A Human Womb of Adoration

As a writer, now, I feel crooked and lame. My sentences, trite and flimsy, fall apart on the page. Sure there was a fine snowfall to brighten the landscape, to contrast with the sentinel firs. But I have finished. There is no poetry for the blanketed stone wall or the harrier come to perch. Something in me is packed away for now. Energy flows to other immediate mouths. These babes float by their chords in water and I am suspended as well. Fatigued. I touch down and feel a wave wash over me, taste the salt in my mouth, awaken, only to fall back to sleep.

These babes are helpless creatures, but stunning. We close in on the first one, all of us, form a human womb of adoration.

Look at him.

Look at how he wrinkles his face. Ripples and reflections of spirits manifest themselves in his features. There are his parents, of course, and there is, somehow, each of us.

I walked the beach and imagined him playing there, plopped down to amuse himself, a white hat on his head. Later, he will run toward the waves and feel their sudden chill at his ankles. We will all be there, a different beach, and different bodies but our perspectives will be the same, of the immutable sky, of the waning sun, and the lull of the ocean, keeping time.

Portals and Angels

Last night I sat with my sister and we watched as her belly moved in crests and troughs- waves rippling across the skin. Zachary seemed to be restless. We flipped through the pages of her childbirth book, with its diagrams of women's torsos, the queer shapes of the insides before and after pregnancy, how they are squished by the baby. On one page there is a pelvis floating in mid air with a baby passing through it. What struck me is how precariously close that precious baby head is to the bone. There are also diagrams of unsightly tears of the perineum area, how the abdomen is cut for a Cesarean, etc., etc. and again I wondered, why childbirth is so...perilous. Couldn't nature afford a little more space between the baby's head and the mother's pelvis? Why must we be ripped, torn, cut into like a cantaloupe? And then I thought, well, if this world itself is perilous and seemingly always on the edge of destruction (famines, wars, ice ages, epidemics), why would the portal to it be any different?

I have sat next to people on the verge of that second great portal- death. I have watched them moan and thrash about. They too exhibited a restlessness, an awareness and apprehension of moving over a threshold. John O'Donahue, the Irish poet, philosopher and former priest talks about “thresholds” or the demarcation lines between two territories of spirit. Birth and Death are the grandest of all, but there are many others that occur during our lifetimes, lesser situations where we seem to move from one spiritual/emotional/mental plateau to another. The reason for them is inherent in the etymology of the word; threshold comes from the word “thrashen” which means to separate the grain from the husk. O'Donahue says that if we “cross worthily and heal all patterns of repetition” there is an “emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and holiness.” This seems to me, soulwork; thresholds are passages for the spirit to move though in order for it to find its essence. Birth and death seem to be milemarkers of some sort. I wonder, though, if the soul is in someway assisted through these tricky junctures.

This morning I was walking my dog and I came upon a crumpled piece of garland. It looked like an angel's halo after someone had run over it with their car. Shortly after that and most coincidentally, I sat down to meditate and read a passage from Incandescence. The woman mystic of the day was Hildegard von Bingen; here is a verse:

O, angels with shining faces who guard the people.

O, archangels, who take honest souls to heaven.

O, virtues and powers and principalities and

dominions and thrones.

O, cherubim and seraphim.

Are these helpful intercessors real? Are there angels whispering in my nephew's ear to comfort him before he moves through the portal? Before my father died, he wept so passionately for the dead who had suffered and passed on it was almost as if they were in the room with him. He used to see them on television, in the stands of a Red Sox game, on the evening news. He was both astounded and comforted by their presences. So maybe angels are real and not the winged, fairy-like creatures of lore but boiled down essences of love and charity. They have successfully completed passage through all of their thresholds.

O'Donahue says the “visible world is the first shoreline of the invisible world.” This gives me a great deal of comfort as I sit under the ficus tree, asking my father's now angelic soul to help my nephew's burgeoning soul through the birth portal.

Maybe every birth is a miracle and every death is a miracle. Maybe what makes them miracles is the element of perilousness in conjunction with the elements of God. And these elements of God present a love and a faith so steadfast, the soul is soothed and able to progress through its portals. Maybe you can call these entities angels, by their purity, by their charity, by their evolution.

Letter to My Nephew In Utero

Dearest Zachary,

Seriously, enough is enough. I don't know what's keeping you, but you need to know you are causing quite a row; we're all on edge here, waiting for your arrival. I know this is a bit much to put on a baby, but you should probably get used to the guilt trip now, while you're young.

Perhaps you have some misgivings about the birth process? I can understand that; it's probably very comfy and cozy where you're at and you don't want to retire such agreeable circumstances. But I'm telling you, you need to move toward the light, Zach (can I call you Zach?) because where that light is coming from, well there's something called love. Okay, so you've got a little bit of a trip ahead of you; there's that, for lack of a better word, tunnel, and it can be tight, but it is really not very long at all, maybe only a few inches and you'll have plenty of lubricant. Listen Zach, everybody does it. So you squeeze through this mini tunnel into the light, yes, you got it and do you know what's going to be waiting for you on the other side? No, not a slap; they don't do that anymore. Your mother's face and your father's face will be waiting for you. They are your parents, Zach, and they're actually pretty good looking, so you're lucky. No really what I'm telling you is this is the beginning of your life! And a life really isn't so bad, no matter what the papers tell you. Okay, so the economy is still in the shitter, and Iran is close to creating nuclear weaponry, and sadly, the Republicans control the House, but don't worry about this stuff! You're just a baby and babies have the easiest lives on the planet! Really, I wouldn't kid you.

First of all, you get this really cool room all to yourself. It's called a nursery and there are duckies and froggies and boats and other interesting things to gaze upon. Doesn't that sound better than the blood vessels you've cozying up to for the past nine months? Jesus, Zach, there cuddlier things out there than long, spindly blood vessels. And then of course, your mom and dad; I promise you, when you are in their arms, everything is right with the world.

Well, almost everything.

No, but seriously Zach, you've got to get the ball rolling or your grandmother is going to lose her mind. You don't want this to happen; grandmothers are important and it's crucial they keep their sanity so they can give you every little thing your heart desires. They make your small, burgeoning world that much better. You want that little doggie in the window? He's yours. You want that bunny or lamby friend; take 'em. Grandmothers, at your age, are the answer to everything.

I know, Zach. Your Auntie Laurette can relate: she's a Capricorn too. We are somewhat averse to change. We are stubborn. We are wary of wild schemes and go-nowhere jobs. But you can't fight the inevitable; you've got to take the bull by the horns (or the goat, for that matter). I, for one, did not exactly do this during my “coming out” process and my head was a bruised melon from the forceps digging into my skull. Don't let this happen to you! I was afraid, Zach, or at least this is what the shrinks tell me (that and I should get myself to the nearest immersion tank and have another go to resolve some issues).

Listen, Zachary, all kidding aside, if you don't get moving, I'm going to call upon your grandfather to give you a good ol' metaphysical boot in the ass. I have that kind of pull with those in high places, if you know what I mean. So move toward the light, Zachary. Please, please do it soon. For your mother's sake.

Love,

Auntie Laurette

Love Delivers: Reflections While Waiting for My Nephew

January 2, 2012

The typical thing to do at New Years is to reflect on the year past, its blessings, sorrows, trials, but I feel as if I have been doing that all along, writing this blog, and to reflect on reflections is sort of redundant.

We smoothly slid into the New Year, surreptitiously, my husband and I; I fell asleep on the couch and he in his man-chair, before a show on the apocalypse until a few minutes before midnight where he poured some ginger ale and we toasted and kissed to 2012 while watching the revelers at Time Square. Then we went to bed.

On New Year's morning I sat down on the mat before the ficus tree and read the January 1st entry from Incandescence: 365 Readings from Women Mystics. Here is the entry:

On New Year's Day,

we hope the new season

brings new flowers and new joys.

But- come what may-

those who suffer and worry for Love

will live joyful lives.

Love's rich power is creative and friendly.

Love is kind and has a sweet temperament.

Love soothes with compensation

every new sadness.

Love knows the repeated blows

I must endure for her.

From now on, though, I'll rely on Love.

totally,

with a sad heart, joyful.

-Hadewijch, Poems in Stanzas

Hadewijch of Antwerp was a woman poet mystic, part of the Beguine movement which included semi-monastic communities (no formal vows taken) of the Roman Catholic faith during the 13th and 14th centuries in and around the region of Cologne, France. According to the text, “Hadewijch's most famous statement is that 'she wanted to become God with God.'” (Someday I will write a non-fiction book on these women mystics because there seems to be much to explore). Well this was an appropriate poem to read, given the blessings I had received this past year. While I do not feel the need to write about them because, somehow, it downgrades their potency, I do bow my head in deep gratitude for the twins I carry, for the book accepted for publication, for estranged family connections renewed, for my husband, family, friends, and small daily blessings. I have discovered that gratitude is a highly personal thing and is difficult to keep. Life's flow has a way of undermining it; the mind can't help but look for the next best thing. So I carved a box somewhere inside myself and wrote gratitude on it and went away to live my life. And then it occurred to me I was neglecting the thing, entity, energy, if you will, that brought me these things. I was neglecting love. (Note: A writer has to be very careful with love because you straddle the fence of cliche, and that is a fate worse than death.)

So I started thinking about love and its components passion and compassion, passion the fiery part, the dynamic; compassion the nurturing part, the steadfast. One of the exposition essays I have my composition classes read is Anastasia Toufexis's “Love: The Right Chemistry” in which she discusses the passionate and compassionate aspects of love as the results of the chemical and biological evolution of our brains. I would like to add physics to that. Love is always a force of attraction, like gravity. The Universal Law of Gravitation states “Every mass in the universe is attracted to every other mass.” With love, the lover seeks to be near the beloved, be this a person or persons (any sentient being actually) or perhaps a mode of expression, an occupation, as in the case of the artist. This nearness settles the inherent anxiety we all have due to our physical and mental separateness (space). But love has a component to a component: compassion has a component called gratitude. So often we neglect this because we are an over-stimulated society; passion is more the ticket, will get you where you want to go.

If passion is a phoenix, compassion and gratitude is an oasis where you may float, but it disappears too quickly. I think meditation can help with this. Put yourself in that oasis, feel its cool water, hear its lapping waves. Rest there.

On a different note: for weeks now, we have been waiting for the arrival of my nephew. I went to have dinner with my family at my mother's and my sister sat at the table immense and emotional. She was frustrated; she wanted to see her baby's face, but the contractions weren't coming. The undercurrent of anxiety and hope that filled our holiday season had now swelled where we could see it. She says she feels the baby moving and that's a consolation, but she's having a hard time dealing with her mind; she doesn't know what to do to induce herself (tried herbs, eggplant, sex, walking) and distract herself.

We are now, suffering and worrying for love, as the above poem states. What I want to emphasize here as that the impetuses of love, passion and compassion, deliver and we shouldn't forget that. Example: This past week we had a visit from my mother's brother and his family. We have been, for the better part of fifteen years, estranged from them for reasons I won't get into. I never thought I would see the day my uncle would be at my doorstep, but there he was and it was as if time had not passed. As we all gathered around the table and laughed and reminisced, I realized that love had done this, brought us together (well, love and facebook).  It lay dormant for awhile, like the cicada who lives years underground until that day it is prompted by Mother Nature to rise up and sing. We tend to forget about the singing part. And so love will bring that baby, despite our fears.

I have, in my study, a rose bush that I kept in the yard for the summer. Instead of planting it in the ground, I took it inside. Now it is blooming again and this, together with these reflections have prompted a poem:

Watchful and cool, a rose twists

toward the window like a periscope

spying on the place where light was.

It blooms this January day, a festive red,

a smaller face than summer's,

but just as potent.

My Compassionate Christ

Christmas morning I read a page from Incandescence, Readings with Women Mystics, and familiarized myself with one Marguerite d'Oingt, a French nun and celebrated mystic, who lived in the thirteenth century and is recorded as one of the earliest of French women writers. In her recorded meditation, Marguerite d'Oingt meditates on carrying the child Christ and then the crucified Christ in her arms. She reflects on how the latter was just as light as the former. Christ had come into the world virtually weightless and left the world virtually weightless. I thought of how compassionate acts create lightness, and Christ's act of coming into the world, Christmas, is a manifestation of His first great act of compassion; His last, being the crucifixion. I meditated on this and then my father burst through. His spiritual geyser had reached me and I burst myself- into tears. My father must live there, in Christ's compassion, as a massless being, as energy, light, pure love. My father, as I have witnessed, has the power to do (this is the Physic's definition of energy, to do, to make change) and that is exactly what compassion is, love in action. He's behind the scenes, working at our lives, enriching them. I have no direct evidence of this; it is only what I know viscerally.

Compassion is always the answer. This is something I tell myself. For me, compassion is the intersection of Christianity and Buddhism. (Thich Nhat Han said once that “Buddha and Jesus are brothers” or maybe that is the name of one of his books?). The Christ of compassion and not dogma, is the one I seek. His compassionate acts can be divided into two types, those we can understand: consolation and teachings with parables, and those we cannot understand: miracles. I believe Christ's capacity for compassion was so intense, it had reached a mystical level and this gave him a certain lightness, to walk on water, to turn 5 fishes and loaves into 5 thousand, to resurrect the dead.

I have not been so compassionate as of late due to my discomfort with this pregnancy. I am always ready to rip someone's head off. A few weeks ago I went to my sister's house and there was a car blocking her driveway. The house next to hers was having an estate sale and the short, narrow street was crowded with cars everywhere. I was annoyed, furious someone could be so inconsiderate. A man came out of the house and I curtly asked if the car blocking the driveway was his. He said, calmly, that it was, and that he was very sorry if he had caused me any inconvenience. He would be out of my way in a minute. The compassion in his voice effectively diffused my fury. I noted this, was ashamed afterward.

I want this pregnancy to be an act of compassion, but I struggle with it being so. I have always been so free to do whatever I want and now I feel so restricted, so heavy. It's been 41 years of selfishness. I am also terrified. If I feel this uncomfortable now, what is going to happen to me in four months? How heavy-footed will I be then? Fear pummels me and my mind flashes up all sorts of ugly scenes of bed rest and preeclampsia and bursting hearts. What have I done? I ask myself at night, when I can't sleep, can't rest, and my mind spins.

And then in the morning, it is different. I want so much to see their faces, feel their warm bodies, love them, be with them. But I am already with them. Through the Christ in me, my compassionate Christ, I can meditate on this.

Tell-tale Heart Beating in My Ear and Other Pregnancy Oddities

I feel as if I am wearing someone else's body. The large belly is a tortoise shell, or a watermelon. The ear, a permanent metronome, a constant beat I can synchronize with exercise repetitions or steps when walking. The boobs, eggplants come high summer. The feet, strange unravellings there, at the heel. But the body does not discern which ligaments to loosen and I am unravelling everywhere, as if I am a ball of yarn at a kitten's whim. The lower back, well, same ol' familiar pathways of pain; that is the old body chiming in, the familiar. The hair seems to have benefitted; it grows long, has luster and volume like those heads you see in a Pantene commercial. The stomach is forever a misanthrope, grumbling with whatever I give it. The lungs, slightly restricted. They want to rise up, but someone has tied them to a tree.

I do what I can with this new body. I get it moving in the morning; I stretch it, try to fill it with air, let it leak out slow, bathe the bulk and limbs. Adorn it with clothing and jewelry. But inertia is steadfast; I give in and the beating of my own heart begins to irritate me. Perhaps my sinuses are clogged, or maybe I have an ear infection. Take care of that says the brain, now fully awake at 3 am, but I don't. Relaxation is fleeing. At night I wrestle with myself, kick off my right heel to turn myself on my left side, then, a few moments later, kick off my left heel to turn myself on my right side. I've been warned about sleeping on my back because I've been told the babies could crush an artery to the heart. I told my doctor I always sleep on my back; does this mean I am going to wake up dead? My doctor is a soft talker, has model cheek bones and blue moons for eyes. No you will not wake up dead, he said.

This tell-tale heart ticks away the moments of this pregnancy; I confess, I can't wait until it's over. I look at magazines, of lithe women in gracious yoga poses; I see them running on the street or dancing on stage. I dream of myself dancing, weightless, rising up into the ether. I feel like I should be dreaming of babies (think of the children! Adele said to Edna in The Awakening). Shouldn't the anxiety dreams about leaving them somewhere be kicking in? I feel the quickening inside me- life, theirs. Not mine. There, there, my mind says and then I forget all about it. My love for them is buried, as the quickening is buried under flesh, under all of this immediate discomfort. When I read about unfortunate happenings to other mothers, spina bifida in the first trimester, a heart-wrenching choice, I well up with tears. My love for them throbs.

Not them, I say to myself. Please God, not them.

The Cold, Hard Truth: Men Get Published More Than Women (Revisiting the Issue from a Personal Perspective)

My brother and I are both struggling writers. I write primarily literary fiction and he writes commercial fiction. I have been writing for about 10 years longer than he has. I needed a master's degree for teaching and was highly devoted to my writing so I chose to get my MFA from Vermont College. I also read an article written by an agent (whose name escapes me now) advising all unpublished writers to get an MFA because it would up their chances. My brother does not have an MFA. My fiction and poetry have been published in various literary magazines, not of “Ploughshares” caliber mind you, but noteworthy nonetheless. My brother has never been published in a literary magazine. Despite my credentials, my brother gets more attention from agents than I do. This has always left me a tad bit flummoxed and somewhat peeved.

Let me say here that I do believe my brother has talent in writing. I wouldn't pick up his book off the shelf, but I do see the quality. His stories are comparable to those of Dan Brown, with secret books, scrolls, rings, etc. (He did write a World War II biopic which departs from this, but that was non-fiction). My literary fiction has prominent female characters and protagonists. I do have round male characters, but they have not made it to the forefront as of yet. My fiction is about women's lives. I have tried to sell and have queried some 500 agents regarding my two novels: a coming-of-age story about a woman who becomes an artist, and a woman caught in the snares of polygamy. Both queries generated requests for full manuscripts; I would say about three for the coming-of-age and 13 for the polygamy story. I heard nothing from the agents who requested the full manuscripts for the coming-of-age, and several non-committal emails about how the polygamy story should be rewritten. Once I rewrote the polygamy story, I was dropped. I have been told I am a good writer...but “I don't feel I am right for this book” so many times, I could cry.

My brother is on his second agent. He had one for the non-fiction book, which was almost sold, and just recently another agent had voiced interest. She had reviewed his manuscript while she was a junior agent at a reputable agency and went looking for him on facebook when she decided to go off on her own. My brother talks to agents on the phone, has been compassionately guided through rewrites, has been encouraged by agents and publishers alike. The only time I had actually talked to an agent on the phone was the day she called me up to tell me to stop emailing her; she had rejected my work but her email wasn't getting through.

I had hypothesized that my brother's attention from agents stems from the fact that he writes mostly commercial fiction. As much as agents say they are interested in character-based novels, they are really very much attached to plot, to story, to, dare I say, gimmicks and hooks. The success of stories like The DaVinci Code and The Time Traveler's Wife are evidence of this. This is not to say these books are necessarily “bad”, but they are written to entertain. I regard literature as art through the written word. I believe in poetry in the prose. There are no gimmicks in Kate Chopin's The Awakening or Margaret Atwood's Surfacing or Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. These are the writers I try to emulate. They are now beacons in their own right, now, but where does that leave me? I wracked my brain over my lack of success with agents. I thought it was due to the fact I focused primarily on literature, and society's need for entertainment over art. And then tinkers won the Pulitzer Prize and threw a wrench in my theory.

(Note: tinkers is a wonderfully poetic novel and deserves its praise and popularity, but there are many novels like this one written by MFA graduates and faculty that go unread by the general public every year. Also, Dan Brown deserves praise for elevating women in religion and Niffenegger for being an artist, professor and a respected author, but I digress...)

The good news is, last week I was informed by Rebecca Olson, the senior editor at Calyx Press, that my book, the coming-of-age-as-artist novel (or kunstelrroman), was accepted for publication. It was total validation for me and I could not be happier. This, however, has prompted me to act because the hunch that I had and have, that I am a good writer, that I am worthy of being published despite my failure to get an agent, is valid. I pulled up VIDA's numbers and read the articles on the imbalance of male and female book reviewers and books reviewed and I was astonished. I had ignored the issue before because, as said, I was convinced by the commerciality versus literary theory. But “the numbers don't lie”.

(Note: VIDA's newest numbers reflect the Best American series in poetry, fiction, and essays and yield the same imbalance between men and women writers).

The New Republic's Ruth Franklin, in response to VIDA's numbers, tallied men/women authors published by 13 publishing houses in 2010 including Norton, Little Brown, Harper and came up with that same overwhelming imbalance of men authors to women authors. Independents like Graywolf and Melville House were no better. Franklin looked at lit mags next and Tin House, Granta, and The Paris Review all published approximately one third of women writers. She explains how “for many fiction writers and poets, publishing in these journals is a first step to getting a book contract” and the editors of these magazines are “gatekeepers”. Franklin quotes Robin Romm from Double X: “The gatekeepers of literary culture- at least at magazines- are still primarily male.”

Editors at lit mags aren't the only gatekeepers though. Agents also fall into that category. I personally know five male writers with first novels/short story collections and all of them have agents (some of them are on their second ones). I know five female writers (myself included) with novels/short story collections and none of them have agents. Two of these women have books published by or forthcoming from small, independent presses. I know of one woman in the next town over, Brunonia Barry, who self-published her book The Lace Reader which did so well it was eventually bought by William Morrow.

Here's the real kicker: all of the agents representing my male friends are women. So much for the male-gatekeeper theory.

Okay, so my evidence is anecdotal, but it does represent the trend.

So what's the reason for this inequity? Do men submit more? Are they more aggressive? Maybe. My brother is very aggressive with his submissions, but he has been encouraged. If I had that kind of encouragement (“You're almost there!” “I admire your writing but can't represent you, here's the name of an agent who might...” “I'll pass this manuscript around the agency” and on and on) I would be as equally aggressive.

Do women write primarily about women and are therefore shooting themselves in the foot for being attractive to only half of society? (My husband will barely hold my purse for me while I go to use the ladies room). But wait, female readers comprise the majority. And Jane Austen's stories are beloved, as is Sex in the City, for that matter.

In the words of Herman Cain, I....don't.....know.

What I do know is this, when a door is locked to you, you stop knocking on it.

Mary Ann Evans changed her name to George Eliot for a reason.

The harsh reception of Kate Chopin's The Awakening in 1904 ultimately caused her to stop writing and she died without the recognition she deserved.

I've looked at short story collections from the 1960's (my brother-in-law was an English major) and have found only one women writer in all of them: Katherine Mansfield. What, no Woolf? No O'Connor? No Cather? Nope. Contrary to what Meghan O'Rourke writes in Slate, writing has been historically dominated by men.

And I know damn well history repeats itself.

This is why institutions like Calyx Press, A Room of Her Own, and She Writes are so important. With these organizations giving women a voice and turning out quality writers, women have a chance at leveling the scale. Maybe then the rest of the industry will wake up.