O Mother, Where Art Thou?
A short treatise on the mother of all subjects.
Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you 👈
Who is Mother?
Magician, wizard, soothsayer. Mystery, puzzle, rhyme. With magic and spells and producing meals from the thin air of a seemingly empty fridge. Mother is all confusion and head scratching mixed with the ‘oh yeah, of course,’ logic of a Sunday crossword. Cryptically, profoundly, maddeningly unfathomable with the threads of knowledge pulled from the richest fabrics of the galaxy. Truths and lies and invented orbits. Mother is stars. Mother is a planetary gas to shroud your whole world. Suffocation or life-bringing inhalation—only time with tell with Mother. See the sand, watch the sand. Warrior, advocate, judge. Standing between you and the lion. Lodging complaints with the local council of hair lengths and the right-for-you relationships. This pool, this dark and bottomless oceanic chasm—there are fish with no eyes at the deepest parts of Mother. The long sustain at the end of our note. Mother. Never someone—a person, a being, a dream—always Mother. Mother is the dull brunt of bearing our childish infidelities as we grow old and apart and away, always together and not. Mother is yearning at the end of an unanswered text. Holding desires we dare not comprehend. Mother is a pocket of wondering in the where you are now moment. Mother is all and everything and everyone but you. You may never become, but Mother will always be. To you, to them, to Mother, yes.
What is Mother?
Mother is title. Mother is role. Mother is a checkbox on a clipboard of a life lived under survey. A club in a deck of cards with only queens of hearts laid out, flush. Mother is a flower on a day once a year and an ad campaign and a cash cow of fear and love and energy and commitment. Mother is the rubbing of Vaseline, the coo-coo words, the soothing in a sound and the ache of far-away from. Mother is the complicated, sometimes poorly defined and lived and earned and rejected thing. A cliched and constantly threatening TV trope with a laugh track and Kleenex at the ready with the applause sign lit. Mother is a frustrated huff in the moment of asking to do the task for the 20th time. The kicking at the curb then sitting with to eat ice cream in the dirt with you and your pet rock. Your prickled heat cheeks flushed with giant, unasked-for feelings. Mother is the being with. Disappointment, heartache, and constant questioning. Fear and longing and nostalgia and stuck. Mother is presence within absence. Mother is whatever you want Mother to be. Whatever you need. Mother is, therefore Mother am.
Where is Mother?
In the single sharp clap of hands at the brilliance of a joke. Held in the deep inhalation of an approaching sigh. In the rude sense of missing that comes in that sudden missing moment, air rushing from the room and into the out of wherever. Mother works through cracks in conscience, working, working, into the slurry between your bricks as you build a house of wrong. Working in to expose the error before creating new and colorful grouts to shore up foundations. Mother is there in the air and fire and life and love and singing in the shower and crying in the darkness of a cupboard, peering through a crack and wishing for adulthood. A thumb on the cheek. A secret sweetie in the lunchbox. The ding of a far-off bell of approval and dismay—there is Mother. In the should and the shouldn’t. Mother. The will and the will do and the maybe later or do it now. Mother gathers up the hems of garments and comes flying into rooms, no questions. The flailing down the hillside, tumble-weeding into a fence, and you, tangled and broken. There. In the voice that you hear in the twang of the wire—there is Mother. Mother is in the next room, at the end of the telephone, off doing yoga in a sweaty studio downtown. Mother is in a hole in the ground, urn on the mantle, sailing into the ashy air above the cliffs of her favorite lookout. Mother is in your heart, your head, the cotton wool of your brain soaked with tears. Mother. Mother is everywhere. Still.
When is Mother?
Mother is now. Mother is later. Mother is before. The now is the never stop and the take-for-granted time. In every moment of your life. Or the suppressed none. The connected and the dis. Before Mother, there was Heather or Rachel or Margaret or Sarah and pre-mother was like you and us and them and dreams and thoughts and mistakes and time and exams, and their Mother at their bedroom door yelling or crying or not there at all. Later, Mother is gone. This is the pain of Mother. Mother is always. Mother is nevermore. Mother is the fleeting thing that lives forever, even while disappearing from the air and the clouds, and into the dust of our lives to be gradually stomped into no more with the footfalls of our constant amble. Mother is all time, in time, biding time.
Why is Mother?
Without we were never. Are never. Never would be. Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Mother Superior. Knows best. Is the word. Of invention. Has a country and a hood and a milk and a hen and is the Mother of all. Battles and dins and ruckus and love. Why is Mother crying? Why is Mother loving? Why is Mother the hand at our back and the voice in our head? Why, said with many inflections and with many tones and many times over. Mother is the why of our ethics and foundations and our rationales for don’t touch and put down and stay away from and run towards as fast as your legs can carry you. Mother is why hearts grow or don’t. Explosions of joy and anguish and breathing and living and dying all in a micro-second of understanding all and understanding nothing. Mother is the why of it all. The single realization at the moment of her last that we must go. We all must go. Now and later and forever.
Mother is.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
This week’s amends…
Osip Mandelstam (1935)
trans. Richard & Elizabeth McKane
Mandelstam. Woof! Poets are the most dangerous of all creatures.
Here is an excerpt from Poetry Foundation’s bio page for him. Go read it all and explore more of his poems there.
Far from applying his poetry to the political ends recommended by Russia’s governing body, Mandelstam persisted in writing poetry that promoted his own humanism, which was at once profound yet personal. Consequently, he soon become the subject of reproach from those artists and intellectuals who had willingly compromised themselves.
[snip]
Mandelstam exacerbated his own demise when he wrote, in 1933, a poem characterizing Stalin as a gleeful killer. Brown and Merwin, in Selected Poems, present a translation of this poem, which concludes: “He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries. / He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.” After news of this poem reached the Soviet leadership, Mandelstam was arrested. He was tortured both psychologically and physically, and it was assumed that he would eventually be executed.
[snip]
After Mandelstam’s exile ended in 1937, he traveled to Moscow, where he had presumed that he still owned a home. The state, however, had seized Mandelstam’s quarters. Throughout the next year, Mandelstam and his wife lived a threadbare existence, and his health deteriorated to the extent that he suffered two heart attacks. During this period, Stalin undertook another series of purges to rid the Soviet Union of what he considered to be undesirable elements. While recuperating at a sanatorium, Mandelstam was once again arrested. This time he disappeared into the maze of Soviet work camps and prisons. In late 1938, the government reported that he had died of heart failure.
Want more Mandelstam? Here is a PDF of an article called “The Case Against Mandelstam, Poet”. I’ll admit I haven’t finished reading it yet, but this was a rabbit hole day discovering this guy and I’m loving it.
Who showed me the entrance to the rabbit hole? This week’s VIA is Pome
On Rotation: “Survive” by Dr. Dog
Another oldie but a goodie.
Via Kottke
Japan has the coolest (and oddest) subcultures. Lots more photos in this Vice article.
Via 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today