Goodbye Post

OK, so I know I’m a little late, but I’m going to say my official goodbye here at My Inconvenient Body.

Two little ones turned out to be a little more than I bargained for (mom artist’s beware!), but I’ve also moved to a new state and made a lot of Christmas gifts since my last decent post streak, so it’s not all baby #2′s fault. I swear.

Anyway, I’ve finally managed to set aside some writing time, which I’ve used to publish my new book, The Abortionist, and to start afresh.

My new blog is here:

elishawebsteremerson.com

I can’t thank you all enough for your comments, support, attention. I know it is difficult to give one single thing (especially a writing-thing) your time, and I was so honored whenever I received it.

I hope to hear from you all again.

Thank you!

Elisha

 

Please, check out my  new ebook, here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Abortionist-ebook/dp/B00C4X6RYE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365512610&sr=8-1&keywords=the+abortionist

Crushed

I can’t write with you on my chest
You crush the words inside me
Into essence & nonsense & body
And sound. Which is fitting
Because that’s all word is to you
Sound and the motion behind it.

I am beneath you
Unable to write about anything else.

Faces

As I negotiate this slight but present “writer’s block,” I leave you with Rainer Maria Rilke. What he is (not was, is) very much represents why I want to write.

 

[Faces]

(From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge)

Rainer Maria Rilke

Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes, I am beginning. It’s still going badly. But I intend to make the most of my time.

For example, it never occurred to me before how many faces there are. There are multitudes of people, but there are many more faces, because each person has several of them. There are people who wear the same face for years; naturally it wears out, gets dirty, splits at the seams, stretches like gloves worn during a long journey. They are thrifty, uncomplicated people; they never change it, never even have it cleaned. It’s good enough, they say, and who can convince them of the contrary? Of course, since they have several faces, you might wonder what they do with the other ones. They keep them in storage. Their children wear them. But sometimes it also happens that their dogs go out wearing them. And why not? A face is a face.

Other people change faces incredibly fast, put on one after another, and wear them out. At first, they thin they have an unlimited supply; but when they are barely forty years old they come to their last one. There is, to be sure, something tragic about this. They are not accustomed to taking care of faces; their last one is worn through in a week, has holes in it, is in many places as thin as paper, and then little by little, the lining shows through, the non-face, and they walk around with that on.

But the woman, the woman: she had completely fallen into herself, forward into her hands. It was on the corner of rue Notre-Dame-des Champs. I began to walk quietly as soon as I saw her. When poor people are thinking, they shouldn’t be disturbed. Perhaps their idea will still occur to them.

The street was too empty; its emptiness had gotten bored and pulled my steps out form under my feet and clattered around in them, all over the street, as if they were wooden clogs. The woman sat up, frightened, she pulled out of herself, too quickly, to violently, so that her face was left in her hands. I could see it lying there: its hollow form. It cost me an indescribably effort to stay with those two hands, not to look at what had been torn out of them. I shuddered to see a face from the inside, but I was much more afraid of that bare flayed head waiting there, faceless.

Settling for Settle

1.

“I’m so much older than I thought I’d be,” cries unhappy wife and mother, Emily Weaver in Crazy, Stupid Love, and I have to admit that I laughed out loud at the line’s illogical logic.

I’m so much older than I thought I’d be.

Just five years ago, my youth seemed to spread before me with indifferent forever-ness. My youth was a fact. It felt consumable and yet, infinite.

And I know, I know, age is an attitude. You’re only as old as you feel, but despite myself or my best laid plans, certain experiences are befalling me–I am passing through certain social rites, and many of my forever young friends (all those wild Peter Pans) seem to be doing similar.

Shall I list them? Marriage, kids, houses, settling. My husband and I find ourselves redistributing our money. Instead of coffee, cigarettes, and art supplies, we buy diapers, cereal, and car parts.

Settling. It’s a nice word. Inevitable, but comfortable. But what about when it’s loss?

You can settle softly, like a feather to the ground. The word can be a nestling, a nesting, a getting comfortable.

A staying.

But it can also mean loss–a decisive surrendering to a less-than-ideal.

The former is light in my mouth. When I say it, the stress falls on the first syllable. It tickles my tongue. SEttle.

The latter, this locked-into-less settle drags on. It lands with a thud. SetTLE

2.

In a recent match of Words With Friends (My IPhone Scrabble) an old friend (the kind of defiant and spirited person you eventually spin myths about) played the word AGING, and it felt so sad, so sad to associate with the word in anyway.

And yet, it’s inevitable–aging. It’s truth, so why does my aging sometimes feel like settling–and I mean in a bad way–the way that feels like loss?

3.

The coin is a beloved symbol in Buddhist thought. You cannot pick up the heads without the tail. One cannot exist without the other.

And perhaps the meeting of these differing concepts in one word (settle) is more than just accident.

Settle–the relaxing, the getting comfortable (I am so much more comfortable), but in this process of decision, selection, staying put (in one way or another) you have to say “no.” You have to sacrifice. You have to “settle” (for some things, sometimes.)

They don’t prepare you for this settle, though. They tell you all your dreams will come true–but the truth is, some just don’t.

And maybe there’s always going to be settling in settling. You can’t have one without the other. Right?

And yet (and yet and yet) there’s an art to insisting. The trick–I’ve yet to learn, is when to insist and when to allow. When to get out of the way and accept, and when to take a break from settling to fly. Because settling seems like something you do again and again, over and over. Is it obvious, I haven’t settled when it comes to the word settle? And perhaps, therein lies the word’s genius.

 

 

Our Children, Our Selves

1.

You like to think they get the best of you, and I’m not taking eyes or jaw-line. I’m both interested and disturbed by how much of myself is blood, DNA, my body. (This veers dangerously close to the theme of my blog, which could mean a ten thousand word tangent, but for the sake of all of our busy schedules, I’ll resist that tangent.)

Take the Minnesota Twins study, for example. (If you took Psychology 101, you know I can’t mention genetics or nurture versus nature without referencing a twin study.) Thomas J. Bouchard’s 1979 twin study was basically a long and vigorous assessment of different twins separated at a young age and reared apart.

Like twins Gerald and Mark Newman.

“Neither know of the other’s existence until a shared acquaintance brought them together. Upon meeting for the first time each saw his own reflection. They had grown the same mustache and sideburns, and each wore the same glasses. As the brothers talked,they discovered they had more than looks in common. Levey went to college and graduated with a degree in forestry. Newman planned to go to college to study the same subject but opted to work for the city trimming trees. Both worked for a time in supermarkets. Levey had a job installing sprinkler systems. Until relatively recently, Newman had a job installing fire alarms. Both men are bachelors attracted to similar women– “tall, slender, long hair.” In addition to being volunteer firefighters, they both share favorite past times of hunting, fishing, going to the beach, watching old John Wayne movies and pro wrestling, and eating Chinese food in the wee hours after a night on the town. Both were raised in the Jewish faith but neither is particularly religious. Both men drink only Budweiser beer, holding the can with one pinkie curled underneath and crushing the can when it’s empty. In becoming acquainted, observes Jerry, ‘we kept making the same remarks at the same time and using the same gestures. It was spooky…He is he and I am I, and we are one.’”

Obviously, this is just one example. Some of the similarities are pretty amazing, while some are, well, not. (e.g. bachelors attracted to similar women– “tall, slender, long hair.”) The debate over nurture vs. nature remains without conclusion, and yet I can’t help acknowledge that much, if not most, of who we are is inherited.

I grew up seeing my father no more than twenty or so days a year, and yet, I often gesture like he does. I argue like he does. I adopt vocal tones and attitudes that are my dad. I didn’t know this growing up (though my mom would often allude to how much it freaked her out) and now that I live closer to him, I can see it for myself. In fact, I can quite easily pick out traits of mine that come from the Webster side of my genetic pairing, but maybe I’m making it too simple.

2.

“They” say you see yourself in your children- and that you have to often step back and remind yourself they are separate from you. Still, even with forewarning, I struggle with what to say as my nearly three-year old son sits apart from story time festivities. The other kids dance, clap, and laugh, meanwhile Henry stands to watch, an intensely serious expression expanding all over his face. He sits apart from the group, and I ask him why, later in the car.

-Why didn’t you want to dance with everyone?

-I don’t know.

-Didn’t you think it’d be fun.

-No.

-Why?

-Because I don’t.

And it’s difficult to keep it about him when I’ve got all of these old spook memories laying around, like how I spent most of my kindergarten and first grade recesses sitting by myself, waiting for the bell to ring, or how, in second grade, the kids at the bus stop referred to me as “the girl who doesn’t talk”–and it would really feel like I couldn’t talk, like there was something blocking my throat, a great sorrowful clot that I couldn’t understand, and definitely couldn’t maneuver.

Oh, I eventually figured it out. I’ve had social periods in my life–extremely social periods, in fact–and I’ve had long stretches where I mostly kept to myself (or a very small amount of people). I’ve developed and lost a stammering problem. I’ve blushed my way through entire years, and yet I’ve frequented social events like a butterfly. What I mean to say is that I’m not afraid for Henry, really. I know he’ll figure it out.

It’s just–I’ve always imagined it to be easier for the people who can just glide into the group, the people who don’t feel apart. I’ve watched, and it seems like, the people who can quickly lean on one another, laugh with one another, and call out to one another find life to be so much friendlier, a little more palatable. They have less fear, or so it seems, and I wanted that for Henry.

I want for him to be able to shake of the weight of thought so that he can leap into the parade of fun. (I’m not being metaphorical. Story time regularly has Parades of Fun.)

And if he can’t, I want to figure out a way to make it OK, because when I think about it, all of this “apartness,” all that sitting to the side and observing, only felt bad when it felt wrong, when I became conscious, self-conscious of my body as being odd and out. I liked to watch, and maybe he does, too.

So, maybe I can sit back and watch him sit back and watch (without oddness or pressure) and that will be the way he participates, or maybe I’ll have weak moments and nudge him forward just a bit. Or maybe I’ll do a little of both, flip-flopping between them like a nervous mother, trying her best to protect her son from the hardness in his blood.

I can’t say it better

These are some of the most important words on love (as in the human relationship) that I’ve read in some time:

An honorable human relationship–that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”– is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in so doing we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

–Adrienne Rich

Here’s to going the hard way–whether you’re lovers, brothers, sisters, friends, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, and I could go on and on.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

 

 

iObject (It’s a question)

Stay with me. This is a question. I’m researching a project I have in mind. . .

Part 1.

While visiting my childhood home, I came across an old, empty journal. The journal was a gift, and I’d thought it so wonderful, I didn’t dare write in its pages. The book is fat (nearly three inches thick), leather bound, with an embossed image of scantily, sheet-clad women holding hands and dancing (you know, sort of Greco-Roman-Barnes and Noble). I think I was around 15 when my parents gave it to me, and I can remember holding it just to savor its weight. The certainty of its objecthood thrilled me. The object, its quality, inspired me. I yearned to fill it with important things, better handwriting, serif-worthy prose. I’d had journals before, but this–you know, this was a JOURNAL.

Part 2.

I don’t think about objects as much now, as I did when I was a kid, and a quick pre-blog bath/brainstorm session led me to the following reasons why.

It's a lot easier to inflict harm on the objectified human (or animal, for that matter).

Reason number 1: “Object” is kind of a bad word–especially if you are sensitive to the female’s ongoing relationship with said word. I’m sure, even if you are not (sensitive to it) you’re familiar with the term “objectification” and all the negative connotations it conjures. But seriously. Pay attention to the next commercial break (or magazine page or billboard or grocery store isle or or or) The female body is ever dismembered (i.e. objectified) for the sake of making a buck or eliciting a quick thrill (in order to make a buck).  A woman’s legs. A woman’s belly. A woman’s breasts. No matter how healthy my body-concept, it’s difficult not to feel (sometimes) estranged from certain body “parts”. It’s as if–in the midst of all this objectification– these parts aren’t wholly mine, or a part of the whole–my whole. I have to make a conscious effort to note and deny this aspect of my culture that allows my parts to be so easily marketed and sold (as parts). I have to make a conscious effort to inhabit my body as a body, as a subjective and warm, living and doing entity.

Reason number 2: It’s not exactly christian (in this christian nation) to worship objects. Placing too much importance on material objects is not only seen as foolish but perhaps a bit amoral. People tend to view the materialist as a shallow, greedy person, unconcerned with the things that “really matter.” In fact, I’ve personally heard our society condemned for being too “materialistic.” In his essay, “Images of God,” Alan Watts offers a counter-view:

“For it is strictly incorrect to think of the progressive cultures as materialistic, if the materialist is one who loves concrete materials. No modern city looks as if it were made by people who love material.”

Which brings me to

                  Reason number 3: Most modern day objects just don’t mean much, anymore. They’re cheap and disposable, if not right away, within a number of years. And the objects that do mean something (the objects that get us excited), mean something because of what they do, not because of how they are made, or what materials that were used to make them.

Though some companies have tapped into our object-lust by creating objects that not only perform but are pleasing in other ways (i.e. visually, tactically), i-anything does not count as an answer.

Part 3 (The Question):

So, the question I want to ask you is, what object gets your heart pumping, for its objecthood, alone, I mean? Please, your comments are welcome!