The nature of mud.

 

Mud was mud for touching and that’s just what you’ll do. One of these days this mud is going to be smeared all over you.

 

Mud blurs the lines. It's half paint and half sculpture, blurring the lines between a solid and a liquid since it’s half way between the two.  Depending upon how wet or dry it is, it can be more like a solid or more like a liquid. It’s not one or the other, it’s both. And that’s weird, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It also blurs the lines between dirty and clean because it's both clean and dirty at the same time because it stains your clothes and people pay to have mud facials and mud treatments to exfoliate and renew their skin. People pay for mud baths to draw out toxins and clean out their pores, and yet it’s one of the dirtiest things that can make you dirty that you can easily wash off your skin and make your skin feel and be clean. Skin gets clean from mud by “dirtying” it with clay-mud first, and then washing it off with water. It is magnetic properties stick to and draw out the heavy metal toxins from deep under our skin’s pores. That's real cleanliness. Mud even blur the lines between soap and food. Health food stores carry edible clay that is a dietary supplement because is it full of minerals. The one that I have says on the packet that all indigenous peoples have known the healing properties of clay and add it to water as a mineral supplement. In many places women crave clay when they are pregnant as the iron helps them give birth. So a dirty, clean, edible, soap? How weird is that? If you dirty your clothes with mud, chances are someone with laundry detergent will want to "clean them. And while mud may be one of the major underlying reasons behind the laundry detergent industry’s profits, mud’s true purpose is to touch the skin. Mud was made for touching and children in mud- most easily make this the most obvious. Children are better at exposing mud’s true purpose because they are not as good at hiding it. When two or more children are gathered in the name of mud through the sense of touch, the joy factor is increased exponentially. Younger ones will also always put it in their mouth and eat it too. That's that instinct thing, doing its own thing. Children will also instinctively make mud pies without being taught the recipe by adults. The fun generated by two children playing in mud is more than twice that of one child. Once you see a pack of wild children playing in mud, mud’s purpose becomes very clear. Mud was made for touching and that’s just what you’ll do, if you give yourself permission. Sooner or later the mud is gunna be smeared all over you. First you’ll want to touch it with you finger, then you’ll want to make a little blob and hold it in your hands. Often that’s as far as we go, but if a mud enabler (such as those who trained me and the hundreds that I've trained) is in our midst and gives us permission to go further and we do, then we”ll never regret it. Going further with mud is always viewed as the right decision, especially in hindsight, as is “going all the way.” By “going further” I mean like taking off your socks and shoes and stepping in the mud and feeling it squish between your toes, and by “going all the way” I mean everything, all the way up to rolling around in it, or lolling in it as they say. Lolling is really a real word that came before LOL, so yeah rolling and lolling and covering your whole body with it, and being buried or submerged in it -as in a mud bath-(depending upon how watery it is) and then of course the end of "all the way" is licking and ingesting some. In order for an adult or even a child to fully enjoy rolling and lolling around in mud, the weather needs to be hot or the mud needs to be warmed  up. Cold mud in the winter often compounds the discomfort of the winter cold, and this is where things get muddy. Just because some mud caused you discomfort in the winter doesn't mean that mud is uncomfortable. Cool mud during the hot summer time can be very comfortable and create great relief. Mud warmed by the hot summer sun is especially nice to lie in.  Mud warmed by geothermal activity is always a treat especially in the winter time. But the closest place I know for that around here is NZ. You don't want to get out. And that's why we sometimes  make made warm mud by pouring boiling water on it.  Rolling around like a pig in mud during the summer time (or warm mud in the winter time) is very soothing and it feels good. In this way mud blurs the lines between acceptable human behaviour and that of animals. Despite our best efforts to believe and act otherwise, humans are in fact animals, and so mud is our birthright- our Earthling birthright- and one that we have largely denied ourselves. In the right setting, mud can bring out the best in people. When two or more humans are gathered in mud there are greater feelings of equanimity towards each other because mud is an equaliser. Trying to pull rank when covered in mud feels awkward and unnatural. Most people, if given the right chance, in the right context will love touching mud. Once you touch mud it becomes obvious that mud was made for touching. If a sunset or a rainbow is eye candy, then mud is skin candy. Mud and skin go together like fresh fruits and taste buds, like flower nectar and our sense of smell, or like babies mouths and mothers nipples. Because of the many pleasure receptors in our skin and the large quantity of surface area of skin on the human body mud is also a joy conductor. it creates joy through the skin. and we're more skin that brains. And since touch is a bit more tangible than sight, skin candy is more measurable than eye candy and if you could touch and feel rainbows and sunsets then you would know what I’m talking about, but you can’t. And I’m not saying mud is better than rainbows or sunsets but I am saying that mud can cover all of your physical body whereas rainbows and sunsets can't.  

Now, judging by the way mud has been given a bad name and how much mud hatred or fear is out there, you would think that mud is the minority. And even if it was a minority which it's not, its not right to hate minorities. But mud is so the majority, outweighing humans by trillions. The amount of hate we would need to hate all the mud in the world is unfathomable and trying to hate it all would be ridiculous and exhausting. Since there is so much earth mud here on planet Earth, it is our Earthling duty to tap into our Earth-mud love - the one we had as an infant, fresh out of the muddy womb. The amount of subsoil that can be turned into mud is so huge that it’s safe to say that there is an unlimited amount of mud available for human consumption well into the long range future. These vast quantities of mud represent immense potential for increasing and expanding humanities’ capacity for fun and playful pleasure. Mud pits bring joy to humans in the same way that large bodies of water do-you can hear the very same kinds of giggling and shrieking with delight. And whereas real estate has "exclusivized" swimming in natural water bodies, (it’s often more expensive to live at the beach) mud can be enjoyed by everyone at all times and without the fear of drowning.

Mud also has a noticeable blurring effect on the spoken word of language. It makes people say words that aren’t rally words like in America there’s ewwwwww and in Australia there’s errhhh, and in other places there is also oooohhhh, and ahhhhhhh. Children all around the world do that high pitch squealing thing that adults cant do...eeeeee! Then you’ve got various words of varying validity that are used to describe mud which include  yuck, yucky, icky, ick, gooey, gloopy, gloppy, sloppy, squishy, squashy and whooohoooblee-hoobly-hah! Regardless of the words or non words that come out of people’s mouths, there is something about mud that people like, despite everything that our parents and our inner Fuddy Duddy’s told us about it and continue to tell us. No matter how much we are told to hate it, once we’re in it’s presence, all we can do is love it.  So c'mon down to the mud pit, 

coz we all put our hands up for you

and we raised em up vertically too

volunteered to show you a team that is strong

to show us how and what planet we belong

the name of it of course is the Earth right?

and as Earthlings we all have a birthright

to connect to the earth of the Earth right? 

coz when Earthlings are happy then the Earth sings

and mud pie instincts are worth rekindling

the fire the flames the rhythm of our heartbeats

our hands they make the heartfelt drum beats 

so come on down to the mud pit.

do a little dance let's cut it.

even our inner Fuddy Daddy loves it

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and we haven't even started talking about

what we can build with it yet. That's next.

First we must become one with our building material.

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Falling in love with and immersing yourself in your building material of choice makes the built structures more meaningful and filled with positive memories. Let the children show us how.