First Born

My friend told me she lost her baby today. The pregnancy no longer progressing at seven weeks. On parallel but divergent IVF journeys, I found out while at the Spencer Museum with a group of students. I sat, moved by Marla Jackson’s First Born (1997), her tribute to the loss of her son. I held the son I carry inside me closer. His 32-week-old self-moved, rippling my belly.

The space between week seven and week thirty-two feels like a breath and eternity all at once.

Jackson’s tapestry was part of an exhibit on Emmett Till, but really the exhibition was about Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother, who turned her grief at the loss of her bright boy into activism. The opening part of the exhibition featured art by artists mediating on the loss of black boys. I was struck anew by how motherhood is lauded in the abstract and erased in the visceral; Jackson’s tapestry commemorates her son but also reminds us that a mother’s grief is often ignored, invisible, even as it transforms the body. I wish so many things for this bright boy I carry inside me as he rewrites so many things about my body, reminding me that biology is elastic even while I wish the sciatica would stop. Pregnancy is profound and mundane. Joy and despair.

CDK Dance take on Goyte

CDK has perfect choreography to this one hit wonder by Goyte. Also whoever did the costumes found the perfect Wes Anderson meets the 70s meets the 90s meets today blend.

Song of the Day: Maggie Rogers, “I’m So Sick of Dreaming”

There’s not a bad song on Maggie Rogers’s new album.

Song of the Day: Depeche Mode, “Strangelove”

Oddest earworm ever, but I can’t keep the chorus out of my head.
Depeche Mode, “Strangelove”

Commonplace: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and, shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two ‘prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.

During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.

“A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”

“Small!” echoed Scrooge.

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,[45] who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and, when he had done so, said:

“Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”

“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.

“What is the matter?” asked the Ghost.

“Nothing particular,” said Scrooge.

“Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted.

“No,” said Scrooge, “no. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.”

~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Commonplace: NYTimes 2024 Trends

“A revival of the good old future — a belief that progress will take us to a better place. And not just a world of hologram hamburgers. How nice would it be if we could reverse the trend of culture feeling like it’s prepping everybody to expect the worst possible future as an inevitability? Living is hard enough already. Maybe we shouldn’t be going out of our way to ‘Mad Max’ our minds.” — Jeff Tweedy

Commonplace: A.S. Byatt, Possession

“ I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”

A. S. Byatt, Possession

A. S. Byatt, Neo-Victorian novelist, passed away this week at 87. Her novel Possession is both a masterpiece as it reveals a secret romance between two fictional Victorian poets as well as a good literary mystery. I came to the novel from the 2002 movie, which I saw for Gwyneth Paltrow, but really Jennifer Ehle is the burning star of that film, so fully embodying Christabel LaMotte in all her passionate and bitter complexities.

Song of the Day: The Smiths, “Panic”

Totally a mood.

Song of the Day: “Racing Like a Pro,” The National

Song of the Day: Kiri Te Kanawa, “O Mio Babbino Caro”

I gave myself a reading gift this semester. I assigned E. M. Forester’s A Room With A View in my Brit lit class as the last reading of the semester along with the 1985 Merchant Ivory film. I fell in love with both in the early 1990s as a moody teen. I vividly remember blasting “O Mio Babbino Caro” from my mother’s Jeep, driving through downtown after an AP US History exam I had known in my bones I’d aced. The business guy in the car next time did not know what to do with a 17 year old playing opera at full volume.