Danaë

<p style=”clear: both”>It’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 of them.

You cannot see it outwardly, maybe, my life looks so sedentary and settled, but inside I suspect I am by nature a nomad. I want to know what is essential, what I would keep in the caravan, what comforts I would insist upon, what books, what music I would have to have recourse to in the middle of the desert. I am fascinated by compactness, by the design of ships’ cabins, by packing lists, by how little one can stuff into a backpack and live on for weeks at a time. It’s always been there: I remember as a kid trying to make the bunk beds in our small bedroom into a spaceship, with elaborately drawn cardboard control panels, but half the trick was to empty out the Fisher Price medical kit case, white, for me, and the brown identically sized tool box that was my sister’s and load these suitcases with the things we needed.

Reduced, these objects take on more importance than the flow of objects with whatever utility or aesthetic value through the comfortable household where boy-play may break any item, where everything, practically, is replaceable. The objects we carry with us from one place to another become home when home is transitory. The economy, the limits of having to choose only the essential turns them into identity, phylacteries, laden with meaning outstripping their compact portability.

And then, like a starvation artist, one practices giving these up. I could, I note, live without this item for five minutes, thus, I could live without it an hour, the hours adding up to weeks, to a lifetime (one travels backwards across Zeno’s paradox, this way, a survival trick). It was the surprise last night of glancing up and seeing the W constellation and greeting Cassiopeia, surprised at the recognition because I don’t identify as a stargazer, but that familiarity with the constellations has the consolation that wherever one wanders one can be at home.