hippy books for new parents

Elly and Jen are off soon
I was trying to think of books to recommend to them

all i can think of is ‘the continuum concept’ , by Jean Liedloff? or somebody
i’ve only read a couple of chapters of it, but it was very interesting, more anthropology than child rearing, how children are loved in amazon tribes, it had a great sense of wonder, basically it reckoned, babies should be carried everywhere and integrated into the natural rhythms of life, light and day, warmth and cold

I never read ‘spiritual midwifery’ by ina may gaskin, but it had some brilliant hilarious pictures of beardie hippy hill billies, all the women dressed like little house on the prairie

anyone any other suggestions?

first babes are a lovely miracle, but an obvious shell shock, what with the demise of the extended family and everybody only have friends about their own age, nobody has much a clue about babies nowadays
when we had Finn, i don’t think we even knew which way up to hold him, the gorgeous mewling scrap.
Sibéal was much easier, i employed the male survival tactic of accidentally sleeping through every and anything….

http://www.continuum-concept.org/cc_defined.html

dilly daydream

wet playtime. rats

has anybody had any groovy dreams?
one of my dreams, yonks ago, i dreamt that somehow the 2 sides of my brain were swapped over,
i woke up thinking that’s odd! reached out to get the glass of water, always on my bedside table
but somehow, instead of going left , went right and bomped my head on the wall.

Night mares, makes me think of teeth gnashing, sweat foaming white horses.
In the Czech language though Nightmares are called Nocni Moucha, Night moths, which i also like as it has the scarey fluttery, craving for light spirit
For a few years I got sorta Night Owls. Like when you startle wake and don’t sit up straight, but are rather Judo pinned to the mat, purely by the force of a thought.

when i was 21 I hitched up the east coast of australia, i got several huge 24 hour lifts from trucks. ozzie truck drivers are odd, flabby, cussing, hang dog depressed, but hey, they gave me a lift, so kindly too!
when the truckies eventually stop driving for half an hour, they eat steak, drink a couple of beers and pop a speed pill. as to make any money, they just have to keep driving.
Anyway we were driving overnight through the bush, i was sitting up in the passenger seat in the cab. half awake, half dozing. somehow subliminally I noticed a white shape drifting through the trees. like a ghost. waft swerving, shadowing alongside us.
Suddenly it was right in front of me. Smash. 50 miles an hour. the thing slammed into the windscreen, just there. the distance the computer screen is away from my face.
Yikes. I was totally shock awake.

dreamt of it for years after. I now think it must have been some sort of snowy owl, poor thing

Mr Softee

…and some old words to go with a curious picture
………..
…once in Thailand, I visited a Golden Buddhist Stupa, way up on a hill.
to get there I shared a Tuk Tuk (one of the big ones. Jeepney?) with a rowdy bunch of teenage monks,
they were off for rainy weather retreat (a bit like summer camp and National Service, far as I could work out).
Shaven haired, a uniform of saffron robes. mucking about, illicit sneaky smoking,
else headphones on, singing along with their walkmans.

A tranquil temple, amidst the fluttering pennants,
a few wild monkeys flinging themselves about.
A giant, languid reclining Buddha, eyes closed in snooze bliss.
Big spinning prayer wheels. Thanka devotional paintings.
Rows and rows of lotus positioned deities, many under dust covers, like shrink wrapped production line Buddhas.
A view out across the jungle, vista of steam heat and trees…

Sunset, the place shutting up for the day, on my way out, a young ice cream seller called me over.
He was on a bike with a big box of lollies balanced on the front pannier, lawks knows how he pedalled up that hill!
Off home, he gestured I should hop up in front of him.
away we wobbled, free wheelin’, speedy whooshin’ turn and turn about the bends,
the sticky fug of tropics, cooled by the breeze of our own passing. yippee! (that and my ice cream numbed bum! the goose that laid the golden egg. Fab)

Spiralling, helter skelter, giddy reel, down and round, round and down. past the trees.

When we got down i bought an ice cream

sofa so good

all this talk of sofas……….

once when i was hitch hiking to Edinburgh, i dug out an empty Rice Crispies box and a marker pen
for to write my sign: Edinborough (frightfully middle class!), for some reason all the letters didn’t seem to fit, malice a lack of forethought, so my writing got tinier and teensier towards the end… and angled upwards!

………..
I got stuck by the roadside somewhere outside Newcastle.
Eventually a large white van pulled over. 3 oddballs in bobble hats.
pleasant fellows, no room up front with them, they said hop in the back. so I did.
Opening up the back of the van, plonk in the middle, there was a sofa, with a standing lamp besides it.
A proper living room!
Complete even with 3 ceramic ducks, arranged flying across the side wall

One of their friends, more bobble hat action, was sitting on the couch he said ‘we’re off hunting for mushies…. fancy coming?’

desk move ceiling

How does everybody like their new office seats?
mines grand, admittedly only a short crabwise shuffle 5 yards to the right from my last place.
wilderbeest to the water hole, bit of a trample path, but has residual good vibes from all the people who have ever sat here before
The best bit is the enormous skylight, directly above.
I feel like i’m going to be alien abducted by a bright shining light. Else I shall float, drift above to frolic with the angels. thinking about it, those may well be the same things!
the skylight is complete with a little door. the giraffes broom cupboard?!
I could bounce up there?
I spent much of the weekend on a bouncy castle, yippee, boing, boing, stop to cough. splutter.
they’re brill, you can make like wrestlings giant haystacks, roar and hurl the kids harmless wreckless against the wall
………
……… What i meant to say though, was that once i was up in scotland for new year, a party in a house with a very narrow corridor, wedge yer bum against one wall, brace legs against the other, then shimmy squirm upwards.
3 of us sitting above, there, where the helium ballooons roam, each with a beer (80 shilling? pint of heavy?!)
noses pressed against the plaster ceiling rose.
life imitiating a Lionel Richie song ‘oooh oooh dancing on the ceiling!’

one word

lawks and lordy, just a single word?! Flounder Fluster. Dear Brain Derr Brain, surely it can’t be that impossible?

I nearly always stop to talk to Market researchers and TV reporters, a regrettable weakness, i always tell people it’s because of my time interviewing Ozzie Grannies in the supermarket suburbs of Sydney. ‘G’day, so you think processed cheese slices taste of plastic? Is that before or after you take the wrapper off?’
Actually I really like market researchers, because people asking me questions, sends me into a very fuzzy, entirely pleasant hypnotic trance.
And they usually give you a free ice cream at the end of it!

Anyway couple of years ago, i was crossing the pavilion gardens, returning to work from a tranquil hour of Buddhist meditation.
I was pounced upon by a camera crew and an attractive presenter.
She asked ‘excuse me, kind sir. Could you give us one word to sum up Brighton?’
‘errr ummm, errr’, the mermaids by the pier, the rounded domes of the pavilion. look direct at camera. blurt out.
‘Voluptuous!’

can anyone suggest a word i should have said?