t want to relate to ourselves in such a way??).
I have lots more to say about where I’m at and what I’m choosing to entangle myself with at the moment (it’s all so delicious!), but I’ll leave it there for today. The main thing I wanted to share was my discovery of the Desire Picnic. Try it! It’s easy! And quick! And free! Report back if you feel called.
Jane x