"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.

The Seat

A woman giving birth on a birth chair, circa 1515

It finally happened. Someone gave up their seat for me! I, ladies and gentleman, am officially and publicly pregnant! It's about time, too. My pants don't fit, my bras leave deep indents on my skin, and I can barely bend over to pick up the objects that I have been inexplicably dropping all the time these days.

And I still have a good 15 weeks to go. Whoosh. Things are gonna get real fun, real soon. The tales I hear from pre-natal yoga include: constant heartburn, severe middle-of-the-night leg cramps, and the thing that gets me the most from those women in the 37-week stage: the spreading of the pelvis. I envision a spreading much like jam on an english muffin and then try to imagine walking on two legs attached to this now amorphous, swilling, splitting, stretchy hinge.

So, I finally feel part of the club. I look pregnant. I feel pregnant. I am, dear friends, in-the-not-too-distant-future going to go through a life-altering event by which my vagina will expand to 10 centimeters and I become a mother. It is starting to feel real. Very real. And I am actually starting to read the books that have been accumulating on the various horizontal sources throughout my house. And though, there are many moments where I can suddenly feel not part of the club–like attending a birthing class where all the other parents-to-be are coupled, or when the convenient pregnancy app on the iPhone insists that at week 25, I should pay special attention to daddy–I will gladly take that seat that is being offered to me.

I kinda look forward to the punk rock part of being a single mom. It doesn't, after all, get more punk than that. I mean, I don't even know exactly how I would be getting to the hospital at this point. Hailing a cab? Thumbing a ride? Hopping on a bike? Kerouac ain't got nothin' on that. While the other mom-to-be's discuss the names they both can't agree upon, or the shortness of his paternity leave, I just smile and keep it to myself. I embrace the challenge. I succumb to failure. I arm myself with humor. And if I get one or two more tattoos along the way, you'll know why.

Looking for Housing While Pregnant

Pappa Sleeping © Sarah Small

There are a few decisions one can make when looking for a new place to live in an in-between state like mine. A: Not mention the fact that a kid is on the way. B: Skip to the chase and just say you already have one. After a few rounds, I have chosen option B to an interesting effect. Upon explaining that the 2 bedroom unit is just for me and my child, I have had multiple landlords ask me next whether I am Section 8.  It seems in this great metropolitan area in which I live single mom must equal welfare mom. Good to know that I am a soon-to-be proud member of a deeply resented (yet rapidly growing) national statistic!

In any case, it is considerably different looking for housing with one on the way than how I have done it in, say, the past 20 plus years. I mean, I have lived in some tough neighborhoods, and in some amazing diamond-in-the-rough Craftsman homes, complete with Wedgwood stoves, inlaid wood floors, and buttloads of built-ins, to a very comfortable degree. But shouldn't I be looking for a bit more out of my community than tree-less streets and cemented lawns, not to mention dueling corner liquor stores and speed-bumps? You know, for my daughter's sake? I have looked at more than a few, roomy, affordable places and excitedly thought I could work with this, despite the foreboding feeling of the block. I am used to having my car broken into–even used to discovering that someone has been reclining in my car and haphazardly drinking liters of Coke all night–because I loved the Mediterranean, 1920's duplex in which I happily lived. And it seemed a small price to pay to live in the culturally vibrant, urban center that I did.

On the other hand, I have to cringe at the cookie-cutter, gated, townhouse communities with kid-friendly pools and safe play structures and their utter lack of visitor parking. But those are the exact places in which it would probably make the most sense for this stereotype to live. And it is only my pride–and my snobby, arty/liberal/individualist bent–that keeps me from signing on.

Sigh. Between the sweet old bungalow with the occasional gunshots and the suburb-within-the-city, fancily-named apartment complex, I just might end up staying put. At least I know what I am working with. And though I do get depressed when it feels like I will be cramming my daughter into my already crammed 1-bedroom apartment, my friends assure me that it is mostly the boob she will care about for the first few months of her life.

No be scared

Tanyth Berkeley's Girls

The fact of the matter is that I am now five months pregnant. Today, I was quickly trying to stuff a banana down my gullet in the middle of class and I felt like I had to explain to the students my bizarre behavior. When I told them I was pregnant, they broke into applause and quite embarrassed me. It was not a reaction I expected, and I felt oddly cheered by the event. The 20 yr-olds never do cease to amaze me: whether it is the extent to which they can make a truly disgustingly graphic music video to Ty Digg's Get Nasty (and I'll leave that to your imagination) or whether they can empathetically find something positive to say about even the worst student work in the class. This is my daily life in any case, and I better find reward with the company I keep.

The other thing I spent some time trying to do today was hear my baby's heartbeat. Though it meant listening to about a half hour of my stomach gurgling, I did finally manage to hear that slow, under-water pulse with the store-bought stethoscope. I can't seem to manage turning any pages of the baby books stacked by the bedside, but listening to this heartbeat is something I can get behind.

All this to say that I am starting to look pregnant to people other than myself. Or at least to the woman at the dry cleaners who asked me if it was my first baby and then promptly told me not to be scared. She had four herself, so she should know. "Babies are so cute! No be scared!" I decided to take her advice to heart. Let's hope it will be that easy.

The world–even on the subway–can be a magical place. It's a matter of perspective.  It's a matter of seeing.

Tanyth Berkeley likes the special ones. She likes the pale ones, the large headed types, the big bodies and the long giraffe necks. She likes the Robert Crumb shapes and the vampire faces, the glowing white skin and the men-in-dresses with womanly laces. She likes the eyes set back in the skull or the shoulders holding up those big heads that are smashed in like a pretty pumpkin in certain places. Her specialty is the awkward, the rare flower, the big cheek boned and special feminine shells and large sizes and different races.

Wild Into

Kathryn Spence, from the installation, Short Sharp Notes, Rolling or Churring Whistles, Clear Phrases

The other day, a hummingbird flew into my house. Have you ever tried to catch a hummingbird? It ain't easy. And the poor things never really want to take a break. The hummingbird flew round and round my living room and kitchen ceiling, beating its wings against the crown molding and scaring my dog so much he wouldn't come back in the house. After about 20 minutes of trying to coax the hummingbird back out through the front door by basically asking it nicely to leave, I started to panic. I had to leave and I really didn't want the death of a hummingbird on my hands.

I remember when I lived in Mexico, I was always surprised to see the rows upon rows of hummingbirds for sale laid out at the weekly flea markets along with the antique frames and rusted tools. I never understood who could possibly want a dead hummingbird. But when you actually saw them still, they were beautiful, startlingly kaleidoscopic creatures.

I left the house and came back as quickly as I could and heard nothing. For about 10 minutes. And then the hummingbird emerged beating against the door jam. Unable, once again, to find a way out. I watched him for a few more minutes, occasionally resting on a window sill, and tried to swat him unsuccessfully with a broom. When I saw my neighbor and her dog in the front yard, I called her in. She brought over a ladder, a metal bowl, and a flat piece of cardboard. She climbed the ladder and as I continued to swat, she attempted to trap him in the bowl as he flew past. As the bird flew by, more and more frantic, he left dark, tiny feathers on the ceiling.

But, no luck. Finally, after about 30 minutes, the poor bird rested on the sill again, and my neighbor caught him, slide the board over the bowl, and we raced out of the house to let him go. For a long moment he didn't move. And then, out of nowhere, he just flew off into the air. We looked at the cardboard and there was a tiny smear of blood. Hummingbird blood.

We both felt exhilarated by the release. But what did it mean? A hummingbird had never entered any of my homes before. Why now? Was it a good sign? A bad omen? And wasn't hummingbird blood a particularly powerful ingredient worthy of some kind of sorcerous spell. Did my house need a cleaning? Or had it just been blessed? My heart pounded as I shut the front door and wondered what the next wild creature would bring.

Things you should know about me if you don't already

Eleven

Photo by Thierry Bouët

We are in the precious remaining last few days before the semester begins. Yesterday I spent sleeping, eating bacon, eggs, and pancakes, and then napping some more. Today, I was a bit more productive. It's hard to predict what I feel like each new day. I am no longer in charge. My body, it seems, will make its own decisions for me from now on. It really is like a bad J Lo rom com.

In other news, who do all these pregnancy books think they are talking to? Decorate the nursery? Dude, that would require a two-bedroom apartment. Start picking out a crib? Uh, don't I have, like, 6 months and a baby shower before I really need to decide on sleeping apparatuses? And don't get me started on all the lame sidebars for Daddy, like, Why not a baby shower for Daddy? and Just for Daddy: Lamaze!  Puke. I know gay couples have been dealing with that shi-ite for centuries. But it's so 1985. C'mon folks! 

It does remind me, however, that I will have my share of explaining to do. My friend's son upon overhearing that I might be pregnant, promptly demanded to know who got me pregnant. Smart ass! Others want to know all about the sperm donor. And still yet, there are some people who know more and some less about exactly how it all came to be. And I kinda need to keep those stories straight. But with all that blood rapidly leaving my brain and travelling south, that I fear, will be a challenge.

So, next week I officially wave goodbye to the first trimester. And I start teaching four classes. I am hoping I can use the pregnancy as an excuse for basically everything, but in particular, for why I just can't seem to stay awake during their groundbreaking films and why I just can't seem to keep up with reading their mind blowing scripts.

Passing

photo by Joseph Szabo from the book "Almost Grown"

I live near a school. An elementary school to be more precise. Because I have a dog, and because he is oft in need of walks, I find myself near the school at various hours of the day. I have always loved the sounds of a playground: rubber balls hitting pavement, screeches sent across the jungle gym, even the mechanical echo of the school bell. And I have always felt melancholic during summer when those sounds go away for months at a time. I was one of those kids that actually got depressed at the end of the school year. Even at a young age the end of the academic year marked, not the arrival of summer, but another year passing. I distinctly remember during those moments thoughts like How many more years just like the last? Will I be the same person I am now when I return in the Fall? and Will I ever make it to the 8th grade? Summer just seemed to be so purposeless, and though I appreciated the pool time which basically could last from 9 in the morning til 9 at night if you begged hard enough, I never really knew what to do with myself.

As a teenager, however, I did find that when I returned back to school for the 10th grade, I was a new person. I had had sex, I had gotten stoned, I had figured out how to elude my parents' reach. I had found late night bus routes to take me to the places I wanted to go. I knew where the skateboarders and the punks hung out. I suddenly had taste in music and movies. Even an appreciation for art and poetry. I was someone new. I could reinvent myself. And this new self that I presented to the world was believable.

I have spent many years inside some kind of school or another. Most of my life, you could say. And today, I have those same summers off. But teaching college doesn't make me feel the same kind of heartbreak that being connected to elementary and secondary school does. I guess the kids I teach don't seem to grow up all that fast...they are already more (or in most cases less) there. When summer comes,  I am ecstatically relieved. The campus doesn't have those same playground sounds, and while the cafeteria may be just as bad, there are no ringing bells to remind us each hour of the time passing.

The Final Countdown

Self Portrait as Art History: Mona Lisa in Pregnancy, Yasumasa Morimura

By the end of the 10th week, the embryo officially becomes the fetus. The embryonic tail disappears. The reproductive organs mature. And I am starting to officially feel pregnant.

Soon there will be people to tell and decisions to make. Will I move? When do I tell my job? What about my big pit bull? And does this mean I take my online dating profile down?

So far, the winter, the holidays, and the pregnancy have made me want to stay close to home, eat a lot, and watch bad movies at night. Is this what the next 7 months have in store for me?

In other news, I have to find a doctor who will agree to work with a midwife, and a midwife who won't be on vacation in the middle of summer when the baby is due. And I also have to find someone to be there for me. I am thinking I will just hire a professional, someone I can really count on, rather than, you know, mom. Can I hire someone to come to the Lamaze classes, too?

The other thing is that I absolutely have to finish the film. And I only have three short weeks until I go back to teaching four junior college classes a week. And I guess 6 months or so after that until my world changes entirely. So the pressure is on, even if the motivation is a little lacking. Let's just say, I am a mite distracted these days.

Secrets

19th Century Pregnancy Doll

Last night I dreamt there was blood. I know it's because of the doctor's appointment tomorrow. It's odd, those ultrasounds. Peeking inside like that. It almost seems like cheating. I mean, for centuries, we didn't have this technology. Pregnancy was a matter of faith. And deep mystery. An alchemical process.

Eventually, when the organs start to rearrange themselves around an expanding uterus, and the cartilage begins to soften so bones can spread, and the blood once used to support brain cell activity flows south to instead encourage embryonic cell development, a complete mutation of the female body as I have known it for 41 years will occur. It's already begun.

I have heard the process continues once you have a child. That feeling of not belonging to your own body. Of, well, belonging and being for someone else entirely. How can something so common as pregnancy and childbirth, seem so wildly different from anything I have known thus far?

7 weeks

Window Water Baby Moving - Stan Brakhage

I went to the doctor's office two weeks ago, and there is indeed now a little bean growing inside of me. Though the nurse both showed me what was supposed to be a faint heart pulsing and made me listen to what was supposed to be the faint swishing of a heart beating, I did not believe her. It all looked kinda empty and sorta unimpressive to me. But, I decided to take their word for it and accepted their sincerest congratulations. Now, I have a mere 5 weeks to go before it starts getting official. I do hope the little bean can hang on.

Like many who have come before me, I did decide to buy a few books so I could at least know what not to eat/drink/pop-into-my-mouth. And courtesy of Google, it seems, pretty much everything that hasn't been parboiled for 30 minutes is up for debate. But the thing that has proven most challenging (OK giving up coffee was pretty hard) has been keeping mum. So I pee on a stick, and I see a red cross, and then what? Just sit there for 12 weeks and not tell anyone? Not gonna happen. I know things can go wrong, and the risks are high at my age, but I just have so many questions, so many anxieties, so many moments of joy, they can't all be contained solely by my poor, slobbering dog.

So hence the blog. Hence the black and white ultrasound photo on the fridge...and if people happen to ask me why I am not drinking, well, I just tell them.

So here we are in limbo. Crossing our fingers. Waiting nervously for the next doctor's visit. And beginning to wonder just how a single, working woman with no family in town, might manage.