my birthday
Working on the novel again, a struggle between the whole of a story and its parts. I thought I saw how it could work as music but then it grew quiet and I heard only a few notes.
My birthday. Now it has a meaning. Out to dinner. Nouvelle Mexican. Happy and anxious, equally. A few gifts. Earrings. A book. A glass of champagne. Thank you everyone! Thank your babysitters, too! I had forgotten that anxiety of my other self, the non-birthing self. The narrow-self. The one not big enough to fit another life. The prevaricating, lip-biting, staring-out-the-window-with-brow-furrowed self. The sweating, hemming-and-hawing self. It is been a long time. Hello.
I didn’t miss you.
What are you made of? This small, anxious, smiling self? Opinions. Smiles. Oh really? Wow.
Now I know. Plato was right. We are all selves bereft of other selves, split off. Wandering. In Search Of. This is why pregnancy is A Big Deal. For a few months, we are whole—two selves, one accommodating the other—in one.
A dream I had last night. Involving houses, a narrowing, a closing up of the birth canal. And a boy. The baby I thought I would have. To narrow, then to open out. The eternal process. How to keep opening up what tries to close to fit into the narrow passages of this one life? How to keep all the possibilities?
My birthday. Now it has a meaning. Out to dinner. Nouvelle Mexican. Happy and anxious, equally. A few gifts. Earrings. A book. A glass of champagne. Thank you everyone! Thank your babysitters, too! I had forgotten that anxiety of my other self, the non-birthing self. The narrow-self. The one not big enough to fit another life. The prevaricating, lip-biting, staring-out-the-window-with-brow-furrowed self. The sweating, hemming-and-hawing self. It is been a long time. Hello.
I didn’t miss you.
What are you made of? This small, anxious, smiling self? Opinions. Smiles. Oh really? Wow.
Now I know. Plato was right. We are all selves bereft of other selves, split off. Wandering. In Search Of. This is why pregnancy is A Big Deal. For a few months, we are whole—two selves, one accommodating the other—in one.
A dream I had last night. Involving houses, a narrowing, a closing up of the birth canal. And a boy. The baby I thought I would have. To narrow, then to open out. The eternal process. How to keep opening up what tries to close to fit into the narrow passages of this one life? How to keep all the possibilities?
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