On 14 September 19__ at 4:08 PM i had:
- 3 days, 7 hours and 7 minutes
- 79 hours and 7 minutes
- 4,747 minutes
- 284,820 seconds; give or take . ..
Aside from coming out ass-first and big at 9 lbs +, my parturition had been so painful that some 15-17 years later ma punctuated her recounting of her pain by pitching onyx book ends through, what had been the parent's bedroom window, but then the incubator for transfiguration of familial axions in search of existential dendrites, impulses from which, if you are still tracking are scrolling as words before your very eyes. For example vignettes that go to the level of unrest failed to pass through Rumi's three gates 1) is it true? 2) is it necessary ¿ 3) is it kind ? :suffice it to say the unshared content was a cross between salacious and self-aggrandizing involving an ex-wife who left days after an emergency appendectomy and a paucity of filial duty a la 'Psycho'
(time is nigh with 4,682 minutes to go), i'll rest - looks like we're in for weather before ¿ expulsion, relief, liberation . .. ?
+-+-+-
There are 32 hours and 24 minutes between September 16 @ 2:51 PM and September 17 @ 11:15 PM. Last night @ 'B' - 55.2 hours i cast the I Ching about yanking the pesky mesh foisted on me under anesthesia (by a pompous yutz to expedite his 'Boxer Day' festivities and boost his bottom line 'cause he was too fucking lazy to address a 'trifecta' of geriatric pelvic maladies FAI, femoral subchondral cyst, leg length discrepancy, degenerative osteoarthritis, an inguinal hernia). The universe, or AI via Dominion, returned Hexagram 61 changing to 42.
When i conceived this scenario of developing a period prior to birth as a narrative vehicle; it almost seemed to write itself, however hubris is a cruel task master. Somehow my destiny got tangled up in what Thich Nhat Hanh describes as 'projects,' or distractions to the focus of mindful living. Yet which is which¿ In addition to the 'thought exercise' you may or may not be reading, i am working a portrait of my sister; who being 6 days short of 2 years my elder enjoys the dubious distinctions of sharing her birthday with another of my nation's 'Day of Infamy' moments and will carry to her grave the mystery of PSP.
Again Dame Paradox and her whelps "T'is" & "T'ain't" informed the photographer's finger of the precise instant to capture one of the most ineffable expressions of my long focus on women's inscrutable bastion to the world - her face.
'B' minus 30 hours and 10 minutes
I woke at 4:40 AM on this birthday and resumed sleep until 5:50; still charmed by the notion of communing down the birth canal; nor would it be the first reenactment. On one of our many efforts to bridge the chasm of our dyspeptic relationship over the years, i spent a birthday-eve across the 95 from where ma spent some summers parked with her father the miner. On this visit to what had been a remote turnout, opposite grandpa Joe's filling station, was then and now a women's center, having been gifted by a foreign dilettante espousing 'the gift/share economy' to the Shoshone tribe. One of the features of the compound was a mobile home replete with a 'rebirthing' room festooned as womb with fire engine red walls, aping the placenta, i would have to imagine.
'B' minus 6 hours
An appropriately dark afternoon for the sudden change in atmosphere once the water breaks. The cortisol levels must have been off the charts at the time of my birth; a one bedroom bungalow in Reseda with the two siblings sharing a room while i bunked in the living room with the adults - not certain, but i think neither has forgiven the usurpation of prime 'mommy time', with the alliance between the two elders lasting a lifetime.
Yet all this portent and foreshadowing begs the $64 question: would i change anything knowing what i know now about what was to come thus far ¿
I would not, would you ?
No comments:
Post a Comment