Lebenskünstler

They say being a parent changes everything and it is true, but not all at once. There is the immediate annihilation of available time, but there is also the slow accretion of change as bits of what seemed solid about your identity get worn away.

My son, my executioner
I take you in my arms
Quiet and small and just astir
and whom my body warms

Sweet death, small son,
our instrument of immortality,
your cries and hunger document
our bodily decay.

We twenty two and twenty five,
who seemed to live forever,
observe enduring life in you
and start to die together.

– Donald Hall

So there is the literal death foretold in birth, but also this subjective death. I do not lament it. Mortality becomes as present as a blister in contact with a hot stone. Everything becomes both more, and less, urgent. Every little shard of experience lies in wait. A potential sabotage. Another bifurcation point in an unfolding narrative. So Katy Perry talks of young love lost, but it is also a tale of alternate paths – lives lived and not lived, the melancholy of the could, the should…I get that feeling every time I’m in an airport or see a plane passing overhead. But I especially feel it each morning whether faced with rain on glass, cold sunshine, or the grim darkness of hotel drapes.

In another life
I would be your girl
We’d keep all our promises
Be us against the world

In another life
I would make you stay
So I don’t have to say
You were the one that got away
The one that got away

– Katy Perry

Baby breath becomes laughter. Words become poetry. Skin becomes soil. And pop music becomes philosophy. Happy birthday June babies – it is July already.