Time Among the Horses

May I recommend this rumination on New Year's Eve by Verlyn Klinkenborg. (Now there's a name...)

The Sleeping Duo

Naps have become like food, as necessary and as perfunctory. In the course of a day, I might quietly lie down two or three times, slide into insensibility, and then then get up again as if nothing had happened.

Meditation is the most reliable trigger for a nap. I sit down, cross my legs, relax the mind into some semblance of receptivity and openness. There is the distinct sensation of energy moving down into the abdomen to nourish the being who grows there. A twenty-minute instant later, my eyelids begin to sink. It is so delicious to curl up right there, on the cushion. I come awake again to find the candle still burning.

I can't say what happens in the twenty minutes of sitting and thirty minutes of sleeping. But I choose to imagine that, in some very real way, life is being given to the child.

In Taoist thought, a woman loses qi by bearing children. Men lose qi with every seminal emission, and from that belief there arose an elaborate system for having a climax while avoiding ejaculation. If you're a pregnant woman, however, there's no way to have a baby without actually having a baby.

In yogic thought, prana, which is roughly the same life-force as qi, is transferred to the growing baby during the third trimester. This is the gift that everyone receives from her mother. Consciousness migrates from who-knows-where, but the vitality of life comes from a woman's blood and bones. And diet.

The pregnancy newsletter I receive ("You are now in the 30th week of pregnancy!") says,

Your baby is rapidly growing at this point. Obviously your baby is continuing to gain weight, and his/her head is also growing.... Because there is so much development and maturing going on, it is incredibly important to ensure that you are getting plenty of nutrients and rest.

No kidding.

I Am Two People

Expecting in the Kitchen
Originally uploaded by Shugetsu.

Perhaps it is presumptuous to imagine having a relationship with a person who doesn't know what they are yet.

But you know how it is: spending time being close with someone, especially in silence, gives you an idea of who they are. Whether it's correct or not is hardly important: there is the impression of relationship.

And so I feel that I get along well with the little one. He bustles about in response to his papa's voice; is quieted when I sing to him; rests when we meditate.

He would weigh 2.5 pounds, and open and close his eyes, if he were on the outside. But in the realm where he now resides, there is no reference for these things.

-

For me, being pregnant seems to precipitate recurring dreams. So I have dreamed the same dull dream every night for a week, just before I wake up: something doesn't measure up; there is some mild disappointment, and I make my way home from a building in Belfast.

Baby Name

To name something you have not seen seems presumptuous. How can a name be the only thing you know? It is a false conceptual handle on an unknown phenomenon.

Even so, there is a baby--or rather, there is a heartbeat, and a shadowy ultrasound image, a growing abdomen where he allegedly lives--and there is a baby's name. It is a boy's name that came to me early on, so unmistakably as to relieve one of the need for further brainstorming.

Now the baby's movement has is becoming apparent. It is extremely subtle. But now the name begins to denote something more real. There is evidence; there is someone this name applies to. Deep inside, someone devoid of concepts--a tiny being in a dream--is called something. Is named and measured and planned-for. I suppose it has always been this way. Knowing nothing, we are born into this world of speech, symbol, and meaning. It's not more valid than the void; it's just the law of this realm.

What I See Right Now

No camera could capture this.

Snow has begun to fall in thick flakes
and the sparrows cluster and flit around the feeder
that hangs across the way
in a maple still golden with autumn leaves.