mother, choking up

Music: Kate Bush: Aerial There's the feeling and the worry, an inseparable pair: the feeling is that something might burst forth, that thing that lives in a lump in the throat, this sorrowful Self not so much needing to be held as much as needing to express itself as sheer, naked need (alone, not alone); the feeling is that letting this Self issue forth will be maudlin—-the fear is a fear of guilt, of selfishness. This is always the case with death, as countless minds much deeper than mine have made plain (and not so plain): authentic living is a reckoning with one's finitude in a way that is not selfish or self-pitying. Authenticity, in other words, is impossible.

I'm listening to Kate Bush's new double-album, Aerial, which is simply wonderful and at times maudlin but throughout infused with a quiet happiness. The ambivalence is cliché, but obviously truthful, that the underbelly of joy is a secret sadness (and we all have our secret sadness). So hundreds are making a pilgrimage to see the weeping Virgin in Sacramento, to ride the ambivalence and reckon with death and the promise that love is stronger. And my favorite song on Bush's new album is "Bertie," a sad song whose lyrics push up the ambivalence of parenting, the joy and selfishness of the joy another can bring to this sorrowful Self:

Here comes the sunshine Here comes that son of mine Here comes the everything Here's a song and a song for him

Sweet kisses Three wishes Lovely Bertie

The most willful The most beautiful The most truly fantastic smile I've ever seen

Sweet kisses Three wishes Lovely Bertie

You bring me so much joy And then you bring me More joy

I've never really had a problem admitting that I adopt surrogate mothers and fathers when I move to a new place—or that I need them. Thursday I learned that one of my adopted mothers has a voracious, late stage cancer, and that I need to go see her, so I'm going to go see her. I know that everyone has to go through that door, and we have to see people walk through it--usually before we do--and that we share these feelings of ambivalence, and that I'm talking to people as much as I can and crying as much as I can and trying to let that Self come out without letting something like narcissism take over. What can you do when you can only think in circles and feel in waves? You do things, you move, you make the gesture, you make acts of. I can do that, though I perhaps cannot say it very well. And you can give a shit less about things like grading or reading or producing work or blogging or any of the things you normally do to make the secret sadness go away. So I'm going to see her and bring her flowers; I need to help make her joy.