Dear growing belly-creature,
Saw you again this morning. You look cozy. Black and white is very flattering to your new features.
I've been afraid to talk about you to too many people. Mostly because you hardly seem real yet. You're only a couple centimeters. Frog-sized. I'm trying to picture you as someone who will wear pants someday, or ask me for money, or cook me a terrible birthday breakfast, or tell me my music sucks. Someday soon maybe you will feel authentic. But for now, if I can't hang onto you until you are ready to breathe real air, at least people won't know how hard I was ready to love you.
Another reason I've been afraid to talk about you is because I don't feel at all like myself, and I've been blaming you, and it's probably not fair because I'm the one who invited you into me. Being dog-ill and bone-tired all the time makes it difficult to bask in the ruddy glow of a future with you. All I've been able to see so far is more exhaustion, less free-time, debilitating body issues, and an ever-growing vocabulary of threatening terms such as "integrated screening" and "nuchal translucency" and "nipple-confusion" and well you get it.
And did you know I'm having trouble looking at other babies and children? In my neighborhood there's been a tsunami of breeding, and I catch myself aggressively averting my eyes from strollers and carriages. I can't bear to look at what I might lose.
AND books drive me crazy. All the books. Like this and this and this. They're like, "relax, everything will be fine, don't worry about [genetic disease] and [horrible disfigurement] and [ridiculously expensive baby gear] and [so much pain you'll lose your marbles]."
BUT. When I get to spend actual time with you, when you aren't just a crazy floating future-fear, it's all okay. Like today, when you were chilling out up on the monitor, and the technician poked you with the wand so you'd roll over, and you totally did... I wanted her to keep poking. These visits are too short. I wish I could spend more time with you. So does your [can't bring myself to say father] co-creator. I can see why Tom Cruise wanted his own ultrasound machine.
When I can see you, you're real. But when I can't... well, I'm a fretful person by nature, so.
Oh hey, why the hell won't you let me eat anything that's supposed to be good for you? Two weeks straight of mashed potatoes and rice pudding will probably curdle your brain cells (according to the books). Would a fresh salad kill you once in a while?
I'm nervous that you'll read this blog someday and think less of me because I'm human.
Oh, you'll be happy to know I've stopped scouring the internet for photos of parasitic twins. The last one did me in, the one with the bubbles of baby boiling out the mouth of her sister. Total horror show.
Sorry about the spin classes. You probably hate them but they make me feel sane. I won't be able to take them too much longer. Hang in there.
And sorry for falling the other day. I was dizzy, I was late, and then I was a basket case. Two dudes with hoodies and missing teeth came rushing over. They picked up my shattered cell phone, they offered to call an ambulance, they told me to sit down and stop crying, they scolded me for running. Turns out you barely felt it.
I can be more careful. Really.
And thank you for making my nails and hair grow faster. I'm bionic.
That's all for now. I can't wait to see you again. Please don't go anywhere.
-With much love,
Your [can't bring myself to say mother] host organism
If my responses to these are any indication, my child is going to require extensive psychotherapy in approx. 5.7 years.
More can be found here.
Thanks kc...
Or just weird?
I'm like, "both"?
But maybe more weird?
Christ, I just don't know.
Fact #1: While waiting for the G train (which is frequently an interminable affair), Soph and I will often scrutinize the subway posters with the concentration of a Sumerian scholar.
Fact #2: We spend the bulk of our energies on the ads with the most exposed female flesh.
Fact #3: This particular subway platform is often quite crowded on weekend nights.
Fact #4: Soph wears earplugs in the subway to protect his sensitive hearing, rendering him incapable of gauging his own speaking volume which causes conversations to be held at the level of either an inaudible murmur or (more frequently) an enthusiastic bray.
Fact #5: This was the poster we were analyzing Sunday night...
... which prompted the following response from Soph at a decibel level several notches above conversational, one that echoed thoughout the tunnel for what seemed like twelve minutes after: "SHE DEFINITELY HAS SOME SERIOUS CAMEL-TOE ACTION."
Fact #6: The list of things that cause me to blush on this good earth is incredibly short. It just got a little longer.
Could maybe somebody have told me this eleven weeks ago?
Ha, kidding. I generally stay away from paranoiac substances, ever since I discovered the government has been keeping a detailed list of everything I eat.
My Wacom Bamboo writing/drawing tablet!!
First creation:
Portrait of the fella who done got it for me. I dig him.
Yo, re: the silence... I've been sleeping mostly. Sorry. And gestating a human (more later). And downloading Youtube clips of the new American Idol contestants. Someday I'll buy a TV. Probably before my kid starts to hate me for not having one.
Finding her body woven
As if of flame and snow
I thought, however often
My pulses cease to go
Whipped by whatever pain
Age or disease appoint,
I shall not again
Be jarred in every joint,
So mute, amazed, and taut,
And winded of my breath--
Beauty being at my throat
More savagely than death.
--from the book The Flowering Stone by George Dillon, about his married lover Edna St. Vincent Millay. When they met he was 22. She was 36.
Not for these lovely blooms that prank your chambers did I come.
Indeed,
I could have loved you better in the dark;
That is to say, in rooms less bright with roses, rooms more casual, less aware
Of History in the wings about to enter with benevolent air
On ponderous tiptoe, at the cue, "Proceed."
Not that I like the ash-trays over-crowded and the place in a mess,
Or the monastic cubicle too unctuously austere and stark,
But partly that these formal garlands for our Eighth Street Aphrodite are a bit too Greek,
And partly that to make the poor walls rich with our unaided loveliness
Would have been more chic.
Yet here I am, having told you of my quarrel with the taxi-driver over a line of Milton, and you laugh; and you are you, none other.
Your laughter pelts my skin with small delicious blows.
But I am perverse: I wish you had not scrubbed--with pumice, I suppose--
The tobacco stains from your beautiful fingers. And I wish I did not feel like your mother.
--"Rendezvous" by Edna St. Vincent Millay, regarding an encounter with George Dillon in a New York flat in 1937, nine years after their first interview. She was now 45. This meeting marked the end of their affair.
Come see this at Culturemart! It's just an excerpt from the beginning of a long (VERY long) piece, but we're working hard and it's looking wicked.
Come come come come.... and happy new year, my sweet dudes!
