Posts Tagged cycles
Surfing the Waves of Emotion and Physiology
Posted by Marisa Black in body, bodylove, menstruation, sex on February 5, 2012
Red Balloon by Paul Klee, 1922. US Public Domain.
[cross-posted here]
The pressure builds slowly, sometimes imperceptibly. I can almost forget about it. But at a certain point, the tautness can no longer be overlooked or dismissed. Lately I’ve conceived of this mounting pressure as a balloon filling, slowly at first, and gaining momentum as the weeks pass. By the end, before my balloon releases, the pressure demands notice, requires my attention.
One of my earliest posts here and on Dodson and Ross was an attempt to earnestly and poetically express my feelings about my menstrual period. As a new blogger, I remember being rattled by the comment thread at D&R that followed, and have generally avoided the topic since. Of course I don’t want to reduce women and the female experience to hormones and menstruation. But to deny its impact on my life, inner and outer, would be disingenuous, especially as it relates to my sex and sexuality.
Marking the Darkness, Marking the Light
Posted by Marisa Black in identity on December 23, 2011
[cross-posted here]
Tonight I’m relishing a sensation. It’s deeply rooted in my gut, the same place where the echoes of my orgasm reverberate in the bowl of my belly. Tonight’s feeling isn’t from orgasm. It is similar, however, being primal, older than language, shimmering under the surface of words.
Sometimes this feeling is fierce and comes like a jolt in my loins. Other times it is soft and languid, comfortable. Most often this belly-based feeling is familiar, in an elusive, smoky way. It carries with it the sense of ancient ways, of DNA linking backward and forward in time, a spiral that folds into and around itself, enveloping me in a cellular knowledge, outside my chattering brain.
Chronic Yeast Attached to Moving Target
Posted by Marisa Black in body, masturbation, sex on December 7, 2010
[Cross-posted here.]
My compulsion to remain silent about the chronic yeast infections and related malaise is strong. Nobody wants to hear about your broken pussy! the chorus chides in my head. Why not? Because it’s gross. And unpleasant. And not very sexy. And depressing. But so what? Life is sometimes gross, unpleasant, unsexy, and depressing. Carlin tells me it’s okay that I don’t have answers, so despite my preference for neatly wrapped happy endings, I’m squeezing out an update.
When I wrote about this in October, I was on the cusp of another month-long anti-candida regimen. The diet was restrictive. Some would say restrictive in the extreme, but it’s all a matter of perspective. The probiotic doses I took were hefty and expensive. The vaginal suppositories, luckily, were tapered. I was not battling a run-of-the-mill yeast infection. I faced a demonic stank-producer that had taken up residence and needed some serious persuasion to vacate.
Fertilizing Fields
Posted by Marisa Black in body, menstruation on March 9, 2010
Photo by Pete Gaylard
(Cross-posted here.)
In my bloodcycle I feel the tides. Lunar gravity pulls at cellular fluid. My belly fills and flushes, ebbs and flows, expands, wrings itself out, renews and regenerates. In quietude, I feel the tug and sway, the cycle of life that extends out of my body, encasing me in a web that connects new life with compost, death with rebirth.
“It’s all about the blood,” Dr. Amy said. She was talking about hydrotherapy and the body’s cleansing systems. I nodded, thinking about my liver, but also thinking about this post and what my menstrual cycle means to me. It’s all about blood, yes. Blood and gravity.
For several years my goddess sisters and I met monthly. We gathered on full moons, later shifting to new moons, the time for starting over and setting intentions. We circled, we connected, we laughed and ate and cried and drank. Sometimes we spoke of red tents and ancient practices of fertilizing fields. We imagined the ways in which women/wombed-ones/wimmin/we-moon/womyn circled together in temporary huts, bleeding into the earth, nourishing the fields that literally fed the people. We spoke of cycle and return, of reciprocity, of knowing our bodies as powerful and connected and capable.
And yet, despite nostalgia, I still segregate the theory of my bloodcycle from my practice. I might wax poetic about the glorious benefits of cleansing through menstruation, but then plug myself up with a tampon or capture the crimson clots in a cup, holding it inside me.
I never let it loose. Christina’s tattered bloodtowel reminds me of a deep longing to release the flow and bleed out. Doing so may unleash all that has backed up for me creatively. The logs may become unjammed.
What my period means to me: The power of potential.
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