this is an attempt to hold myself accountable to writing a thousand unedited words a day for thirty days.
just put her down for a nap after a full jar of solids. she’s sitting up already, and watching everything i do. we’ve been experimenting: sweet potato, banana, avocado, pear, apple, pumpkin, carrot. her favorite is bananas and according to the taytas and aunties, all babies love banana.
she cried through my whole shower this morning, even though she didn’t need anything. you’re okay, you’re safe, you’re fed, you’re warm, you’re comfortable. brief pause for consider then a return to the wailing. she wasn’t truly comfortable until i picked her up, didn’t need anything besides a little cuddle. i’m so grateful for a healthy happy baby.
she used to having my mother around. i’m used to having my mother around. what a different world it is to be a parent without a village, what a suffocating way to be. the nights are an alternate reality, a behind the veil experience, when there’s no one to share the shift with, and everything is upside down. at 2 am she woke up wanting to play. i was peaking through deep sleep to find her next to me, eyes wide open with a menacing smile. play with me mommy, i have no sense of time.
the sun shines in again, more judgemental than ever, with not a single cloud left in the sky today after a rainy morning, reminding me of the dust that i never ended up wiping yesterday. maybe after this. maybe tomorrow i’ll tell you about the dust creature that is taking form under my desktop screen and how i am intending to let it live so i can give it purpose like a little dust golem, but what purpose? what do i need it to do? what do i need done that i can’t or don’t want to do myself?
no time to read yet today. woke up, fed nunu, played with nunu, showered, dressed nunu, hung out at the park with the other moms and babies, commended them for having been doing this alone this whole time because oh my goodness. i’m not sure how anyone does this, let alone how they do it so gracefully. how little i knew about the suffering of mothers.
unless you’re a mother or know a mother intimately, know who she was before birth and who she became after, it might be impossible to understand. it is definitely impossible. trying to understand without the intimate knowledge of it is like trying to pour two litres of water into a one litre bottle. the immensity of it demands more space because love is not love anymore, and so suffering is not suffering. the love is such that it holds the suffering, and the suffering is such that it couldn’t be contained without an even greater love. and on and on it goes. i am like a gargoyle in the night, reaching and groaning for pacifiers and advil and whatever’s left from her night feed please just have some and fall asleep please my head is killing me please everytime i’m at the edge of falling into the dreamscape, when my nervous system is at its most vulnerable just as everything is about to go into autopilot WAAA! as if she knows, as if she can sense my presence drifting off WAA! RETURN TO ME!
did i sleep last night i don’t know. nor the night before or before, whichever night that was. but her eyes are the first thing that glow in the light of sunrise, sparkling at six am panting in place and talking to her toys waiting for me to see her. and when i do, all is forgotten. the night is an alternate plane where i am given the torture of a lifetime, where my every sin is paid for, where i am no longer allowed to be a human with biological needs. but as soon as the sun rises i’m free again, and i’m the luckiest girl in the world with barely enough time to take a shower.
not looking up, continuing, not stopping to crack my knuckles even though i really want to because i know i’m just gunna use it as an opportunity to read what i’ve written so far. i’m starving. it’s almost five pm and i’ve forgotten to eat again. well i haven’t really forgotten. i remembered and decided to make myself another coffee again because i’m too tired to cook anything and i’ve already maxxed out the month’s take-out budget. my nails need doing too, the index fingernails are chipped in all sorts of funny ways (those are my ganja crumblers).
where is the green sheep? last night’s episode of the sopranos featured our favorite propaganda within the first ten minutes, like yet another totally unnecessary product placement. are we talking about a country or a brand? is there even a difference? what is a nation but an imagined community? what do you, city dweller, have in common with the peasantry besides being inside the same constructed border? what do i, northerner with a foreign passport, have to do with the martyr from bint jbeil besides our repulsion towards the rough beast charging at our constructed border? tony is asking about a dog in a photo with a boy saying, “who’s that?”, and the mother feels compelled to say “oh that’s my son. his girlfriend is israeli.”
so? does that tell me anything about him? no. does it add anything to the plot? no. tony says, “no, i mean the dog, who’s that dog?” she says, “oh your father gave him that dog, he had him for a few years before his girlfriend took him with her to tel aviv.”
and tony’s traumatic discoveries about his parents continues, and we continue the show with this unnecessary information just subtly fed to us like it’s nothing, like it’s the most casual thing in the world. and yet with no other country brand does the show do this. the only country brand that gets unnecessarily inserted into conversations like a cereal box positioned perfectly in the frame so you don’t miss the branding is yours truly. consume consume consume. consume cereal consume coke consume zionism consume diamonds consume reality as we say it is. do you loove isghael? two hundred years of lobbies, laws, conferences, councils, deals, death, billions of dollars for your love down the drain in less than a decade, less than half a decade. the only soldiers left are the silent ones, who reap the benefits of liberation without ever having had to contribute.
my heart hurts when i think of them, those familiar faces, who i have called friends, who have never said the word “palestine”.
Agh the sleep deprivation… yes you are meant to have a village helping. And revisiting past movies and shows - the references to Ishrel is astonishing- I see it clearly now.
Maybe she can see your spirit moving to the dreamscape and it worries her?