Two years ago this morning my partner Alix gave birth to baby Jacob. This afternoon Im going to buy him a push-bike, and a little helmet. The grandparents will come this evening for dinner and cake. As Alix cuddles him in bed, hell probably tell her a sleepy-excited story about blowing the candles out. So it feels like a very good day to release this book of letters I exchanged with my dear friend Michael Stone while we were waiting with our partners for our sons to arrive. The letters are about how we got ready to feel and understand ourselves in a new-old way. Over the next few days, well post tiny excerpts from the book here. Im going to thank some very important people in the comments under the store link for the book. ______ September 12th Michael – I feel conflicted about the yogic ideal of svādhyāya. The word is usually translated as “self-study”, but it technically means the study of one’s one “ādhyāya”, meaning “lesson.” Back in the day, this referred to that portion of the Veda that a priestly family in ancient India was commissioned to memorize and therefore preserve as a living text. An endless line of boys mimicking their fathers, verbatim. I imagine we’re both questioning the archaic scripts that have been handed down to us. The illusions of romantic fulfillment, and complete emotional transparency. The ideal of the nuclear family bubble. Thinking your partner is there to make you happy, and other forms of co-dependency. Having children because you want to relive your childhood, or have some kind of control over something. Beyond all that, I have always felt a yawning gap between what is happening in life and every language or model that attempts to describe it. The only scriptures I remember are those that tell me to close the book. I’ve been chafing at something else. Self-study puts a strange ceiling on learning. It turns windows into mirrors. In my dreams now I hear a baby cry, and I rush to do something, or I calm myself down, knowing I can’t help in the way my instinct tells me. Baby’s cry in the night will open something else. It won’t come from me, and it will open a part I do not know or did not choose to open. I’m ready to not choose. Funny, now that neuroscience is screwing up whatever we thought we knew of free will: perhaps I am also more ready to sink into every choiceless condition of love, no matter how it feels.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:03:19 +0000