I may have written this here before on another anniversary. I don't know.
The point is, this year it hit me hard, I could feel the sensation of the physical loss in my body and I could no longer continue editing the book. A friend who has also miscarried and like me is now past child-bearing age with no children had a kind of brilliant insight. She said: editing means cutting, right? Yes, I said. Well, maybe it's too hard to lose anything right now.
Yes, I said. Yes, you are absolutely right.
So, I've been resting. Someone else had the insight a while back that rests are part of musical notation. So, this is a long rest stop. This rest is getting to look like John Cage's silence piece (4'33"), except for a lot longer.
On the other hand, it's the first long break (that hasn't included other work, applying for other work, taxes, etc.) that I've taken for well over a year, and by long, I mean since Thursday.
John, my beloved, and I have had the time to do a few fixing up things for the apartment. On Sunday we took a long walk in Central Park, punctuated by a visit to the Met to see the astonishing Plains Indians exhibit. A few photos of my photos below were all taken in or near Conservancy Garden (near 105th Street & 5th Ave.) - these are the first photos I've taken with my real (not phone) camera since November 2014:
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| Central Park Conservancy Garden - April 19, 2015 |
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| Central Park Conservancy Garden - April 19, 2015 |
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| Central Park Conservancy Garden - April 19, 2015 |
I am not sure when I will get back to editing the book, but I will. All I know right now is: I can't push it. Spring takes a toll on me. It's beautiful but T.S. Eliot, the miserable sod, was right: "April is the cruelest month." Or, as another friend of mine said once, even more succinctly "April is a liar."
There is all this beauty and all this loss. That is always true of course, but perhaps because April - when there is life popping up all over so improbably and yet so inexorably after such a long, hard winter - seems so promising, that when there is loss associated with it, that loss seems somehow crueler. In my case, aside from the 2007 miscarriage, April's abrupt losses also include deep history - all the way back to 1966 when my mother and father split suddenly (because my father was violent and my mother needed to get away) and I was left with my grandparents - and then many other traumatic and disruptive events after that (some of which in adulthood I perhaps brought on myself as some kind of reenactment).
In any case, it's a hard time, so this April I'm turning into the curve, allowing for the grieving, giving up on the muscling through routine. As I mentioned to John the other day, all the regrets in my life have to do with my attempts to muscle through - tasks, relationships, ideas, projects - that I knew in my heart I should let go of or at least take a break from.
This book is too precious to me to do that with and my life is also finally too precious to fuck with - and yes I know I have dangling prepositions and I don't even care (!)
Finally, I should mention that this April I finally feel some sense of safety and security - John is here with his Green card and not about to head back to Canada with no firm return date (like last year), and I can make it financially for another few months. This means I have the space to feel all the grieving that I have had to heretofore repress. So, April showers bring May flowers and all that - if you'll pardon the hackneyed metaphor.
The good news is I am open on many levels, including - as one recent night - to the realization that my book is worth a damn. I've been working so closely on it, I lost track of that fact, and so this rest has at the very least reminded me of that - which is no small thing.
When we were at the Met, we walked through the room with the Van Gogh paintings, by accident, which astonished me afresh. The below paintings (photos by John Barclay-Morton) made me cry. Seeing them live, I was able to feel the beauty in motion in stillness, how the colors and textures leap off the painting. I have always loved Van Gogh's work but never felt it like this before. If it takes rests for this, so be it. That level of connection to beauty and deep joy - even over centuries - is worth it. Indeed, what else is life for if not this? Except of course love, but this is a form of that...
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| Van Gogh at the Met in NYC - photo by John Barclay-Morton |
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| Van Gogh at the Met in NYC - photo by John Barclay-Morton |
