Who am I?
3/13/06
Not long ago, in one of her more provocative columns on bimbopolitics.com, the writer and Starving Artists Detective Agency staffer known as Jacuzzi but whom I know so well as Juliane, discussed the ancient practice of using lemons as contraceptives. As it so often happens - in fact, always - we didn't, even though we kept one bedside at the ready. Hence, the image accompanying this item.
There are questions and mysteries that arise from this event, this miraculous melding. The obvious one is which heroic swimmer out of millions of competitors, tail flailing frantically and clutching its defining chromosome to its heart, reached the waiting shore first. Violating our oaths as detectives - and for that matter, our plights as starving artists - we have assiduously avoided learning what the ultrasound's prying eye has found. Just because you can know doesn't always mean you need to know. We prefer the companionable ambiguity of intuition and folklore handed down by relatives and friends.
For instance, Celia, a counter clerk at the local coffeehouse last year, swore she could tell whether it would be a boy or girl by the way the woman carried her baby.
Taking stock of Jacuzzi, Celia confidently predicted Isaac would be a girl.
Then again, another friend, upon learning Jacuzzi was pregnant once more, relies upon a tidbit she found on the Web. She discovered a site claiming that the shape of the neck hairline of the previous child is a key indicator. Let's see: What little hair Isaac has looks as if Vasso at The Clip Shop shaved his neck. No fuzz peak disappearing beneath the collar of his onesy. So it must be a girl, right?
In any case, we'd like to hear of your favorite method.
But the greater mystery by far is this: Why bring life into the world at all, a world of pain and torment and tyranny, a world whose prospects for sustaining basic human needs are growing dimmer by the minute,
a world whose safeguards against war and disease are being ravenously consumed by those who profit from depredation? Why subject exquisite, irreplaceable innocence to this bubble of relative stability and prosperity, so out of character with human history, that is certain to come to grief?
And more to the point, for some, is why risk passing on to sons and daughters the sins of commission, sins of omission, the unintended cruelties, the deliberate savagery of a lifetime lived? Or why extend trust, love and hope to imperfect flesh, bones and blood when more durable canvasses for the imagination beckon?
Another question to be asked - and perhaps answered - before this mystery can be solved is why, given what we know and who we are, did we throw caution to the wind, and embrace an unknowable future like the Fool in the Tarot, holding a rose in one hand, a staff in the other, and stepping with whimsical confidence into thin air?
You might say that Jacuzzi and I are the ones, the only ones, who would know, but I'm not sure. In fact, I wonder if there is a solution to this riddle. Did we see things as a matter of choice? I'd say it was more like conviction, a belief in the sacredness of sexual ecstasy that can be meaningful and profoundly fulfilling and a true union of two individuals only when it includes the possibility of creating a new life and when we both acknowledge that potential and accept it - whatever it may bring.
To return to the original mystery, then, who is this creature staring back at us from the watery womb, captured in a blurry ultrasound imagery? What soul has returned and is now coming back into being? Does it have a name? Will we know what it is?
Send clues, tips and mysteries to: scribby@scribbyworld.com
Or leave a comment by clicking on the button below.
3/15/2006
Scribby, my poet, a very lovely mystery corner indeed! Let us await the answers!
And I have one more mystery for you. It's 10:40 at night, and I'm wondering if there's anyone who might come rub my feet? Do you think this is a mystery you can solve?
Jacuzzi
3/27/2006
Mazel tov!
By the way the purpose of life is to talk about books with friends, and, occasionally, to write one. That, and going to Mets games.
Ventry
3/27/2006
is sexual ecstacy to be denied those of us who have had vasectomies? nonsense! who the hell are you to say what is meaningful or true? enjoy your baby. mine are all grown up!
8/21/2006
