I'm 38 years old today. The 3 and the 8 stack up together and make 11 times 2 makes 22 time 2 makes 44 times two makes 88. 38. Does 38 feel like 23 Does 38 feel like 90? This is how 38 looks right now. A little bendy in the upper vertebrates. A little crinklier in the eyes and forehead. A wisp or two grayer. A smidgen wobblier in the ass. These are all mirror objects. Blood and bone and water, skin sag. What is the spirit of 38? I can sit still for longer periods of time. I can watch myself from a distance and not become ruffled in that watching. Falling doesn't feel as hard. I can hear yes and no and maybe. I can speak when the pause whispers go. Also, in 38, in my fourth year of mothering, I have graduated into a less guilty place, my mother guilt is on its way to being eradicated. It's taken some thought. The outside pressure to be only mother isn't sticking to my skin the way it did a year ago, when I turned 37. I am. She is. We are. We come in 3's. Today she will see me as mother creature, but she will see me as Felicity. She will see herself as Beckett. She will fly and I will let her. I will fly and she will let me. She will see me standing alone, making, or not. She will see me sitting with myself, not feeling like I should be there, breasts out, ready for suckling. We will come together. We are together and separate. My breasts have become my own again. This is the love that I know. This is the love that I want. This is the love that I feel, entirely.
Saturday Shenanigans
I'm in the process of reading several books. Each has its designated time to be read. While riding the bus to and from work each day, I'm reading The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. While building up my knee strength at the gym, I'm listening to Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. During lunch, I'll pick up Possibility of Being by Rainer Maria Rilke. And before I close my eyes and nose dive into dreamland, I'm reading The Reenactments by Nick Flynn and In Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe.
I can now bend my knee to 138 degrees. In case you didn't know, this is what 138 degrees looks like:
This morning I started working with a personal trainer to more fully rehabilitate my knee (and the rest of my body, which is a bit out of whack). My limbs are feeling wobbly and weak, flaccid and frustrated, puny and pulverized. But it's happening. Progress.
TBA is happening right now. Though I usually like to overcommit and see too much, this year I've chosen to see Cynthia Hopkins, BodyCartography Project, Mammalian Diving Reflex, and Kim Gordon's new band, Body/Head. Because I know the melding of art and activism are vital, I'll probably check out THIS forum.
A few friends from my former Goddard MFAIA program are gathering tonight for the first time in quite a while. There will be wine, hummus, pickles, pita and discourse on domestic choreography, ass wrangling, cyborg feminism, and juggling motherhood with art and work.