The Divine Is A Disco Ball.

In defence of some healthy hedonism.

Open Heart Surgery is a newsletter devoted to exploring metamorphosis, unravelling, questioning and healing. I write essays and poems in service to personal and collective liberation - the personal, political, social, cultural and spiritual realms are all present here. This is a space for divergent thinking and open hearts.

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Good evening from Melbourne.

I wrote this piece today on a Monday morning in my friend’s bathtub as I digested a whirlwind of a week/past month. This was after spending my early morning at the hospital waiting for a scan of my very badly sprained ankle (thank goodness for reciprocal medical care between Australia and NZ). I am between deadlines and plans and messages and XYZ, and I am literally being forced to be horizontal for some days (I can’t walk).

The joke isn’t lost on me - last week was about three week’s worth of experiences and life and my body have both forced me to slow down. (By the way, the injury happened on the downhill, home-straight, 400 metres from the carpark/end of the hike, which is classic, not on the rock face we climbed or the ridge we crossed).

So! I am currently injured, unable to walk, editing photos/working/from bed, liaising one million catch-ups with all the humans I know and love in this city (every Kiwi now lives in Melbourne), yet very, very full. In a great way. My belly is full of all of the experiences I was unable to have during such a long ill and fallow season of my life, which was also spent largely in solitude.

I couldn’t imagine being able to hike last year. I couldn’t imagine travelling again to see the humans I adore. I couldn’t imagine having the capacity to socialise, or go out dancing and I sure as hell couldn’t envision having the desire or capacity to go on dates again. Having the energy or capacity to FLIRT?! A foreign concept.

I couldn’t imagine being well - physically, mentally, emotionally. When you’re down and under a long time, well - you’re down and under. There is no daylight. There is no guarantee of any other side. You’re just surviving. There are many different reasons and sets of circumstances that send a soul/mind/body to the underworld - my own are not special. But a reckoning is a reckoning is a reckoning.

Metamorphosis is something I will spend a lifetime describing.

So, my friends, even injured - I am still grateful - genuinely - for all the dancing and socialising and art and camping and hiking that last week entailed. My heart is full from all the time spent with my best friends, many of whom I had not seen properly in years.

Anyway, I have been contemplating hedonism lately, and how necessary it is if you are someone who was raised on austerity and discipline - this is a piece for all my fellow burnt-out over-achievers.

I wrote this as a poetic journal for myself and decided to share it tonight because I love reading candid writing. Perhaps you resonate, or perhaps this is not your disco season - may it serve as a reminder that all seasons are temporary.

May we survive the winters, spin the pain into gold and dance through summers where the living feels a little easier.

I am well aware, my friend, that this too shall pass.

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The Divine Is A Disco Ball.

(In defence of some healthy hedonism).

Last week was a dance floor

And I, a pair of tasselled, disco, rhinestone-studded cowboy boots.

Welcome back to the rodeo.

I could’ve said no to more things,

But I’m a ride-the-highs of-life kind of girl,

Even post chronic fatigue.

Look, when you’ve been down and underground and alone for the majority of 18 months, ill to the bones, wondering when your will to live will return again,

Wondering where your joy went -

You would too.

I’m out in the world again - I’m travelling to see best friends again -

I’m out of my hermitage and cabin (literally).

So,

I dressed in satin green suits, sauntered through gallery exhibitions of one of my favourite artists with a best friend, flirted online with strangers, did my makeup every day, went on a date, stayed over, went line dancing in white rhinestone-tasselled cowboy boots, stayed with more friends, worked, went to another rave, and then went straight to camping for the weekend without a beat for a breath.

And I hiked up rock faces and I marvelled at a new and different landscape and I saw an ex and I thought about how the years have changed me, and him, and the vastly different seasons we’re in,

and it was all bittersweet.

And I did pause, and thanked god for places with no reception, and we meditated, and saw amazing birds and snakes and slept outside and woke up to gentle wind song and birds chirping and forgot where our phones were and it was all rather wholesome

and sweet and strange,

An emotional cacophony.

Then I sprained my ankle,

As if my body and Mother Earth couldn’t resist reminding me

What rest is.

It’s funny though -

because I think there is a lot of healing to be found in hedonism.

I was raised on Discipline - on stoic, grit-your-teeth-and-don’t-complain, farm girl, Protestant work ethic.

We were all scholars and athletes, my siblings and I,

described as polite and earnest, hard-working and disciplined,

and my adolescence was far from indulgent.

My vision was always set on scholarships and topping classes I knew I could and being competitively great in every fucking thing I did.

I had no sense of being okay with mediocrity;

I had no off switch.

I was fit as a fiddle and smart as a whip and intent on proving myself to the world through achievement -

you can guess how large my failure complex is

any time I’ve ever broken down in my twenties.

And you know what?

Sometimes I need a hearty dose of hedonism.

I’m not reckless by nature - I’m a Virgo rising.

I’m a perfectionist who has always been high-achieving and ambitious.

Raving, inconsequential flirting, travel and socialising are the balance of my purist side -

Yes, I meditate and regularly research herbs and contemplate the health of my soul and my contribution to humanity, and the endless fucking problems that we’ve created and how oppressive the systems in which we reside are and how privileged I am etc. -

In my early twenties, I carried the weight of the entire fucking world and its injustices.

I’m not a “it’s not that deep” kind of girl - everything to me truly is that deep, at least in a felt sense -

So sometimes, sometimes,

I need to flip my own scripts.

I need to get out of my wonderfully busy head and sensitive heart

and hit the damn dance floor.

I feel a lot of pain here - my own and other people’s.

My skin is porous and my eyes are wide open -

And I was born like this.

Disassociation is a coping mechanism because it is hard to feel everything this intensely -

How do you think I got through my teens?

I used to be the girl that nobody ever saw cry,

now I’m a waterfall of emotions.

Now, I can hold space for them all.

But sometimes,

I need to actively pursue pleasure just to balance myself out.

I know that I can thoroughly winter and survive the cold

and I know that my life will be a continuous unravelling because I am an introspective human.

I know that more challenges lie ahead -

unforeseeable difficulties and death and the rest.

I know that suffering is a master teacher

if we can survive her austerity.

And Yes, I can still sit and find peace

in the stillness of it all -

I will practice this for life.

I will sit in temples and meditation halls

and I will sit in silence,

and I will sit with the depth of my pain and the pulsating intensity of my desires,

and I will sit with depression and despair and grief and anger,

and joy and hope and love,

and I will cry at the beauty of falling autumn leaves

and how sunlight sparkles through tree canopies.

But you know what?

Spring was a long time coming,

as were these summer fruits.

I’m sinking my teeth in.

God made music!

And I have ears to hear it!

These feet were made for dancing,

these hips designed for swinging, arms for swaying,

these lips were meant for singing

(and kissing).

For me, sometimes, sometimes,

the divine is a disco ball and a beat.

Welcome back to the rodeo -

they said.

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Below is a video from an outrageously fun disco line-dancing lesson/class last Wednesday that convinced me that I do, in fact, need to move to Melbourne.