Work from the Womb

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb 

~ Psalm 139:13

We begin this new journey of glimpses and reflections from life, with a thought provoking guest blog.

I am quite thrilled to introduce writer, poet, artist, and "new" pen friend, Silke Heiss. She is a gentle fellow mountain dweller and we formed a connection through our mutual passion for words and verse. We hop from boulder to boulder in a wide sparkling stream, finding gems and treasures - holding them up for each other to see.

Silke is a writer and artist, living and working in Hogsback, often collaboratively with her husband, the poet Norman Morrissey. She works as a professional editor and proof reader to help sustain her service to the muses. She has published poems, short stories, a verse novel and reviews in local journals and anthologies and has produced seven books of poems together with her husband. She compiles a monthly newsletter called "Give Your Writing the Edge". The journey of motherhood has given her insights into the creative process per se. (*More about Silke at the end of this post).

I received this guest blog while I was in hospital recently. In that stark, sterile environment, the keenness of her words reminded me of possibility and regeneration. The possibilities of life refreshed. Learning and creating from the deep, wondrous place of Truth.

"Mothering" is another aspect which features largely in both our lives. Silke writes from the "core" and gives us some gutsy and visceral, albeit tender impressions of her "Work from the Womb":

Work from the Womb ~ Silke Heiss

I had the privilege in January this year of settling my son into his university res, as he begins a new life phase. On my return to Hogsback, the following poem came to me:

Kept up
for Kai

When I fell
pregnant with you
I fell

into new makings -
poems would wake me,
I'd sit sewing sheets for your cradle

at dawn,
taken
with the life inside me:

you. I learned
my womb
where you lived for some time

is the place
of springs, of beginnings,
of growings and knowings -

like now:
I've taken your room
for my work,

am hatching a new baby book
while you're hatching yourself
as a student.

I've kept up, kept growing
thanks to you.
I guess that's what mothers must do.

The poem in many ways, clinches the essence of my life. Since as far back as I remember, there were two passions that ruled my soul - (1) the urge to bear children and (2) the urge to write, or, more broadly speaking, to create artistically.

I cannot claim to speak for all women in this regard. I know women who have neither of these urges, and I know many who have only the one, or the other. However, all women, whether mothers or not - possess (or have possessed) that organ of creative possibilities which I daresay influences us with a far subtler power than its obvious reproductive function would suggest.

Hysteria was diagnosed by the ancient Greeks as a dysfunction of the womb, a notion, which Sigmund Freud took up in his study of neuroses. I am neither ancient nor Greek, nor a medic or psychologist, but I do have a body's common sense and experience to say that it is only too easy to be possessed by the organs we are given - the mind being one of those, the womb being another. (Not to mention the heart!)

Being born privileged, it was perfectly natural that I be denied the choice of early motherhood. The question didn't even come up. I must get tertiary education. I did get tertiary education. But oh! Did my womb remonstrate, literally fighting against my privilege. Crazy. Hysterical. Neurotic. All those things was I, being denied the option of becoming a mother there and then. I got involved with sensitive caring boyfriends, who knew that my life would end if I fell pregnant. Patience? I did not know the meaning of the word, or at any rate, my womb did not.

I threw myself into writing creatively, compulsively. My studies were completed "on the side", so to speak. I decided never to have full time employment, because that would interfere with my motherhood as well as with my writing; in short with my Womb Work, which must come, if not right now then very soon. If it meant being poor, did I care? My womb hypnotised me: it was a trove of endless wealth. I muddled along by freelancing.

I married a man and prayed for a son exactly like him: soft spoken, dancing and with a sense of humour. Then I discovered I had married the wrong man: he was a Feminist. Horror! He did his best to save me from becoming pregnant. He was adamant that motherhood oppressed women. He hated my cleaning up after our puppies, pitied me for being a victim of ideology. I enrolled for a PhD, oh colourless fate, because what else was there to do? But hah! While I was diligently and submissively pursuing my research, my cunning womb blackmailed my husband: It used my tongue to tell him that it would get cancer if I did not have a child. To his credit he gave in and my PhD ended up being a baby; beautifully alive and kicking. Joy! I was 33.

In the mindless regimen of nappies and feeding and burping and napping, my creative activity gradually became more orderly. If you experience paradox, you are in the vicinity of truth, said a wise ancient Greek. (That's wisdom from the balls, if you ask me.) My baby taught me hard. It was terribly boring, often, to look after him. All my learning and privilege were of little use. The following poem came about six months after his birth. With its metaphor joining together the image of "stars in the daytime" with "my baby's face, his eyes" it provides me, and I hope you too, with a record of the miracle of existence in that almost otherworldly, yet utterly earth-bound space of close listening, watching, feeling, which a mother and her baby occupy willy-nilly:

Nothing

Nothing
fills my world.

It loosens my limbs,
opens my ears.

Nothing points
at stars in the daytime -

my baby's face,
his eyes.

Nothing silences all others
while I listen -

begin
to understand.

My baby helped me to see truths no academic modules could teach. Don't get me wrong, I am not criticising the wonders of education, I wouldn't even be here, writing this, without my education. If I had a daughter, I would never let her get away with NOT getting a decent education, preferably a formal one. That said, I would do my best to make sure that her womb be heard, that mysterious ocean that tides through a female body with the movement of the moon. Fact: even if we can describe and record its rhythms, the process is beyond measure.

Although the inconsiderate will of my womb was constrained, or delayed rather, by my education, that education nevertheless prepared me for this: to speak the womb's work, as I am trying to do now. And let's not forget that without Feminism, a piece such as this would be nigh impossible to publish. Credit where credit is due. Embrace complexity.

The sensitivity that is needed to stomach, never mind embrace, complexity, contradictions - that sensitivity is unimaginable for me without the awareness of my inner organs, without the tidings from my womb.

The following poem came about during my son's pre-school years, when I sometimes taught him and his friends to handle clay. Working with children provides exquisite insights into the numinous, into that mystery of the as yet unborn that is constantly wanting to become manifest through them. It provides beautiful experience of the gentle, pressing ambition of life itself, which I would hope the poem pays tribute to.

The child speaks

The child speaks
like a thought -
blurry, difficult to grasp.

The child makes a clay bird
or mouse
like thought -
wobbly, about to fall over,
half painted
in need of rescue or love.

The child is a thought
belonging there where things get being,
no one getting killed for real.

He tries to be proper,
slurring his words in his aim
to get that perfect snake
of a phrase or sentence,
which the adult has captured
without consciousness.

I see him be,
and speak, and make, and try
from within the brave child body,
that shy thought,
a willingness. A willingness.

I'd like to think you cannot but become deep and humble and glowing, if you create from the place where life naturally begins. Whether it is books or songs, laws or cupboards, houses or clothes, gardens or money you're making - get it with womb wisdom. Be ballswise, if you're a man. Get kicked, you feel it right inside, and that inside is well worth bearing in mind.

*More about Silke:

Find out more about her writerly activities and Give your Writing the Edge Newsletter by clicking Publisher: Give Your Writing the Edge Newsletter https://www.facebook.com/highriding
and
https://www.skambha-village.org/give-your-writing-the-edge/

She is a member of the Ecca Poets: https://eccapoets.blogspot.com

She also leads writing and walking workshops with her husband: https://hogsback.co.za/activities/hikuhikes.aspx

She is building up an Artists page:
https://www.facebook.com/HandsThatThink/

Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beautifulwritingartdesign

Safrea profile: http://www.safrea.co.za/profile/2740-Silke_Heiss