I resurrect here a picture I've posted before, in a bit of a tribute to the muse in my head today. I've been rereading parts of James Merrill's Book of Ephraim, which may explain her presence in my head. That said, I'll let him offer his words to her: mine are ill-informed at best.

Deren, Elanora ("Maya")
1917-61, doyenne of our
American experimental film
Mistress moreover of a lifestyle not
For twenty years to seem conventional.
Fills her Village flat with sacred objects
Dolls, drums, baubles that twirl and shimmer,
Stills from work in progress, and underfoot
The latest in a lineage of big, black,
Strangely accident-prone Haitian cats.
Dresses her high-waisted, maiden-breasted
Person--russet afro, agate eyes--
In thriftshop finery.

Okay okay okay okay.

I'll try this again. The previous post was me trying to find something to write about. Never a good start. But then I started clicking that ol' "Next Blog" button up there...

I stumbled upon this: the blog of a mother-to-be, or so it would appear. It brought me to tears...

I have to say this right now. I'm not sad about what I did. I had to do it. I didn't have an option. And I didn't connect with the thing in any way. It wasn't a child, it wasn't even a fetus. It was a vaguely fish-shaped lump.

That said... oh my.
You know what I cry for? Not for that little thing. Not for something I lost. Not for the creature-that-might-have-been. I cry for something I do miss, and something I look forward to having again someday, when the time is more right: the way it changed the feelings between me and him. That feeling of being three, at night, lying together. That feeling of being part of him, and him part of me, in a literal, physical way. The sense us being part of something else... part of living, part of dying. Part of each other and the world in a visceral, primeval way. I felt whole, and filled.

I mentioned below this conviction of mine that women are hollow. In a physical sense this is literally true. We have a place inside that almost never fills, and men have no such corollary. It's why women rage differently. It's why women are more self-contained and insular. It's why a woman can be whole all by herself, where men will always, in some respect, be incomplete: because there is a resonating chamber, where echoes rise, and it's full of potential and silence, full of hope and sorrow and waiting. Women never lose this. And when that place is filled... that's something else again.

That's a validation, it's a clarity and a diffused confusion. It's an answer and a million more questions. It's the use of a thing that has no other use, and that's wonderful. It's a terrifying theft of freedom and self-determination, and that's hard. It's a thing with so many implications that those too fill her up. And it's real love, in a way that will never be equaled by any other sensation: to gift her lover not only with the ultimate safety, holding him within herself and caring for him, but also with the ultimate promise of faith and constancy, assuring him that even this risk is worth it, and that she thinks he's ready, strong enough, healthy enough, happy enough to be a father and help her be a mother.

I think I'm qualified to speak here. I may not be. It doesn't much matter; this is what I got from the experience. Let me reiterate: I do not grieve for what I lost. But I hope and look forward to that sensation, that completion, and that utter companionship with him. Again someday. For real, someday. When I'm ready. When I can handle it. When I've earned it.

I love you. I love what you gave me. I love how you love me and loved me even when I had to throw it away. I hope you'll trust me enough, love me enough, to give it to me again one day.

Labels: Brendon, Dreams, Julia, Love

Shoreline and sea... and a sea-change within. Time and time again I come back to this place, this dark, wind-blown garden, looking for answers. There are greater things here than ever before, and smaller. I'll crawl on my hands and knees here for a while, looking for diamonds in the sand. You look over there; let me know what you find.

I wrote about Boudicca last week. I find her unspeakably inspiring. Not just because of her rebellion. Not just because of her cause, and not just because she was Gaelic. It's because of her violence. Because when she burnt London to the ground, she ripped apart its people in ways we shrink from now, she did things to them that the Romans never even thought to do to her, and she still raged.

To evoke such rage... is very difficult. Especially in a woman. I don't mean to make a generalization here. It's just that women have that hollowness inside, that resonance, that makes them different when it comes to wrath. Slow, sudden, implacable. I'll rhapsodize more on my thoughts about women as hollow beings at another time. But it's that about Boudicca that inspires me.

I lost the knack for rage a long time ago. I'm capable of irritation now. Frustration, annoyance, aggravation, childish fits, even. But real rage, the kind that blinds you and chokes you, fills you with adrenaline and then drops you like a snipped marionette when it's through--that I haven't felt in years. I squashed it out of myself when I lived in a place where anger was nothing but another reason to get punished. And now... now it's something I miss.

Because anger is worthwhile. Anger is useful. Anger is a driving force and can be productive when it's not destructive. Sadness, now... that's more slippery. It's harder to shake and harder to express. It depresses the system, makes one lethargic and doleful. And it doesn't make one very rational.

I want to apologize for my carelessness, for my harshness, for my childishness. I find myself apologizing these days for things I would never have even considered sins in years past. Does that mean I'm becoming a better person?

I think so.

Hold this little shell for me; don't break it. I'm unearthing something here. It'll just be a minute. Then we'll go sit on the blanket and see what we've found.

Labels: Apologies, Introspection