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...
Read MoreHow To Be Disappointed
1 ) Be disappointed. 2) Let go of the story of how understanding and generous and forgiving you are, because the only thing worse than being disappointed in someone else is simultaneously discovering you are not the person you thought you were and not being able to reconcile yourself. Cognitive dissonance and unnamed, unnameable feelings only amplify the disappointment. 3) If you were my kid and you were disappointed, I’d totally tell you to feel what you’re feeling, but I might put boundaries on the behavior. It’s fine to be sad, but not so fine to throw yourself on the ground in the middle of the coffee shop and kick and scream because they are out of your favorite kind of scone. The floor is dirty and people give me funny looks. 4) Notice the...
Read MoreTribute
T his is unimaginable to me, that as I write my mother is locking up her classroom and leaving for the last time. On the phone last night she said that she had been busy taking loads of all of the things she’s acquired over the years for teaching home so that this afternoon after the last bell rings she can walk away. Also unimaginable. My father called earlier this week to make sure I was aware, in my physical distance from their lives, that today was her last day, and — our lives spinning fast here, tonight’s recital the 8th performance with at least one of my children in four weeks — the reminder was not ill-conceived. But he asked if I knew what it meant. And I suggested that every book that goes in a box to come home, ever mathematics...
Read MoreStill Needing External Validation
H aving turned off comments did (briefly) help with blogging, strangely. I think it had to do with having the sort of convoluted head that wants to manage other people’s impressions of me, that wants to give others what they want from me so much that I can start to lose myself around other people, and that it seems a little crazy, but it’s just one of those basic things about being me that I have to come to terms with — when comments are off, I am writing this for myself, but then I am free to share it, which — yeah crazy. And so also, I am careful with the stats that are available to me, that are mostly a generic where are the hits coming from, what are people looking for. And it’s this that kills me: at one point the unreliable...
Read MoreAsking Not Telling
T here exists, apocryphally (does apocryphal existence count as existence?) a Suzuki teacher in Portland who uses a squirt gun on parents who cannot keep their traps shut during the lesson. I don’t know how such a teacher would have any students come back, but, I am grateful the lessons my kids get are with teachers who recognize that we are all learning in the room. Because three of the boys get lessons with the same teacher, it’s interesting to watch themes emerge in the lessons, different for each child, for the level each child is at, and still, the same truths. This week was a lot about attention. Of course, it’s always about attention, but when Soren, tired, clearly wants to please, wants to do what’s asked of him, and telling him to...
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