Eurydice
T acit. There are things that exist only so long as they are unspoken. That are torture to the mind that would make everything explicit. Things that defy categories and resist speech. Things I may have so long as I don’t give in to temptation, turn my head, look back. Having being thus conditional. Everything is conditional. Nothing is absolute. Almost nothing. A summer of being unable to write anything except in the privacy of journals, I find my violin is trying to give voice to everything that is resisting words. And it sounds best when no one else is in the room. I fight to reclaim skills lost years and years ago. I ask myself for whom I write, why I am writing. I write to hide, which I fear implies, in fact I write to be found. It is irritating, your...
Read MoreGalatea
O r her inversion. Because I keep noticing how women try to remake their men. Or improve them. Maybe men do this too. I reach back to myself fifteen years ago, I made changes, gave things up, tried to break my worst habits or bury them. It took a while to really be done with cigarettes, I still use more crude language but try not to when he’s around, or the kids. But haven’t I always done this? Not just susceptible to influence but willing to try on whole new aspects of identity, change what I listen to, what I read, how I dress if this is reinforced or that is? And wasn’t I improved, weren’t those good changes to make? With the right Pygmalion, isn’t the marble benefitted? (But what about everything that is lost?) It’s the...
Read MoreDanaë
I t’s an old dream, the one where I am secure in my sea-worthy box, curled up, my baby boy beside me as the waves toss us, carry us away. This is one of the things you observe as a mother, the two impulses that drive the human being, the longing for freedom, for exploration, for autonomy: he goes crawling off to see new things. But then, he also looks back over his shoulder, he makes sure you are still there, and when he is frightened by his own independence he comes back as quickly, reclaims your lap, his need for security as intense as his need for freedom. The tension between the two requires repeated resolution. You sacrifice a little bit of security for your freedom, you sacrifice a little bit of your freedom for your security. Loss is the shadow to both...
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