I'm currently reading the book that my former teacher and thesis advisor, Carole Maso, published after the birth of her daughter Rose. A Room Lit By Roses: A Journal of Pregnancy and Birth is, well, a journal of pregnancy and birth. The title does not lie. It's enjoyable to read, as it's very recognizably Carole, and it's comforting and familiar to be in her lilting sentences and fragments of honest, forthright thought. This passage that I read yesterday really struck me; it so beautifully and honestly echoes what I'm feeling about my own process and practice of writing and being and experiencing right now:
"I have never felt compelled to keep a journal. On occasion I have with all good intentions attempted to record the flow of my life---only after a few weeks to leave it behind...Far too many hours were spent composing fiction...I must say the idea of keeping an ongoing record of my life exhausted me, bored me, even appalled me a little...I feel suspicious of that earnest attempt at explanation---it always seemed oddly reductive...
But it is different with this. The perception of time, ordinarily fuzzy for me---I worked vaguely by seasons or semesters---had in an instant changed. I moved out of the blur of my life and was placed in the crucible of time. Suddenly I was counting---week four, week five---and noticing the daily changes. Meanwhile there were all sorts of little books to keep me company---what was happening exactly, and how I was feeling probably and was going to feel. I've never felt so---well---narrated, so attended to, accompanied...And wanting to chronicle it, hold it all, keep it somehow. How strange to feel the explicit workings of time on the psyche and on the body. The dramatic workings of tie: to be inside it---intimate with it like never before. To be able to feel its accomplishments.
This will all disappear, will fall eventually back into abstraction, or remain forever in my heat unarticulated and then, after a while, lost altogether. This book is a chalice. And my body is now a chalice---holding the most sacred, most precious...Keep this. Memorize this. Hold this time close, regardless of the outcome. I don't want to lose this. For I have never felt this way before and will never feel this way again."
Thank you Carole. Thank you.
"I have never felt compelled to keep a journal. On occasion I have with all good intentions attempted to record the flow of my life---only after a few weeks to leave it behind...Far too many hours were spent composing fiction...I must say the idea of keeping an ongoing record of my life exhausted me, bored me, even appalled me a little...I feel suspicious of that earnest attempt at explanation---it always seemed oddly reductive...
But it is different with this. The perception of time, ordinarily fuzzy for me---I worked vaguely by seasons or semesters---had in an instant changed. I moved out of the blur of my life and was placed in the crucible of time. Suddenly I was counting---week four, week five---and noticing the daily changes. Meanwhile there were all sorts of little books to keep me company---what was happening exactly, and how I was feeling probably and was going to feel. I've never felt so---well---narrated, so attended to, accompanied...And wanting to chronicle it, hold it all, keep it somehow. How strange to feel the explicit workings of time on the psyche and on the body. The dramatic workings of tie: to be inside it---intimate with it like never before. To be able to feel its accomplishments.
This will all disappear, will fall eventually back into abstraction, or remain forever in my heat unarticulated and then, after a while, lost altogether. This book is a chalice. And my body is now a chalice---holding the most sacred, most precious...Keep this. Memorize this. Hold this time close, regardless of the outcome. I don't want to lose this. For I have never felt this way before and will never feel this way again."
Thank you Carole. Thank you.
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