birth of a medicine drum

I don’t have any preconceived notions of what to expect as I drive to Terania Creek. As usual it is chaos to even leave the house. The ambivalence of itching to break free from the daily grind, but being pulled to stay by the familiar sloppy kisses and cute smiles.

The car is some kind of messy & slightly smelly utopia from the busy-ness of home and I’m enjoying the quiet so much that I don’t even consider putting any of my favourite music on. I feel kind of drunk from the silence. The rainforest here is so lush but there are pockets of arid bush and they unite ever so sweetly in botanical chaos. I stop along the way to shop roadside stalls; buying fresh bay leaves, bananas and a cucumber. As my little corolla slowly dusts up the gravel road I check my phone for the texted directions, but only loosely. I feel like I’m being pulled towards the address of this woman who I’ve never met before in this place that I’ve never been before.

There are beautiful creeks where turtles sun themselves on rocks. It feels easier to breathe here, even in the stifling humidity.

I turn off the road and up the long driveway I crawl, my spoiler grinding onto every uneven hole and puddle. I pass a house on the left that is under construction. There are no walls – although a relatively new drum kit is strategically positioned in the middle of the house. It has cracking views over the valley. I try to imagine the person who lives here and silently give respect to their prioritisation of musical creativity over actual walls.

And then I arrive at the house and I see her. Fire hair and smiling clear eyes waiting for me as I park my car.

She stands in front of her ramshackle off-the-grid house, deliciously rustic. Giant goannas dart around and her house faces deep into the still, still bush. As soon as I step foot onto the ground everything slows and I notice immediately that I need to drop down a gear. It is so darn quiet. And I realise its been a long time since I’ve been in such quiet.

We embrace and just briefly I feel like I’ve known her forever. Welcomed and embraced with a few belly laughs between us, we move towards the house, but not before she does a clearing on me with fresh gum leaves.

Here is the place where I slow right down.

As we step inside, a circle is laid on the hardwood floor. A red rug spread adorned with candles, cards, cushions, sound bowls and chimes. It feels earthy and feminine.

She welcomes me and I guess she tells me a little bit about what to expect. But not too much. It’s an organic process she says and it will unfold however it is supposed to. It is the feminine way. We drink tea and talk a lot. About babies, living and dead. About family, but more about the happiness and hardness that paints a family. We talk about our wounds, our shadows. I feel truly heard and held. No judgement, just heard. We sit together and when the silence creeps in it doesn’t feel awkward, it just feels magic.

After sitting in meditation I walk outside to pee behind a tree. A goanna runs off up the hill. Some folk say that goannas are a sign to remind us to follow our dreaming. And I smile at this because my dreaming literally brought me to this place, to this woman. For real! I literally dreamed of a man who taught me to make a drum and the next day this wonderful lady (randomly) contacted me. It is not the first time I’ve been led into a situation blindfolded by the subliminal messages of my dreams. This language of unconscious knowing is so unwavering and potent, that I honestly could never question it.

I’m back inside the house when she walks into the room carrying three deerskins. Your skin will choose you she says.

The big one is probably a male she tells me. Then she points out how the smaller skins have scratch marks where they’ve been mounted – that’s how to tell if they are female. I’m instantly attracted to the male skin and don’t have to deliberate much. It calls to me and I lean down to touch it, to investigate every part of it. I choose this one. Or it chooses me?

And so the process begins.

I lay down and close my eyes.

She speaks.

You are going to meet your deer now. And you are going to receive any messages that (he) may have for you.

And it feels like a very important time to listen. She picks up her drum and plays.

The drumming is like the sound of heartbeats and teardrops and screams and blessings and wind. It is fast then slow, slow then fast.

I let myself go and I let myself see. With closed eyes and open heart.

The deer’s message is clear to me in my journey. He calls me home. Its time to return to my homelands in the west, to touch its dirt and to hold ceremony for my long lost placenta, burned in a Perth district hospital years ago. When the message comes, I know it is right, but I try to question it anyway. The practical, pragmatic side of my self argues over whether its just nonsense to travel across the continent just to honour something so old, so… in the past. But I know deep in my bones that I need to go back sometime and sometime soon.

The drumming has stopped. I sit up.

Lets make your drum the woman tells me.

And I trace a big moon from the hide, gently cutting it away – my WOMB. And then I cut tiny holes around the circles edge. Next I cut out a centrepiece, effectively representing my CERVIX. And finally, a winding journey of cutting my CORD – all 12 metres of it so that it looks like oversized fettuccine. The whole process is revelation after revelation about my birth, the birth of my sons and most importantly… how I birth things in this world. The truth learned by the tactility of the task, the awkwardness I feel when I am cutting my womb, the hurriedness I feel to complete the task and the desperation I encounter to know that I’m doing it all the right way. I see it all and I have to relinquish the lot.

When I’m done, the hide is chopped up and laying all over the floor. I give thanks to the deer and I’m honoured to be breathing new life into his beautiful skin.

And then its time to soak the skin and so we walk outside to the bath tub laying underneath the sky and ceremoniously I lay the womb, cervix and cord into the water where they will spend the night.

||

I drive the wrong and slow way home, winding along the back roads through filtered light. A dead phone battery, dodgy front tyre and nothing but old misleading signs that direct me to Mullumbimby. My focus teeters between my overfull breasts leaking for my baby …. and the face of my deer.

||

The next morning when I arrive she reinstates to me that as we have had ceremony for our deer, drum and intention, today is work, and we have to get into it. For some reason, this excites me. I feel ready to be hands-on and to CREATE. This time, before entering the house, she conducts a sound clearing on me with her chime, which manages to sing through my bones even with its teeny tiny sound. We meditate again and afterwards my feet feel like they are in the earth again. I’m able to connect with myself and connect with nature so acutely.

We walk outside to the bathtub; leaves and dirt speckle the water’s surface and underneath is my soaking skin, swollen and sunken.

I collect the pieces of skin in my arms. Pieces of me. Pieces of my deer. Memories of my birth and the memories of my sons’ births. The patterns and similarities and ancestral lines. I hold them all and then place them to dry on my towel on the ground. It feels so sacred yet so tangible. I already love my drum, even though it is wet and floppy and laying in bits in front of me. I commit to breathe life into it, to work hard to make it taut, to make it beat like a happy heart and to give it a form it will take on forever.

So I get to work.

The process is pleasant and humorous yet gruelling and uncomfortable. But most of all it is revealing. There is no place to be unpresent. And there is nowhere to not see.

The woman watches and tells me to trust in the process. What if the cord breaks I ask? And she replies, yes - what if the cord breaks? And I’m reminded that we aren’t given guidelines and outlines for this life. It is not rehearsed and sometimes things we create will break and sometimes things will not go according to plan and if that happens then what will we do? Well we can choose. We can weep with despair at our broken cord or we can simply tie a knot or cut off loose ends and just keep going.

We can know only that we can never really know anything.

And there is much bending and stretching and needling and sewing and threading and pulling and more stretching and tightening. In between I pause to spray down the skin with water, keeping it wet and malleable. I take small breaks to walk outside and sip Echinacea tea and stretch my back and eyes. And back again I go, stretching and tightening and adjusting and pulling. My ‘cervix’ widening slowly but persistently. And then finally weaving and twisting. The hours actually feel like minutes and when it is close but not quite finished, I’m glad for a break to eat.

We sit on the deck eating our lunch staring out into the bush. Kookaburras and goannas and crickets are abuzz in the midday sun. We share stories about our birth sisters and tribe sisters. We connect humorously as mistaken zygotes.

We chat away, our words witnessed only by the birds and ants, and I notice that next to me is a small black cauldron and a straw broomstick, burnt at the end. And by the end of lunch I conclude that I’ve never really felt more at ease than in the presence of a witch.

And its time to finish the drum. So with some final tweaking, twisting and tying, it is mostly complete. As I notice the long cord hanging off it like lingering noodles, I remember the birth of my first son, cord wrapped around his tiny neck as he came out, choking him and turning him white. He was taken away from my embrace (to be given air) so soon and it made me panic. Those few minutes that I couldn’t hold him felt like years. Looking at the cord hanging off my drum, I decide to leave it on this time. Until it stops pulsating. Because …this time I can.

She shows me how to make a felt drum-beater (simply wrapping the felt around a stick and tapping it with a felting needle) and also then proceeds to show me her impressive collection of rattles and beaters. Driftwood, gum and hardwood pieces beautifully decorated with felt, hide and snakeskin, each one was a masterpiece. After I practice needling the felt I decide that I will spend some of my own time discovering the right piece of wood. I have a week before my drum is dry and ready to play, so this part I’m going to do in my home and in my own headspace. I feel like being in the arms of my lover and company of my babies right now.

Feeling so grateful for the time this magical lady has spent with me in this process.

I wave her goodbye as I saunter off back down the long dirt driveway. My drum is tucked up in the front seat with me and as I start the drive back home, a cracking storm is brewing. I wind down the windows and listen to its music.

Create a Drum Beater

Find a piece of wood that speaks to you she told me. From your palm to the inside of your elbow.

So I take off one afternoon and I know exactly where I’m going. I drive straight to the coast. The walk up the beach is windy but it clears my head. After about 10 minutes of walking ankle deep in the pacific waters I veer off to the west into the ti-tree lake. I walk around, observing nature more than actually bothering to find my stick. Its so still here, reprieve from people and wind and noise. Today the lake is colourless to match the overcast skies. No deep ambers, just endless greys in the woods, clouds, sand.

And then I see it. A piece of not-so-glamorous melaleuca. Scrappy with paperbark. I pick it up and notice there are rivets that pretty much fit my handhold exactly. She’s nondescript but oozes potential. Something about this resonates with me so I take her home.

I arrive home on twilight and decide to clean her up straight away. I sit outside listening to frogs and smack mozzies as I tidy her up at each end with a handsaw. Then I give her a gentle sand down, being careful not to sand off her beautiful rivets.

When I finally lay down that moonlit night, I wrap the beautiful natural fibre felt and around my beautifully crafted stick. Inside the felt I insert some emu feathers that will sway with each beat. And then begins the process of felting. With a needle I spend my evening…tap tap tap…. It gets tighter and rounder and the process I complete in bed over 3 or so hours. It’s meditation and takes me away.

Outside the moon bursts at the seams and I fall asleep excited to know I play my drum tomorrow. It will be dried and ready.

||

My lover is at work. My son is at school. The baby is asleep.

In my cupboard I wake my sleeping drum…

The sound is soft and low and strong and it feels like home. Its ambiguous and ever-evolving, perhaps like a life. Perhaps like my life.

And each time I play, it pulls me to my centre and commands me into the moment. It grounds me and grounds those in its sphere. It stops the baby from crying and slows the hyper-aroused child to a halt. It exhales my anxiety and breathes in my personal power. I am proud to have breathed life into the deer once again. His death now honoured with art, music that will keep on creating and moving through sound and vibration.

Reminding me of the sacred.

Reminding me of death and rebirth.

Reminding me to listen to the subliminal whispers of my dreams.

Reminding me to follow my heart that beats like a drum.

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