Steve and Rosie and I spent a lot of time at the amazing Ann Arbor Film Festival last week. This film by David O’Reilly, “Please Say Something,” about a relationship between a cat and mouse, won for best animation. It’s complicated and aesthetically specific and strange. Many parts of it I found myself saying inside, so true, and feeling sad and understood and in love with this crazy world.
a poem by Benjamin Paloff — from Jacket magazine issue 34.
The Poem is a Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object
The day is more radiation than matter, the black hole a sign
for what is not allowed. A public service announcement
alliterates me something about the homeless heartbeat
of a healthy child, and it reminds me of the monstrously tall
principal of the Union Avenue School, who explained addiction
as a continuous striving after initial experience, which diminishes
dose by dose, like all matter and all experience. Like the troublemaker
he threw into the chairs stacked in the concrete alcove
behind the auditorium. Like the deserving of it. And the chairs
keep collapsing, like timecards and money, which stand in for
and then move forward when plotted against what, for the sake
of convenience, which we are willing to pay for, we call time.
Like the memory of the texture of a blanket bought cheap
and the light on the playroom wall the first morning I woke my mother
to tell her I saw a figure she did not even pretend to believe.
Like that figure, so massive it generated fields that still waver
between my preservation instinct and the gravity of that dawning.
Essay in the Boston Review: Smothered to Smithereens: the poetics of motherhood, by Stephen Burt.
…
To portray life with small children—so it seemed to Mayer and Notley, to Owen, and for that matter to Olds—one had to break just the standards of form, of closure, of compactness, that Plath (even in Ariel) worked to retain. One had to show language and time as unfixed, uncertain, as in the speech of preliterate children, or in the day-to-day, hour-to-hour reschedulings that children (even older ones, and even given quality day care) require. A poet had to aspire less to immortality than to immediacy, to turn away from made things and toward processes, toward some sense of poems as always—uneasily—shared. Owen called one poem “There Are Too Many of Me.” Notley’s “Three Strolls” encompassed the bleariness, the blurry sense of self, the cuteness, the resistance to cuteness, the sense of confinement, the infinite expectations, and the stretched-out sense of time: “how much of what goes on gets stopped & started.”
…
I see this space as a studio/journal and not as a newspaper, so if I write about a baby all the time, then I’m going to keep doing it if I feel like it, even if I worry sometimes that I’m being boring. But I’m also relieved to link to something not-baby: The Dailies from design for mankind’s website. I have a very messy method of looking at websites. I should really learn how to use Google Reader or something. But for some reason I must have set up a long time ago that design for mankind can send me email updates of her site, and I enjoy looking through them once in a while. The Dailies is a section of her site where artists she chooses catalog their day, hour by hour. I love to see how people spend their days, and artists in particular.
from Our Babies, Ourselves, p. 146
In more affluent Western industrialized nations, parents assume crying is first and foremost linked to hunger. In fact, some women in these cultures often end breast-feeding and turn to bottle-feeding because they believe excessive crying by the baby means he is not getting enough nourishment from the breast. But researchers know that early crying has a broader range of functions. It can be stopped by various methods, and food is not always the solution. In the 1960s, an era in America when parents were advised to let babies cry, Wolff ran a series of experiments to figure out just why these kids were so unhappy. He tried a pacifier to determine if oral gratification, without nourishment, would calm a screaming baby. It worked. He next tested a series of newborns with wet diapers. Wolff put clean diapers on half and put the wet diapers back on the other half. Both groups were quieted and didn’t seem to care if the diaper was wet or not. Wolff concluded that babies simply like the stimulation and physical sensation of being changed. He then questioned the idea that babies cry when they are cold, and so placed some infants in cribs heated to 88 degrees and others in cribs set 10 degrees cooler. Those in the cooler cribs cried more frequently, indicating that warmth, too, can reduce crying. Wolff investigated this notion further by layering some babies in clothes, covering others in various positions with blankets, and lightly swaddling others. Their reactions varied; some cried when covered tightly, others liked it tight. Finally Wolff tried the classic parental response to a crying baby. Using a group of crying babies who had to be artificially fed by tubes into their abdomens for medical reasons, he fed them this way until their stomachs were full and waited to see if satisfying their hunger would quiet them. Surprisingly, a full stomach did not stop these infants from wailing. Wolff also discovered that simply picking them up worked perfectly well as a cry-stopper, even if they were hungry and waiting to be fed. In general, he concluded picking up a baby, giving it a pacifier, or feeding it — not for the nutritional value but for the physical contact — worked best.
As most parents intuitively know, crying is not just a signal of hunger. Even in newborns, it communicates much more — the need for touch seems to be especially important; and clearly a crying baby is announcing its internal state and calling for some sort of change.
I love this book, it just has so much evidence inside. And I love the image of this man, Wolff, running around in the warm dark with 20 babies, sticking pacifiers in their mouths and putting their soaking wet diapers back on. I know it must have been more scientific than that, but really it feels like something out of a story, some strange story where a man is trying to get all these babies to stop crying and learns at last that they just want to be held.
I can’t see why gay marriage rights are tipping on the old side of the fence after what seemed like progress last year. Why are bills being revoked? What changed? It was a difficult week in New York for gay marriage rights. Which, to look on the one bright side, sometimes brings out the best in us, because when Diane Savino stood up to give her vote for gay equality, she gave this powerful speech. She gives it with such conviction, and the video is worth watching, but I couldn’t find a transcript online so I thought it would be helpful to create one myself — to understand what makes this speech so powerful.
Like Senator Adams, I’ve spoken on this floor many times myself and I’ve never been quite as nervous. Not because I’m not sure of my position or how I feel or what I think is the right thing to do. Because I’m not sure what’s going to happen – and that’s rare for the New York State senate. Rarely do we not know the outcome of bills before they come to the floor. And rarely have we faced an issue as important as this without knowing the outcome. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers’ lives are hanging in the balance in this debate. They’re either going to go home today knowing that we made history here in New York State, or they’re going to go home incredibly disappointed — but certainly unbowed, and the struggle will continue. But I hope that we are going to make that history here today. I hope that we are going to take that step forward to continue the promise of Thomas Jefferson that Senator Schneiderman so eloquently talked about, or eradicate the inequality that Senator Adams described so painfully. I hope that we’re going to make that choice because I reject — even though I have great respect for Senator Diaz, and I do, he’s not here but I do have great respect for him – and I have great respect for his religious convictions. But this vote is not about politics. It’s not about Democratic politics or Republican politics. It’s not about who contributed to what campaign. It’s not about who tried to make this body one party or another. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. This vote is about an issue of fairness. Inequality. Not political.
.
It is about the fairness of people who are of the right age, of sound mind, who choose to live together, share everything together, and want to be able to have the protection that government grants those of us who have the privilege of marriage and treat it so cavalierly in our society. That’s all this is about. Whether Senator Duaine and his partner Lewis, who are two of the most committed people I’ve ever met –I will tell you, I’m over the age of 40, and that’s all you’re going to get from me, but I have never been able to maintain a relationship of the length or the quality that Tom Dwayne and Lewis has. Why should they be denied the right to share their life together? I don’t know Senator O’Donnel’s partner, but I know he is as committed to him as Tom is to Louis, and my friend Matt Tutone is to his partner, Josh. These are relationships that I envy, and in fact we all should envy. And all they ask for is that they be treated fairly and equally, and be able to plan for each other in the event something happens to them the same way Senator Lancet does with his wife Marcele, or Senator Flanagan does with his wife, or any of those of us here who are married are able to plan to protect the person that we love.
.
You know I’ve also been lobbied, quite interestingly, on this bill by people on both sides. I’ll tell you one funny story. I was on 6th avenue in Manhattan, I was in my car, I was driving, make a left turn onto 52nd street, I was stopped at a light, I had my window open. And a young man on a pedicab stopped and stuck his head in the window of my car, which I thought was kind of strange. But he recognized the senate license plate on my car and this was right during the week that the assembly was taking up the vote earlier this year. And he said to me, Excuse me, is there going to be a gay marriage vote in Albany this week? And I said Yes, the assembly’s going to take it up, but the senate probably won’t take it up any time soon, I’m not sure when. And he said, Are you going to vote for it? and I said Yes I am, and he said, Why. And I said Because I believe that people should be able to share their life with whomever they want and the role of government is to administer that contract that they agree to enter into. And he stopped and said, But they’re changing the definition of marriage. And I said, Don’t get so excited about this marriage stuff. I said, Think about this, we just met, you and I right here at the stoplight. You stuck your head in the window of my car. Do you know tomorrow we could go to City Hall, we could apply for a marriage license, and we could get married, and nobody there will ask us about the quality of our relationship or whether we’ve been committed to each other or any of those things. They will issue that marriage license and we can get married. And he said, Yes, that’s true. I said, Do you think we’re ready for that kind of commitment? And he stopped and he said, I see your point.
.
And that’s really what this is about. We in government don’t determine the quality or the validity of peoples’ relationships. If we did we would not issue three-quarters of the marriage licenses we do. And I know there are many people in the religious community who feel that we’re going to force this on them when that in fact is not true we have never done that. I’m a Roman Catholic. The Catholic church has the right to deny me the sacrament of marriage if they determine the person I choose to marry is unfit or our relationship doesn’t meet their standards. City Hall does not have that right. That will not change under this bill. That will never change. Religious institutions can continue to practice discrimination with respect to the sacrament of marriage. We don’t. We shouldn’t. We should not do it for gay and lesbian couples.
.
I know many people are concerned about the destruction of the sanctity of marriage, as well, and they view this as a threat. But let me as you something, ladies and gentlemen, what are we really protecting when you look at the divorce rate in our society? Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on their way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don’t have cable television? Put on network TV. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch “The Batchelor,” where 30 desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life. We have “The Bacholorette,” in reverse. And my favorite show, which thank God only ran one season because it was truly distasteful, was “The Littlest Groom,” where 30 desperate women competed to marry a dwarf. That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they’re five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. They plan every day what they’ll wear, how they’ll look, the invitations, the whole bit. They don’t spend five minutes thinking about what it means to be a wife. People stand up there before God and man — even in Senator Diaz’s church — they swear to love, honor, and obey; they don’t mean a word of it. So if there’s anything wrong, any threat to the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right, and we have abused it for decades.
.
We have nothing to fear from Tom Duaine and Louis. We have nothing to fear from Danny O’Donnel and his partner. We have nothing to fear from people who are committed to each other who want to share their lives and protect one another in the event of sickness, illness, or death. We have nothing to fear from love and commitment. My only hope, Tom, is that we pass this bill, the governor signs it, and then we can learn from you, and you don’t learn from us. I vote aye.
Ordinarily, we look at something, and our gaze is like a fine wire or a taut thread with two supports — one being the eye and the other what it sees, and there’s some such great support structure for every second that passes; but at this particular second, on the contrary, it is rather as though something painfully sweet were pulling our eye-beams apart.
– Robert Musil, from The Man Without Qualities (the introductory quote to Matthea Harvey’s book Pity the Bathtub its Forced Embrace of the Human Form).
I did end up getting the h1n1 vaccine. I talked to the midwives a lot about it, and to a pediatrician, and I researched enough to feel that, while perhaps I didn’t make the best decision in getting it (who knows?), I most likely didn’t make a fatal one. Even if it does effect the fetus, I’m lucky that my fetus is viable right now — i am past the phase where everything integral is forming out of almost nothing.
But as I was researching, I was directed to this pretty great article from the Atlantic Monthly about the inefficacy of flu vaccines. It’s not about h1n1, which is a virus-specific vaccine. It’s about the flu vaccines that come out each year that try and fail to protect people from what they project will be the big flus of the year. I just love reading smart articles where common knowledge is cracked open and questioned rigorously and my head gets to spin.
(This essay makes me feel not alone, and it makes me feel hopeful, and like I need to be more persistent.)
It wasn’t that I couldn’t write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked. My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn’t budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn’t been pretty damn cool. But they were cool, showed a lot of promise. Would also have been fine if I could have just jumped to something else. But I couldn’t. All the other novels I tried sucked worse than the stalled one, and even more disturbing, I seemed to have lost the ability to write short stories. It was like I had somehow slipped into a No-Writing Twilight Zone and I couldn’t find an exit. Like I’d been chained to the sinking ship of those 75 pages and there was no key and no patching the hole in the hull. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, but nothing I produced was worth a damn.
(essay continued here.)
