A Year Later

Still from Goshogaoka by Sharon Lockhart

Well. A year has passed. I have been taken away by regular life events: moving, new jobbing, parenting. Nothing terribly remarkable. I guess I need things like writing a public, electronic diary a lot less now. Understandably. Being a single parent of a strong-willed, energetic, and no longer fucking napping three-year old can take its toll. Starting a new academic job as a junior faculty at what feels like a senior age can preoccupy one's thoughts. And returning to the place of one's birth, after adamantly refusing to ever live here again (twice now!) can be hard to square. Not to mention a boyfriend that lives miles away, parents that live too close, and too few friends in a town that is at once foreign and hostile while nostalgically familiar in eerie ways.

A quick update: The rents here are insane. Being a professor does not, in this day and age, really pay the bills. Academia is competitive (duh!) It is hard to make new old friends. Certain cities overly influenced by certain industries can feel superficial and one gets damn sick and tired of plastic surgery billboards suggesting yearly subscriptions rather than one-off augmentations/reductions/suctions/injections. It can all feel like an uphill battle of mythic, Sisyphean proportions. BUT.

I have a tidy little office. I actually get to teach in a subject I love. Part of my job is to make films. And the kid and I have got our thing down. Songs that we both like, a few syncopated dance moves, a couple arts and crafts activities under our belt. The boyfriend is spectacular when he is around and when he is not, I get some much needed time to myself.

We are finding the rhythms of the days. That is not to say that in many ways it doesn't still feel like we are living in limbo. We'll need to attend a decent school eventually which means we'll need to find a new place to live. A new place we can afford. I really should sit down and have that much-needed conversation with my mom about why we never seem to get along. I am not sure a long-distance relationship where neither partner will be moving to the other partner's location is sustainable.

But we put our best foot forward. We take one day at a time. We stay calm and fill in the blank. We site all the cliches and more. And mostly, hardly, barely and sometimes, the wheels don't fall off. We do it anyway. We choose to believe in the momentary, fleeting sweetnesses that humble our day.

You

Charlie White, Lovingkindness

Tonight I found myself folding laundry while trying to watch Polanski's Venus in Furs, somewhat tricky as it also requires me to read subtitles. But such is the lot of the single mom who wants to indulge in film watching.

After a very mild and rather dry winter, it seems that spring has already sprung here in Mudville. And change, I can feel it, is underfoot. I may move, I may get some time off, I may get to live near someone I'd really like to. You know, when those first sprigs of jasmine start blooming, or the bulbs start pushing up, or the magnolias just stare at you about to open. And you know all hell is about to break loose? It's a heady time. One can't not feel hopeful and excited and a little bit tremulous. Age has taught me to be guarded, of course, the storm might just be around the corner, I might not get the job, the dude may not work out, but, but, there is a bounce in my step. Not just mine. The whole damn block. We are out and about. We are walking our dogs. We are stopping to chat just a little bit longer. Hell, I just put bird feed back in the feeder. The Christmas trees have been picked up by the city, the pine needles brushed away, and the lights packed up into tidy, brown boxes.

As for me, having options on the table suddenly makes me feel a bit drunk with it all. The last two and a half years of parenting have been miraculous, hard as hell, and, mostly, utterly exhausting. I still don't sleep through the night. I still stay up too late, greedy for the alone time. I still don't have time for anything except the most important daily tasks. Me, that who-I-am-ness, has shrunk to an alarmingly small space these last coupla years and I am eager and ready to stretch my wings a little. It's my turn to have something new.

And my little girl? She is alternately, to quote: really tall, or really little, depending on the mood. She is ready to ride her bike around block after block, or falling down crying when she gets the wrong nipple on the bottle. She says sorry a little more than I'd like. But, she is always game for an adventure. And. She now kisses my fingers when I stub them. She checks in with me, Are you happy now? when she knows I am not. She fucking recognizes letters! Hers, mine, and the one that looks like a snake. Those feelings of togetherness, of being a team, or Z and I taking on the world are with me in every breadth. And when she reaches for my hand to cross the street, I can't help but think, I got this little bear. I got you. Tooth and nail. Tooth. And. Nail.

Now We Are Two

Garden by Annie Leppala

To my 2-year old daughter,

Now you can give me directions. You can tell me where to sit, when to hold you, and, naturally, when to let go. When I ask you to do something, you may occasionally concede,  or you may renegotiate, or when it has to do with fruit, you will beg, borrow and steal, until you get your way.

The days are no longer long. They are exhausting. They are infuriating. They are pretty damn interesting.

We play games. We count to 10 but skip a few numbers. We make surprised and then grumpy faces. You run towards me and fall into my arms and then you run away.

You test me all day long. What will I do when you stick your hand in the coffee grinds? What will I do when you lie down on your stomach on the base ball field and lick the dirt? What will I do when you repeatedly kick the dog in your wellingtons?

You are beginning to prefer order. The napkin on the lap. The spot to be cleaned up. The yellow shirt over the blue one. Mama's fork. Zora's fork. You are making sense of this busy world and our place in it.

I appreciate that. Your struggle to learn. To name. To carve the lines between here and there, me and you. And it makes me sad, too. Because with every new knowledge acquisition there grows something more and more distinctly you and less about the blurry, messiness of us.

And still, our relationship, one could say, is deepening. The time we spend with each other feels not unlike the time of new lovers, eager to learn everything about the other in that no-stone-left-unturned kind of way. A time where we really do prefer each other's company to anyone else's. A shared intimacy of climbing over one another, rubbing noses together, and giggling a lot.

My love, there is space, too, here between us for more. And that is what I look forward to. In the years to come. As you become you and I, perhaps, become myself again. I look forward to reaching out towards you. Taking your hands. Showing you the things that make me sing from day to day or even, just that once in a lifetime moment. And learning what it is that does the same for you. I will wait. I will wait, my love. For what there is to come.

love,
mom

Something

A Portrait of the Writer's Offspring at Rest

There is something I can get into about that toddler energy: the mischief, the curiosity, the constant science experiment of pouring liquid from one vessel to another, the repetition, well, ok, maybe not the repetition. But the giggles, the hoots, the miracle of words, even the little tempests in the teapots that march around the house flailing themselves to the floor when you choose the wrong book (that was yesterday their favorite) for bedtime. I dunno. I feel like I get it. The frustration of the small body with large needs and little motor skills and immediate desires. I'd be throwing myself on the ground, too, if I couldn't figure out why the giant rocking horse could not be simply dragged up the stairs, through two doorways and over the living room rug that catches even as giant humans traipse over it.

My daughter has also discovered fear. Something that is my gentle introduction to the fact that I will not always be able to protect her. It is a hard thing for a parent to wrap their head around, especially when one has so all-encompassingly paid attention to every single moment of their waking life. Ok, not really. But beginning from those bouncy, baby years, as a parent, you are, like, on total suicide watch with the little tigers. One begins to feel sure by this point that you can pretty much protect them from anything. Because so far you have. You just, you know, have to never leave their side. But that leaving? It starts happening the moment they roll over and begin inching their way to the deliriously compelling and confounding world that is just beyond your embrace.

But the best? The best thing is staring into her face and her peering back with a huge toothy grin. No matter that she still has the irritating tendency to get over excited in moments like these and swat me in the face. Or wait, no, the best thing is when she makes her pretend frightened face and holds it til she gets the right reaction. Or how obsessed she is with that one illustration of an incidental horse on page 5 of Madeline. Or how she will stop everything the minute she hears a truck and run to the door. Or when she simply growls like a tiger. One cannot live with a toddler and not begin to learn a thing or two about pure, unadulterated joy. We take notes as parents from our children. And we learn how to relive our own lives as they do. These precious months–before insecurity, homework, peer pressure, and our own parental baggage take firm hold in their maturing bodies–teach us how to live in the ecstasy of the moment. The potential. The danger. The risk. And the reward.

The New Year's Shooting Stars

from Aleah Chapin's Aunties Project

Recently I have learned of the deaths of 2 separate friends' young sons, 7 and 8 respectively. Both out of nowhere. Both all of a sudden. I keep reading the obituaries over and over, trying to make sense of what actually happened, for I don't really know many details. And even harder still, I try to imagine the scale of loss for the parent. But it is, of course, unimaginable. I wake at night, feverish and parched, heart racing, mind spinning: this could happen to me. This could happen to me. And what if?

Life with my daughter speeds by. Moments fragile and extraordinary burst forth unexpected and brilliant and are as quickly eclipsed by other moments equally exhausting and banal in a life now revolving around cooking, cleaning, getting dressed, getting undressed, washing, wiping, folding. And still, my daughter, My daughter! can seem like a foreign phrase to my tongue. It is always amazing and I never stop pulling her close (while I can!) to kiss her cheek, neck, and tummy, until she wriggles away. Even if it is to ask for the same thing the millionth time that I will yet again have to decline her, the sound of an erupting Mommy!, makes me prideful, makes me dizzy, and also still makes me wonder if that is really me, if that is really who I am now.

She speaks. Doggy, horsey, bubbles, agua, mommy, daddy, shoes, apple, applesauce, bottle, yes, no, no, no! Her word for swing is wee. Her word for cat is neow. Every exploration, every science experiment, every test of physics, is a task jubilantly launched. I chase after her. As she keeps slipping away. And yet, I continue to let her try on and try out this dangerous world full of sharp corners, steep cliffs, and bottomless seas. For that is what life is, life to a child in particular, and were that we were as in love with the senses and the tactility and hum of the world that we thrust ourselves out there as brave and intrepid as they did, vibrating and rippling all the way. How ever does a parent give this to their child and protect them at the same time and forgive themselves for even the minor cuts and scrapes and bruises and missteps?

The new year began and we entered holding hands, jumping up and down, and ringing our noisemakers. She had no idea what all the fuss was about, but she gleefully participated. At the same holiday time, two mothers I know have lost their children. Two sets of parents mourn in utter shockgriefpainlossandconfusion. I don't know how to accept it. My tongue sits numb and thick in my mouth, my stomach sour and cramping. This could happen to any of us. It is a thought that cannot be completed. These shooting stars, remembered for their brightness, their brevity, their spectacular marks against the deep, dark sky, are gone.

Fall

Ron Mueck, Mother and Child

It is fall–and for some reason–this year, in California, it finally feels like we have a Fall. Everywhere the light spreads yellow and warm, the leaves dangle, juicy and red, and the wisteria pods on the front porch burst like movie theatre popcorn.

My daughter babbles now. Constantly. When we walk she points and speaks in her own patois, no less enchanted that none–or possibly–just not me, can comprehend her. We struggle to understand one another, her wildly gesticulating arms and nodding head, helping me to puzzle out her desires, one by one. To my delight, where are your shoes? might illicit some kind of response now. But, asking too much from her as in, What should we do right now? can grind the conversation to a screeching halt. Communication is evolving, albeit a slow and piecemeal process. And who doesn't love the sound and the wonder of their own child's chatter? That first recognizable new use of a word, no-o-se? No-o-se. No-o-se! Her thrill becomes my own.

In the absence of enough daylight to head to the playground when I come home from work, we spend a lot of time just milling around the neighborhood until night falls (early), and then milling around the house until bedtime. It's a kind of limbo that is a large part of what parenting seems to be thus far, being open to the exploration of anything and making play out of nothing. That is to say, existing somewhere between sheer boredom and a buddhist's style of absolute presence. I appreciate being able to see the world side by side hers: dowsed in a newness that sparkles like glitter. The joy that registers on her face over any number of the day's small surprises–a discovered stuffed animal or a jar with a lid–is absolute.

And I learn another kind of compromise about putting aside need, task, and agenda in exchange for exploration, creation, and repetition. We patiently wait for winter.

This is my new home.

How much can such a small heart hold?

print by Kenneth Patchen (a childhood favorite)

I have anywhere between 5 and 55 minutes to take a moment and reflect. The Sunday morning nap, appreciated by all is, nonetheless, unpredictable.

We are entering the toddler phase, my plump little baby girl, has stretched out, reached out, and hasn't stopped moving since she has begun walking. She marches around the house every morning like she owns the place–half surprised she even can, and half with the confidence of a drill sergeant. I hope no one ever gives this kid a whistle.

There are many things one gives up exchanges as a parent and one of those that has been besieging me lately, is just the constant distraction. My mind halves as I marvel at her maturity (she can actually get some of that food on the spoon into her mouth now) while calculating the risk assessment of letting her stumble around with said spoon in hand (low, considering the new benefits). Fear and hope. Anxiety and awe. She hasn't a care in the world, save that of the immediate, please don't put me in that car seat again. I am the one that carries with her all that yucky stuff in regards to causality.

But then there are the moments when her emerging independence appears starkly and suddenly and so completely, I am knocked off my feet. And I am proud. And I am something else, separate from her. Watching her. As we begin (already!) to grow apart.

Watching my daughter carrying a full bucket of water with such a focused look of determination and capability. My daughter! And that I hadn't known she could carry a bucket of water, hadn't really imagined it one way or another, but there she was the water dripping down its sides as she held fast the handle, lifting it high into the stream of sunlight. Maneuvering the bucket across the creek, never looking in my direction, and saw the person inside of her. And I knew her.

And what of her own emotions and cognizance? Everything new, everyday. The world a science experiment. Every object to be felt in the mouth. Every surface to be climbed. And then once mastered, to be repeated again. Every vessel to be emptied, some things to be thrown, and then others to be collected again. And her heart? Her tiny heart. Bursting with its own emotions. Pride: please, look at what I have done! Joy: A dog! Panic: where are you going? Fear: where are you going? Irritation: the car seat, really? Frustration: I keep stumbling over the objects I have just tossed! The 0-100 miles-per-hour roller coaster ride of her heart at maximum capacity. Does she know love? I know Freud would say no, as she doesn't even know she exists separate from me. But what does she feel/know/understand of the bond between us? What does she know, for that matter, of me at all?

Now, she can scurry over and climb in my lap. And I know she feels safe. She can move away and then she come back. It's how she tests the world. With me at her center. And this makes me feel something impossibly heavy and real and important and even buoyant, too. It is beyond love. It is beyond. Anything I have know before. And it brings me to her.  It brings me to her.

Nearly One

Ana Álvarez-Errecalde, Birth of My Daughter

I have been having dreams where my daughter speaks to me. Not too long ago I dreamt she turned to me and said, That's enough, now in reference to being tickled, something I had previously assumed she enjoyed. This morning I awoke, knowing she had once again spoken something urgent and whispery into my ear, her hot breath steady as she awaited my response. But, I could not remember. Or I couldn't quite make it out. And this about sums up where we are at right now.

The girl is now almost one and I only sorta know who we are. But that sorta, it sure beats having no fucking clue.

On certain days we have this down: nap time, check. Nap time again, check. Bed time, check. Breakfast, lunch and dinner and snack and milk and more milk and yet some more milk and then water, check. Laundry and only organic and compostable diapers and bath time and story hour and playground and building blocks, check.

Other times, we are seriously winging it and happy the nanny share doesn't report that umpteenth bulging bruise on her noggin.

The grace in all this, is that a child's development is gradual. They don't go from sitting to walking to getting arrested for shoplifting immediately. So one gets the opportunity to ease into the ambulatory phase. The downside is that you begin to take things for granted, like, my child sits in the high chair, that is, until one day you turn around and she is now standing in the high chair, rocking it from side to side, and you are clear across the room when they both come tumbling down.

For all intents and purposes, she appears to be a bit of a bruiser: recklessly plowing ahead when I am still very much running behind. I want her to be independent, I want her to develop her fine motor skills, and I want to enthusiastically applaud all her athletic endeavors, but I also, like, want her to live to see the end of the day.

For her birthday, I plan to make a list of all the things I know about my daughter and tuck it away until the following birthday. A year ago, after all, she was my daughter only in theory. Now, she is the sun around which this solar system orbits.

The Deep

from Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document

Little cries emanate from the back room. Whimpers really. Cries that will mostly likely soon subside. It's that time of night. She wakes, she frets, she falls back asleep. The house is again quiet.

I am a mama now. And like most, I have little time to myself. Little time to pause and think any thoughts not related to the daily chores of tending to.

My child has carved her letters into my heart. Every day she burrows her way deeper and deeper and I have less and less space for my own breadth. And this is a good thing. This love. It doesn't belong to me any more. I am hers.

She stirs, she cries. The night is still again. I wait. I wait. We are still again.

Once

Jay DeFeo's The Rose with the author's daughter

I was going to write about how much going back to work after maternity leave sucks. About how grueling the getting-out-of-the-house-in-the-morning is, about putting my daughter to bed and continuing to grade for the next three to four hours, about pumping while driving, pumping while peeing, pumping with nothing but a curtain to separate me from my students as they talk about whatever upcoming sport event is around the corner. I was going to complain about how utterly exhausting and unfair and short the days can sometimes seem when I have needy students at work and a daughter who truly needs me at home and I have to lug so much crap around that it literally takes five trips to the car when I am having to wrangle it all myself. Not to mention how much the quality of life my dog has had to suffer.

But then I took my daughter to see Jay Defeo's The Rose on the very last day of its exhibition. And even stealthily procured a snap of her beside it. And faith was restored. Life sustenance was nourished. A spiritual experience occurred. And I...

I then had a very different outlook on life.

As she looked up at the weighty paintings in the room, their density somehow felt in my own arms as I held her close, she was quiet and contemplative. Taking in the expansiveness of, really, DeFeo's four monumental works of art, I lingered in the room, moving in close to each as my daughter's chin lifted up, her breath exhaled and her embrace tightened.

An artist only gets one chance at a work like The Rose in her lifetime. I certainly felt the immensity of that undertaking in its presence and the reward of its spectacular success.  It was a priviliedge to bear witness to such a story. More so with my own flesh and blood clinging to me.

"All good things must come to an end..."

Yo Mama, Renee Cox

but...are you familiar with the end of this quote? "But all bad things continue forever." Kinda grim, eh? Well, yeah.

So the all good things part here refers to the fact that I must now leave my daughter in the hands of kindly strangers to whom I pay a barely decent hourly wage instead of keeping her in my own hands while blowing bubbles on her belly and kissing on her rosy cheeks. (And yes, with this weather and her appetite, they are, in fact, quite rosy.) And I guess the bad things is that time spent away from her coddling swarms of perpetual adolescents as they attempt to remake Django Unchained – or whatever latest Tarantino/Samuel Jackson endeavor  – over and over again each semester.

I know, I know. Community college is supposed to be the great equalizer: I am lending my service to a potentially noble cause. And that might be the case sometimes. But the majority of my students are 20-30 year old males who play video games from inside their high school bedrooms, (re)making films about brutalizing each other in the most spectacular displays of fetishtic delight.  Kinda like playing cops and robbers minus the cops. And with a few more squibs and a lot more beer pong.

So what kind of trade off is this? For me, for my daughter, and more importantly, for society? I mean, how many more Django Unchaineds do we need out there? 

On a side note, I just discovered that my daughter was not only named after a famous African-American writer, but also, one of the nicest heavyweight boxers to have graced the ring and a '60s Italian erotica comic character. Go figure.

"Trying to fill a hole in my heart with extraordinary savings" *

Liu Bolin, The Invisible Man

My daughter has reached beyond four months. Words like, "my daughter," have started to become familiar. Sleeping through the night has gone from utter fantasy to that which is almost within reach. All episodes of Weeds have been watched. And I go back to work in January.

My kid is, literally, no longer the new kid on the block.

And so the year comes to a close. A monumental year of birthing two babies: my film and the roly-poly fruit of my loins. Of travelling to film festivals 8 months pregnant and then, bringing her onstage to take questions from the audience. Of gradually and comfortably finding my place between the mother I thought I would be and the mother I am.

*Brilliant writing from Weeds. The author is currently taking suggestions for other short forms of entertainment.

Birth

The Birth, Louise Bourgeoise

On August 1 at 12:18AM my daughter was born. It was two days of labor and four hours of pushing before she emerged, vacuum assisted. And it has taken me nearly two months to return to something as inconsequential as this blog. Time has shifted, life has changed, and I am, like the caterpillar, metamorphosed.

In these two months she has learned to sleep, cry, breastfeed, take a bottle, track objects, and smile. I have learned how to lug a car seat, a diaper bag, and a stroller up 3 flights of stairs. I have learned how to wait to change the diaper until after she eats, when no doubt, she will have quickly processed the milk she has just taken. I have learned how to swaddle and she has learned how to bust through each one. I have learned how to wear her while doing dishes, I have learned how to interview while breastfeeding, I have learned how to navigate Trader Joes with one hand holding in a pacifier and the other steering the cart. I still don't know what her cries mean, but usually they are nothing a boob won't solve.

And to be honest, it has taken me these past months to grow into motherhood. The fantastic change to me physically, the sheer exhaustion of feeding someone from one's own body, the absolute inability to do anything I may actually want to do for myself, were all an assault to my senses that left me reeling, insecure, and downright panicked. I know they say that as soon as you find your rhythm, the tempo changes. But for now I welcome the brief pause.

When

Frida Kahlo, Flying Bed

The mucous plug has come out, the due date is two days away, in no time at all my position on the planet will have fully metamorphosed. It is so strange to be held in this limbo, on the threshold of something so monumental and unknown, yet staring it in the face daily. And, yes, it is hard not to think of that moment when the contractions come, when the door begins to open, when I cross over to the other side.

Something so abstract is about to get quite real. Something that I have been thinking about for over 9 months, is about to finish. And, as all my parent friends, tell me: it's really just about to begin. The wedding to the marriage as my sister says.

So I walk around my new home in a bit of a daze, fixing things up here, weeding the garden out back, spending some last fleeting moments with my film and life as an artist, before putting it all away–or going on a different kind of vacation–for the time being. I can't imagine any of it. I just have to surrender. Am I ready, everyone keeps asking. No. But I just might be willing.

How does one

become ready
for something as insane 
as childbirth
motherhood
hips splitting open?
There is no comparison
that I can think of.
A situation where you are walking 
toward such a vast unknown
like boldly entering a hurricane.
Or sometimes I think about 
like an Ayahuasca trip.
Going far, far away from 
life as I understand it.


And yet, this is a more common path
than not. It is, in many ways,
the road more travelled.

A swift momentum rushes me along.
There is no other direction.
I am caught within it.
Spinning, twisting, pushed upside down
this gushing river.

Where will it carry me to?

Desiree Holman, Outgrowth

An unfinished story

The Last

Sister Corita, 1978

Well, we have arrived to the last few weeks of my pregnancy. We have arrived to people on the street pointing at my belly and asking if I  am having a boy (I am not.) We have arrived to others telling me that I must be due any minute (I am due in 7 weeks.) We have arrived to my last trip anywhere not as a mother. We have arrived to goodbyes in other parts of the country knowing that the next time we see each other, my child will be on the outside of my body. We have arrived.

Or, I should say, we are arriving. To be honest, I am still hanging on a bit to this side of the before and after. I imagine I have a few more weeks of letting go. And I look forward to that transition. All the baby clothes and baby products, no doubt, will help me get there. As will the increasing strain of the weight I carry. But it is my heart, that I hope to soon follow.

The Final Frontier

Francesca Woodman: House #3, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976

Otherwise known as the Third Trimester. We have begun birthing classes, we have had baby showers, we are in the middle of a move. Ladies and gentleman, the future is nigh upon us.

Many refer to pregnancy and early motherhood as a time when a woman's body becomes hijacked. And while I no longer remember what it feels like not to be pregnant, I do feel more like a snake shedding her skin. I am the skin. And the baby is the snake. Not in an evil, biblical way, just that my body is less about me and more about what's growing inside. I feel superfluous, somewhat useless these days, compared to all the metamorphosis happening in there. As she grows, I feel the who-that-I-am shrinking. Not unlike an Alice in Wonderland.

And to what extent do I disappear? That is the hardest part to imagine of what comes next: the absolute change of my identity; the compulsory initiation into the tribe known as Parents; the loss of self as I know it. And too, I am fulfilling the biological imperative of what it means to be a woman. There are parts of a woman's body that simply lie dormant until she is pregnant. Another way of looking at is that you are never fully developed as a woman until you are pregnant and, among other things, have filled up your mammary glands. That is not supposed to be a cultural acceptance, but judging from the way in which I am now treated and embraced as a pregnant woman – as a woman who has finally achieved her biological destiny – one begins to wonder.

It is surprising then, for such a rite of passage, there are not more rituals or sacraments involved save a registering at the local big-box store for gifts. These exist for birth, of course, to mark the entrance of a child into the world and out of the uterus, but not for the woman whose body has been altered more significantly than any other time in her life. I guess from that point forward, it it gets hard to distinguish where the woman stops, the mother starts, and the child begins.

The Dream

Kathy Ruttenberg
Overgrown

They say pregnant ladies have particularly vibrant dreams. And, it seems, I seem to remember a good many of them. I finally had my first baby dream, however. The dream started with a newborn infant whom I nursed, but whom gradually began to appear overly mature. She was alert, active, and very much able to hold her head up. The baby got squirmier and squirmier, until she was crawling–this, only within a matter of days. She also got tinier and tinier, until she could crawl on my hand, up my shoulder, and onto the wall. The baby, we soon realized was half gecko.

The half gecko baby was neither a surprise. Her hybridness in the dream, seems to have been a metaphor for my real baby's sperm donorness. I had chosen a gecko to co-create my baby–for reasons still not clear to me–but I had not imagined the possibility of her wildness. And wild she was, flitting away from me, nursing then clambering up walls, in search of whatever it is that beckons the gecko. When I awoke, the first thing I thought was what have I done? Who, exactly, had I chosen to be the second half of her gene pool and what affect would this have on her? How not in control I felt! Would she be domesticatable or would she, too, be wild to this otherness inside her?

500 Noses Are More Beautiful Than One

Iggy Pop, 1971

OK, upon a closer reading from Ina May Gaskin's, Guide to Childbirth, I have come to the conclusion that it is natural childbirth that is punk as fuck. In fact women in childbirth look a lot like Iggy Pop circa 1971 minus the spandex. Or maybe it's really vice versa. In any case, it doesn't take too many birth stories to make one realize there is no way in hell to actually prepare for this and all the screaming, pissing, shitting, tearing, vomiting, biting, and raw animalness trumps any antics the Pistols could have come up with.

So, as my belly swells and stretches, as my internal organs get more and more pressed upon, and, as the feeling of a child squirming, kicking and punching from within becomes fairly regular, I am aware of the fact that I am pregnant 110% of the time. And judging from the way I look, everyone else is now to.    The nice thing about 10 months of pregnancy is that you get to ease into it. And though, there are startling changes around each bend, it does begin to feel like a holy sacrament. Breeder politics aside, I welcome this little bit of religion into my life.

Yoko Ono said some lovely things like the title of this blog post. It is not entirely a bad idea to randomly open her book, Grapefruit: A book of Instructions and Drawings, and read a passage. It pairs well with the rawness of all these birth stories I am consuming.

Today:

Painting to Exist Only When It's Copied or Photographed

Let People copy or photograph your paintings.
Destroy the originals.

I would say, this could apply to many other things besides paintings.

Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer who takes mainly portraits against clean, simple backgrounds. Here she photographs women just after they have given birth.