Making a mysterious music.
My students say that when I speak it is as if I am lit from within.
The eight chambers of these two hearts pumping blood.
The gush. I have never felt so flush with blood. I hear it in my ears.
It makes a clanging sound.
One does glow as a result. Luminous in the dark. Like those paper planets at that store on Broadway, Star Magic.
Not without its wonder and terror.
Language is a rose and the future is still a rose opening.
Jason leaves a message. “I hope you are well and the one traveling with you.”
Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.
Ash placed on my high forehead. I remember her perfect forehead from the sonogram. Next year the child’s forehead will have emerged, that extraordinary curve — we are ash — lest we forget.
It is when the church is refreshingly direct that I find it most convincing. My sister informs me that they are even waffling on Hell now.
Great solitude now. Largely of the thrilling kind. It’s as if I were sitting in a dark theater alone right before the film starts. The second row. Waiting. One of the headiest pleasures in this world.
I turn inward now.
The room lit by roses.
Concentrate on the baby. Feel the ferocity of the life force, the tenacity, the insistence to live. One feels the child’s single goal now — to be born.
A great throbbing inside.
In a daydream I will the car to swerve — to go up in a blaze — before it all begins.
But immediately after I think — one day we will have to get her a Volvo — something in which to survive the crashes when they come. I have always imagined myself in a black Saab. Yes, perhaps we will have a black Saab.
The double life pounding in me. The two life intensities. It’s almost unbearable at times. All this life. All this living.
Helen, as always, amazing in her flexibility, generosity, open-mindedness, devotion. Ready to change course, think again, re-imagine. A capacity almost no one else I know has. Not to that degree. It makes what is to come all the more exhilarating, exciting, new.
Never shall there be another day like this, not ever again in my life. My birthday.
Two lives. One birth celebrated, memorialized. One anticipated, about to be.
To finally understand “tears of joy.”
I am told I look ten years younger since I have become pregnant. A lucky thing given my age. I have friends, I have a younger brother with children in college.
Fertility, ripeness, how to describe the readiness that took over me? I cannot in any way account for it.
Mainstream heterosexual breeding sorts try to invite me into their club now. I don’t think so.
So much freedom and bliss. I feel completely liberated — that I have done this thing, and on my own terms.
My mother’s one request: that one day before she dies I write a happy book. This must be that book. Maybe I will publish it after all.
I am home sick from school. Not really too sick, just a little sick. Juices and sodas — plenty of fluids. Pastina and broth, my mother brings. I am thrilled to have her so nearby all day long.
And to myself, more or less. The baby is taking a nap. School is such a bore. I hate having to go. I’ve got my little sick station set up on the couch. My private universe of crayons and paper and music and TV and books. Nothing makes me happier.
The failure of public education to work. In my case, certainly in my case. A sorrow to this day. The waste of so much potential for good.
Xui-Di says in China eggs are hoarded for the pregnant women.
This must explain my overwhelming desire for egg-salad sandwiches, something I have not eaten in thirty years probably.
The nest outside the bathroom window fills with snow.
As always I play music day and night and wonder if this in any way shall effect the course of this baby’s life.
There is no money, only temp jobs, no health insurance, only a tiny rented apartment. No possibility of a child here — I cannot even keep myself together — for many, many years. When I take my first real job I am already thirty-five. At my wit’s end by then. There is no money, not for a long time, only, after a while, these books. So much hard-earned joy. To live without regret — regardless of the other consequences. Without my writing there would have been no life for me. It’s all too clear.
Trimester three! Twenty-seven weeks! Yipee!
Leslie Hill, on naming, from Beckett’s Fiction: “Foisted on me by others, the name is an imposition and a falsehood, spelt or written by myself alone, it names me with radical singularity.”
Yes, the predicament of the name. I have never once felt that Carole Maso is my real name. I wonder if anyone else feels this way.
From another notebook altogether. From another zone of the brain. From The Bay of Angels:
I named my child Mercy, Lamb.
Seraphina, the burning one.
I named my child The One Who Predicts the Future, though I never wanted that.
I named my child Pillar, Staff.
Henry, from the Old High German Haganrih, which means ruler of the enclosure, how awful.
I named my baby Plum, Pear Blossom, Shining Path.
I named my child Rose Chloe — that’s blooming horse. I almost named her Rose Seraphina, and that would have been a horse that burns.
I named her Kami, which is tortoise, the name denotes long life.
Kameko — tortoise child.
Kameyo — tortoise generation.
So she might have a long life.
And Tori — turtle dove.
I named my child Sorrow, inadvertently, I did not mean to. In the darkness, Rebecca — that is noose, to tie or bind. In the gloom I named my baby Mary — which means bitter, but now I name my child Day and Star and Elm Limb. I named my child Fearlessness so that she might never be frightened. An Offering of Songs.
Vigilant was the name of my child.
I named my baby Many Achievements, Five Ravens, Red Bird. I named her Goes Forth Bravely. Beautiful Lake. Shaking Snow, Red Echo, Walking by the River.
I named my child War, by mistake. That would be Marcella or Martine. I named my child Ulric — Wolf Power. Oh my son! After awhile though I wised up and passed on Brunhilde, Helmut, Hermann, Walter. And Egon — the point of the sword. I do not value power in battle and so skipped over Maude.
Instead I named my child Sibeta — the one who finds a fish under a rock. I named my child Miraculous. Sacred Bells and Ray of Light. And Durga — Unattainable. Olwynn — White Footprint. And Monica — solitary one. I named my child Babette, that is stranger. I named her Claudia — lame — without realizing it.
How are you feeling, Ava Klein?
I named my child Perdita, does that answer your question?