ONE
A beautiful, sunny, spring day. Elsie and I sit outside to listen to the breeding birds and the big bumblebees buzzing. Then ROAR. Our neighbour's lawn mower. Elsie cries at the intrusion.

TWO
"Is she good?" Countless, countless times I'm asked this question about Elsie. They mean does she cry. Yes, she expresses herself. We have managed to avoid teaching her to stuff her feelings down. We want her to know that we know that the only way she has of expressing herself (the difficult feelings) is through crying. And that is fine and good. She may cry due to hunger (although I try to feed her before she resorts to crying), but mainly she cries due to pent-up tensions relating to learning new things, seeing new places and people, becoming frustrated by her powerlessness and inability to do everything she wants to do. We get frustrated by those things too but instead of having a good cry about it, we tend to push our feelings down in a myriad of ways: eating, sleeping, smoking, drinking, TV, Internet, bitterness, cynicism, hurting others ... and more!

So, yes, she is very good. She was born that way. You are very good too. You just behave in not-so-good ways (as I do) because you've been hurt (as I have been) and these are your coping mechanisms (and mine).

I went to see Age of Stupid and wish everybody would go, well UK anyway so far.

People who've seen it mostly think it's great, and I've been puzzled by fellow environmentalists who don't want to. Preaching to the converted they say, as if there was a divide. 

But it's a continuum. At one end Clarkson and the guy from AoS setting up a cheap airline in India who wants everybody to be able to fly. At the other maybe some perfect person chained to a power station and living on leaves. But most of us in the middle somewhere. The woman in AoS celebrating defeating a windfarm proposal, who asked if she is worried about climate change says Yes of course we are, nervous smile, becoming uncertain. You. Me.

Environmentalists are often stereotyped as negative, against, angry.  Is this fair? Do we look up at the stars or down at the mud? (And anyway I like mud)

yes
the last couple of months
have been much easier
energy-wise
and the development
WOW

this human's personality
her complete trust
love
zestful attitude

so
i had a girl
what does this mean?
what does this mean?
it freaks me out:
a girl!

a female! a woman!
all my feminist spirituality
runs from my mind and i come up with a blank

something about power
and self-esteem
and self-confidence
and body image
and and and

wow
a girl, a female
how cool is that?
(i try not to panic)

and on top of that
james lovelock this morning
how can he go on national radio
(and all the other media he's said this to)
and say that by 2100
there will only be 1 billion people left on earth?
how can he say that and not cry?
how can it be okay that he says that and the presenters don't cry?
how can it be that we let something like that be said
without giving the listeners time to process it
cry
think
cry
think
then act?

p.s. fellow ice seeds bloggers: i promise not to blog for a week after you've blogged something. :)

some random thoughts in a rare free moment...

breastfeeding my daughter
apologies for poem like
no caps
version

she takes breaks
to look up at me and smile
no feeling like it in the world

this will probably serve
as a table of contents
for future entries

i want to tell you about
being pregnant
and the mind-body disconnect

being in labour
and the torture
of the first stage
my arrogance and complacency

being in labour
and the utter empowerment
of the second stage
22 minutes

the conspiracy of silence
it must be
of the early days
of motherhood

of exhaustion of a new order
even given cfs/me
yet
the unbelievable resilience
of each new day

not believing it's possible
that i have a daughter
and
there is a black first family

must be some kind of alternate universe

I've been thinking how to talk about disagreeing. Arguing. Criticising. Guilt tripping.