Publishing: Book or Baby
Instead of tending to survival, I spend ample time harvesting thoughts about possibilities that extend beyond laundry and scraping food off a plastic high chair. Even though--even though--I want more than anything to do housewifery in its simplest form.
Energy
Last night before bed I checked my personal inventory and found that I am starting to feel creative again. Creative in a way that Modge Podge cannot satisfy. I feel the urge to produce something from my soul, only I wonder if the direction I should be taking is of physical or spiritual means. Physical, shall I start again to prepare my body for another child? Or spiritual, shall I write a book?
Both require three things: determination, hope and patience. Both require my most intense focus. Both do not come at all easy for me. I don't reproduce like a well-oiled feminine machine, and the writing process sometimes feeds my attention deficient. However, I know when my creativity comes calling. If I don't respond, the energy goes back to the source from which it came, leaving me stagnant.
Baby
When my grandmother was thirty-two she gave birth to my mother. When my mother was thirty-two she gave birth to me. I'd like to call on the universe to help me continue this beautiful tradition of women begetting women in an equal time period. And it would take the universe, the cosmos, the favor of fate for me to continue the birthright.
So is that where I spend my thoughts? Directing them again to move my body in places where conception has a chance at success? Do I call on the powers to not only give me a baby, but a daughter? A daughter? I chill.
Book
I have essays that visit me in the late hours or early mornings. I usually converse with them from a sleepy consciousness, sometimes asking, "Oh, are you still around?" They are essays of a most personal nature and I'd ask God before I wrote them for public use.
I know this: they are not meant for my blog, or a book by some other author. They are for me to gestate and bring to the world. Not so the world can read them, but for my posterity to know that I had thoughts that endured. Which in the end, matters a lot to me.
A book was never in my wanting to do. But maybe it is in my need to do. The very process has always made me feel the kind of tired that is waking up too early to do something too big. But perhaps not now. Now I feel I set my alarm at just the right time.
Seeds
In the Book of Mormon there is a prophet named Alma who talks about planting seeds of intent. If a seed is planted in your heart it will either grow and become fruit that is good to the soul, or it won't. I have harvested my seeds to see which, if either, will bloom.
The last year of my life was refining and I feel cleansed. Though not perfect, I do feel pure. I am ready for possibilities to enter in here. One will make itself known. I will wait.
And yet I hear what my feminist ancestors are saying. They whisper to me, "Honey, you know you can do both. Right?"
