Ondaatje is good, so good. He is not so much an idol of mine (you hope one day to be your idols, and I don't have a shred of hope for that), but a god. Every word is sacred, meaningful, heavy. His poetry is perfect, but his prose is hard. You can't skim. I'm never more aware of my skimming habits than when I read Ondaatje prose.
I read his poems over and over. I once threw things at a puppy because he ate an Ondaatje book. I dogear and paper clip his pages.
What my new apartment needed was a little romance. It had the energy of the last tenants. It felt like it was mourning them in some quiet way, rejecting me. Then we put some beautiful new dark wood tables in the living room, and I took down an Ondaatje book. The space changed.
He reminds me of details, how every object has its own life, like your keys. They come into your keeping, they make music and open your doors, they take your abuse. You read Ondaatje, you see the edges of things, how they come into contact with you but never belong wholly to you, how you could be grateful and in love and in hate with all things.
So, walking through my apartment, I saw the geometry of light coming through the new blinds, and I listened to the sounds of the dryer in a new way. Everything sounded like music you could make love to.
The night is still hard for me. All my worries come out then. So I try to go to sleep early. Mornings are easier. It's difficult when there's nothing to clean, and I don't like having TV now. Everything is still busy.
--
This morning, I was almost arrested at the federal building on Wilshire while picking up my passport. I'm afraid to tell the story, so I won't. I was let go on the guard's intuition.
--
Here's an exerpt from the book that's warming my house.
You know hunters
are the gentlest
anywhere in the world
they halt caterpillars
from path dangers
lift a drowning moth from a bowl
remarkable in peace
in the same way assassins
come to chaos neutral.
I know now what it feels like to be one of those perpetual victims who mooch off others. I think their thoughts.
This morning, with a dizzying amount of shit to do, I decided I don't give a fuck, and did nothing.
Right now my husband is having mass margaritas with his coworkers for his last-day lunchtime bash. I guess if I worked my ass off my whole life, put in the time to be smart and creative and the best at what I do, I'd be having margaritas too, but instead I'm staring at the thousandth pile of filing I've seen in my career, pregnant and without a choice in where my life goes, and though this is all my fault, I can't help but feel really sorry for myself.
I'm just too tired. There's too much to think about, I hate everything, I don't want to take care of anything, and even if I did, I couldn't because the schedule is too tight and the money too scarce.
I only get hit on by men over fifty. This chick just offered food to everyone in the office except me. My skirt doesn't zip up all the way. My boobs are too small, even now. I just. Can't. Care. Anymore.
Hormones don't create life's problems. They just magnify them. I'm overwhelmed, everyone sucks and the only one who doesn't is getting drunk right now.
So. I don't think much work is getting done today.
Too much going on.
Mr. Aran took a new job. We're moving to be close to it. That puts me too far away to keep my job. Last day is next week. One day after that, I leave for Spain, and will be gone for two weeks. I'm hurtling toward the third trimester, will have new insurance and new doctor. Birth center at new place too expensive; will have to go with shitty hospital. Car accident last week. In-laws moving in with us.
There are supposed to be classes, right? I'm supposed to go in and take these classes where my birth partner sits behind me and I breathe in all different ways, or something, right? I heard through the grapevine that there should be daily long walks going on, and music you play to the fetus that he'll like post-fetus. There's the best-odds diet thing and there's this What To Expect During The First Year that you really should read before that first year is happening. There are people who want me to register places and gather together to party in the kid's honor. April's doctor appointment? Forget it; I'll be in Spain muthafucka!
It's too much to expound upon. I can't think about even one aspect of it. It's like an ant. You see an ant, a whole lot of other ants are coming.
The new place is nice. I wish it were more affordable, but I am horribly in love with it. It's in a small, surprisingly secluded neighborhood with trees, a few churches, a private school, a tiny grocery store, a workout room, pool, hot tub. Two bedrooms and a den and a ginormous patio which I will fill with plants and BBQ goodness. Two underground parking spots, quite nice as long as I drive in through the door that doesn't scrape inches off my spoiler and no one else has taken my assigned spots.
It's quiet. I've lived next to an airport and next to a street for a few years, so I'm not used to it. The floor doesn't creak. There's an elevator and the laundry room uses cards, not quarters. Zankou Chicken and my happy wonderful cousins, in that order, are quite close; Father Nature is a short drive. My old stomping grounds, from before The O.C.
I'm too tired to be excited about any of it, even Spain.
The kid jumps around violently these days.
The Raw Gym in El Segundo is a fighting gym. There's a ring and a big black mat, some ancient metal weights, more rolled-up mats and a no-nonsense bathroom. I go there once or twice a year to watch the Dog Brothers gatherings. For ten bucks, you watch men go no-holds-barred on one another with rattan sticks and metal practice blades.
The bouts are meant to simulate real fights, so they're each two minutes long. Real skirmishes on the street don't go on round after round; hell, most don't go past the first strike. For two minutes, you're expected to do whatever you must. There is none of the circling and hugging you get from tired heavyweight bums in a boxing match. On foot or on the ground, the fight goes on. You lose your weapon, you'd better have a Plan B.
Fighters pay nothing and win nothing. They can fight as many or as few times as they have willing opponents. They wear fencing masks; these are pulled off when the fight goes to the ground. They all wear gloves to protect their hands. Best way to get a stick out of an opponent's hand is to whap him a good one on the knuckles. Broken hands don't grip well.
For the sake of realism, death by knife is called out throughout a bout by the ref. No two minute bout ends without at least one death. Sticks meet with thunder cracks that make the stick vibrate until it's hot to the touch. The sound makes your ears ring. When the stick strikes flesh or bone or joint, or slams dents into the fencing masks, your eyes close. You can't help it. You're watching a bludgeoning. Some fights are paused to mop up blood.
What separates this gathering from any other back alley fight club is, these guys are a brotherhood, out to protect one another. Going too light on an opponent will teach him nothing; beating the shit out of him breaks his spirit. After each fight, the men embrace. There are few rules, but they're important: everyone is friends at the end of the day; nobody spends the night in the hospital; nobody sues - and that includes spectators.
My first time, I held my hands over my mouth the whole time. I'm not your typical sissy girl. I watch Pride, UFC, some boxing. I've trained as a kickboxer for a few years. I've heard the sound of my neck snapping back from taking a good jab to the jaw (I really need to keep my chin down). But this - the fundamental reality of men's innate violence - it is beyond my realm. The non-words they cry and the blood and the sweat and the nasty welts (or "stick hickeys") that rise on their skin. The pictures they pose for, wrapped in gauze and covered in ice packs afterward, arms around one another. The way they collapse into the hug when time is called. It's a place women cannot go, where we will never really go.
The fight before my husband's first, one man stomped his opponent's ankle. My control instinct told me to run to Mister Aran, tell him no, there was no way I could watch that, because what he feels, I feel too. If I'd done that, he would have let me take him to the car without an argument. But I knew that he had to face his biggest opponent: himself. I stayed in my seat and let him go.
I've watched him fight many times. Each time, I feel acutely what he will not feel until much later, when the adrenaline wears off. Our connection is as strong during these times as it is during sex. In the most primal of moments, thinking is replaced with muscle memory, raw rage, biology, psychic connection. I can feel when his strength is wavering, and I give him mine. It's an almost visible cord between us, though he is unaware.
In the years since I first watched him fight, I've felt powerless to understand. We're connected, but will never commune in that space of being. While he fights, I'm the thin tail part of the yin glued to the fat part of the yang: holding it together, but still a whole goddamn other color.
***
It hurts to twist too much, hurts to laugh unexpectedly. I can't sit for long, can't stand for long. Have to switch sides several times at night because my hips ache after too long with pressure on them. The kid went leaping around like a fish on deck last night; I put Mister Aran's hand on my belly and his palm got whacked. This is the part where most women really get into it, the whole miracle of the thing. I just haven't. It feels strange to have something living inside me, almost grotesque. I've been thinking I'm a bad mother. But tonight, I know it's a battle. I'm facing my ego in a 40-week long bout that will leave my life and body forever changed.
In a few months, I'll have the hardest, most painful day of my life. It will most likely take hours, even days. He'll be with me, walking me around, holding me up, watching me cry, whispering encouragement. It will make him feel powerless. No matter who's around me, I will fight alone. Ultimately, I'll be doing all the work. Though he'll be holding the circle together, he'll feel like the little tail of the yang fused to the fat part of the yin, until it's over and he can bandage me up, rub my muscles down, hand me the ice packs, and take pictures of me with my arms around our son.
I feel like such a fucking mammal.
I've written here about stinky and gross things. Embarassing things. Or, rather, things that should be embarassing but I have no emotional attachment to them. But I'm making a big lifestyle change today, it's all that's on my mind, and I'm afraid to even type it.
But here it is. I'm gaining too fast. I'm back to eating normally but by gym time, I'm tired and don't go. I've also stepped up the desserts, my biggest weakness, which doesn't help me or Baby Aran, and that means it's time to take action.
So today: tons of water, thirty minutes of cardio and my stupid yoga DVD. No sweets. No more fattening sandwiches; I have much healthier stuff available. That's all for today.
That was really fucking painful to admit.
Now that it's over, though, I can talk about how I dislike my doctor. She likes to tease me because I always come into her office certain that it's all over, that I've tricked myself into believing I'm pregnant, or that the Bad News is coming. Once she gets the doppler on me she says, "Hear that? Believe you're pregnant now?" Which is cute. I like being teased. So then I admit, again, that I am a control freak and I like to know what's going on. Today she says, "Oh god, please tell me you're not one of those moms who have their whole birth plan worked out. I hate that."
Dafewk? Yes, I have it worked out - and with all the options available, I'd be more annoyed with a woman who did no research and just blindly did what her doctor advised. I know that I don't want drugs unless necessary; I know I want a tub and a shower and the freedom to move around; I know I want a midwife and a birthing ball and a nice aptmosphere where I can relax afterward. I know I do not want to be hooked up to machines that will watch me instead of humans; I do not want to be forced to give birth in a position I don't like; I do not want my baby taken away from me; I do not want to have to stay another day if there are no complications; I do not want the episiotomy. Yes, I've thought about these things. I suppose that makes me a bad patient.
My mother was an RN in a Mom & Baby hospital department for awhile. Most doctors have a "Call me when she's pushing" mentality. The nurses try to make you stop pushing, even if the baby's coming, until the doctor has time for you. C-Sections are done even when not necessary. It's insane. As if pregnancy and childbirth hasn't been going on since the beginning of fucking time.
I know how things go in hospitals. Most of your time there is spent waiting. The last time I was at the ER, for a just-in-case ultrasound my doctor wanted, I was there for hours. You can't empty your bladder before the ultrasound, so by the time I was wheeled in, I was ready to die. Then, at the end, dressed and ready to go, I waited another hour for someone to come by and do my final vitals. I was sure I'd been forgotten. Nobody would make eye contact with me. Finally, I asked a nurse about it and she lost her mind at me. Yelled at me that other people needed the attention more than I did. This is what they call care? Bedside manner?
Before you think it, I'm not rude. I'm damn near timid. I always subscribed to the philosophy about honey and flies (bees?) or whatever. Rudeness comes very, very late in the game, almost never, and comes out more like harsh bullet points than rage. I didn't deserve to be yelled at in the ER.
I'm so sick of working with the doctor on this pregnancy. This is the week I'm supposed to move to the birthing center and I can't yet. We may be moving and I can't make plans until I know for sure. Everything is on hold, and this is when shit needs to get done. So I'm freaking.
Free-king.
Not to mention? Mr. Aran is out of town until Saturday night. I am not handling this well.
Pictures of the day:
Me, holding a copy of American Psycho (must get angry again) and this month's Harper's (new George Saunders fiction = sex), wearing a denim skirt and my husband's button-down dress shirt (my own button-downs no longer doing their god-given job of buttoning down) with not-quite-matching white boots, standing in the Pregnancy & Childbirth section of Barnes & Noble, cringing visibly at the women in the self-help section who are determining which book to give to a child for the purpose of explaining sex, also debating whether they should give up entirely and allow the school system to take care of this, widening eyes at my selections.
Me, twenty minutes later, my selections face-down on the carpet, resting on my bloodless shins, my face in my hands at the masses of information before me, eighteen plus years of parenting weight making itself at home in the middle of my back, my husband showing me a page from an illustrated book, this page containing the face of a yawning bear, the facing page stating "You don't have to agree with me, but it would be faster," stating that this describes my personality perfectly, my crouched position allowing me to feel the thrashing in my uterus.
The ultrasound lady is sturdy, probably in her fifties, devoid of nonsense. She squirts hot gel on my belly. I try to be silly, but my jokes fall dead.
The kid starts out face-down. Let's just say he's shy with strangers. He plays hide-the-peen for awhile, but eventually spreads 'em and shows the package. He waits to do this until Mr. Aran is in the room.
Mr. Aran is able to make the ultrasound lady laugh.
The kid jumps around a lot. He has ticklish feet. Whenever we get a good view of his footprints, he jumps. All the foot pictures are blurry.
When he isn't in the position desired by ultrasound lady, she jabs me, hard, with the ultrasound stick thing, and wiggles. My aching bladder! I'm certain this will give the kid brain damage, but he does as ultrasound lady requires and turns over so we can get a good look at his heart. All the chambers, going bump bump, 138 bpm, everything chill.
The ribcage and skull are enormous in comparison to his spindly legs and arms. We see the brain. The line that separates the hemispheres. Mr. Aran says, "He has his mom's brain. His dad still has his." Ultrasound lady loves this. The picture blurs.
He's still picking his goddamned nose in front of the camera. He has to feel up his face every minute. "Is my skull still there? Oh god! Oh, there it is. Good."
At one point, he turns his back on us, raises one hand and waves.
It's a boy.
Now that I know, I can admit that's what I was hoping for.
