correspondents
Ron, how do you feel about your mother now?
(?em tuoba leef .C lliw woh :gniksa I ma rO)
He broke a glass this morning. My fault. I should not have let him have it. Children need plastic dishes.
He broke a plastic spoon for lunch.
(Thinking about the question of love breaks my heart.)
Ron, last night I dreamed I was in a very fancy subway/hotel complex. I was trying to get to a bookstore or something, but it was so difficult, especially with C. The complex was huge. I ended up climbing out a 5th floor window and sitting
on the window sill. There I met a famous director who was on the roof of the building opposite. I called out to him and we made smalltalk. I told him I would be at the bookshop again later (it was Asian owned, interestingly, and had lots of cheap garments in the back).
And then things really started happening for me. I also ran into an artist who wanted to hire me as his assistant. My job was to apply white paint to canvases and he paid $100/hour.
The director wanted to hire me as well for some interesting work (btw: he claimed to be Leonardo DiCaprio, but I doubt it).
So everything was going really well. Except that I had lost C. somewhere in the process.
Jo, I have been trying to reconstruct the context for the reason I asked whether what you feel for C. is “Love”. . .
I am certain it was a momentary (free-?) association: but such ‘riffs’ are not purely “free”. . .
that is just the quirk/fluke? of my brain: little sparks FLASH suddenly, linking or collaging 2 or 3 subjects, I blurt out my (hare-brained) question or response, and then it evaporates. . .
so it is difficult now to say precisely WHY or HOW such a touchy question came up. . .
We had been talking about Frankenstein (the novel), and how heart-breaking it was for you to try to re-read it under these conditions (life with a C.)— considering the creator’s initial revulsion towards his creature, and the latter’s agonies of rejection. . . AND both their FATES!!.. . .
Although I have a niece, and held her in my arms as she slept when she was an infant, I had almost NO contact with her as she grew up. . .
AND, when I lived in Liege, though I babysat for Terry Fox’s 6-year old daughter (‘way-back-when!!’), she was not my responsibility (after 6 or 7 hours, I could GO HOME). . .
My only experience of being a ‘parent’ (apparent?) has been the responsibility for 2 CATS: (both of which I: dearly LOVED;ADORED; DEPENDED-on; and, eventually, watched die). . . Yet my experiences are obviously NOT comparable to ‘having a C.’:
C. is YOUR ‘creation’/’creature’??—(anyway, literally!) Yes—this must have been the matrix (which is ‘mama’!)/birth of my question:
What IS it LIKE to be ‘in a relationship’ with/ to be response-able FOR/ to have given LIFE to such a creature as a C.?
. . . does the usual notion of LOVE even apply? Are you automatically overtaken by adoration, tenderness, respect, passion, kindness} for C.?
. . . Is it a need to: protect/to RESPOND to his need? . . .That is: IS it LOVE?
. . . or WHAT IS love??
Strangely, often the light and shadows of the moon seem more defined than the daytime ones. I am so conditioned now to waking up every 1-3 hours that even on those rare occasions when C. does not wake me I cannot sleep.
But I am also so sleep deprived that it almost seems the moon shadows come to life!
(wild and exiting nights I have)
I have successfully moved C. from my bed to a mattress next to my bed, but I’m not sure that this is helping. Now when he wakes up and cannot immediately he becomes disoriented and searches the apartment in a state of panic. So I get up and go after him, but he is very fast, even when running in his sleeping bag(!!) and these nightly chases happen in the dark.
When we finally find each other it is almost like running into an unexpected ghost.
(Speaking of ghosts: Is your father still visiting?)
The nightly chase: me looking for C. looking for me:
looking for me looking for him:
Found.
