And then I got pregnant. That was last September, and between then and now, I’ve had absolutely no desire to travel.
We talked all summer long about exploring the mountains around Cordoba, maybe we’d find that all German village somewhere on the road between Buenos Aires and Corrientes. Instead, I settled my gaining girth between the armrests of a comfortable wicker chair and sat sipping from a tea cup, saucer resting on my massive belly. It was all the vacation I needed.
I did yoga in our bedroom, took walks behind the house. They were short walks, because my back ached too quickly and rocks on the dirt road pinched my feet even through thick flip flops. I was tired. I was sick. I just wanted to sleep, eat bowls overflowing with pasta and cheese — the only thing that quelled my nausea — and watch Star Trek.
So that is what I did.
When we know our environment, become too comfortable, we lose track of time and days. Life runs through the tap, and we start to forget ourselves.
Pregnancy slows things down.
Every day brings excruciating difference from the last. On the days I felt good, just feeling good was a revelation. Occasionally, the fullness of my body and extra weight of this tiny body nestled inside mine left me feeling content and comfortable. Most days, I just hurt. I counted the minutes between now, next minute, how many more until the end of this interminable thing?
The summer after my first year of college, I worked for Madeline Gins and Arakawa.
From The Funambulist interview with Madeline Gins.
She a poet and he a painter, they partnered on an architecture project that forced humans to be aware of their surroundings, constantly. It was rarely pleasant. The back yard swooped down from a flat surface onto a field of jagged rocks. You sat at the dining room table with half your body underground. They researched methods of moving walls or walking through them to make living a constant exercise in frustration. If you forgot yourself for a moment, dared to rely on habit, you were likely to break a bone.
“We have decided not to die,” they said.
What was the purpose? For them, awareness brings immortality.
The state of ignorance human beings subsist in has got to be reconfigured as soon as possible. I count stubborn ignorance, much of it stemming from what might be called the Being-Too-Damned-Sure-of-Oneself Syndrome, to be the leading cause of death. All the pretending to know that goes on contributes to this major illness. That said, the requisite reconfiguring certainly ought to go on continually. I guess I am saying that, from my standpoint, and many critical thinkers agree with me about this, physicians suffer from the same deadly disease as their patients.
Madeline Gins, from a 2011 interview with Leopold Lambert
It was my first summer job my first summer in New York, and I loved every moment. Madeline and Arakawa lived downtown in an old warehouse turned dream studio for artists. The old smell of must and meat lingered mildly in the stairway where I walked up in the morning to meet Madeline, down again on my way to run an errand or to pick up breakfast at my favorite coffee place where I poured cream and sugar into a to-go cup and felt all mature and accomplished.
I didn’t actually care what they were trying to create, probably because I didn’t understand it. Still, I was nineteen and exhilarated to be just a small part of an artist’s studio in New York City. Madeline’s rolodex — she still had a rolodex! — held the names of hundreds writers and artists. I recognized their names, and marveled, proud. Just being near their phone numbers was no less thrilling than seeing my name in print.
That was the summer I saw my name in print for the first time.
What a disappointment! I won a NY Press writing contest, but I didn’t write what I liked, I wrote in order to win. There, I learned my biggest lesson of the summer. There’s no fun in seeing your name in print when you hate what you’ve written, so especially if you’re not getting paid, write what-you-like.
But the architecture? I just didn’t get it. Why would anyone choose to make life more uncomfortable with the dubious promise of living forever?
I worked with Madeline on the top floor in her office. A long room with wooden floors and bookshelves that stretched luxuriously to the ceiling. I made coffee in their coffee maker, sat on their red velvet couch by the window and read for days. She gave me wacky assignments like researching how many points on a surface the mind, not the eye, focuses when forming an image. Or go to the passport office to renew Arakawa’s passport. My favorite task for her? I answered her e-mail and wrote her letters, and she trained me to write as if she were the one doing the writing.
Every day, she presented me some new challenge, things I initially thought beyond my ability, but in not wanting to disappoint her, I learned anything is possible.
From time to time, Madeline invited me to their apartment on the the second floor where I listened as Arakawa unfolded the meaning of architecture as a doorway to eternal life. When you’re aware of everything, when you notice your surroundings every single moment, time moves more slowly. You have no choice but to pay attention.
Arakawa sat on the couch, eyes closed hand raised aloft as he spoke. He extended his middle finger to underscore a particularly important point. I tried hard to listen but had trouble with his accent, and he spoke fast, often mumbling. I strained concentration to find his words, string them together to form ideas. Usually, I gave up and prided myself on my uncanny ability to keep an interested look on my face long after my mind wandered.
Now, years later, sitting on the opposite side of the rounded belly of this planet, 20 years have passed and I understand what they were trying to say all along.
From The Funambulist interview with Madeline Gins.
Travel lets you live forever, because every day is a universe.
You wake up in new beds, eat new foods, get lost, get hurt, find danger, feel horrified, and then you get up the next day and do it all again. It’s often unpleasant, uncomfortable and hungry, but at the end of a string of seven days, you’ve lived a lifetime.
Pregnancy mimics that experience in its own way. There is less freedom. You can’t move as well, can’t eat what you please, and too often have no control over your own body. The closer the days move to the due date, the more time telescopes. I am sure there is no slower time on earth than days around your due date. Days are week. A week is half a year. Thirty seconds of contractions feel as if they will never end.
I learned recently that Madeline passed away in January of this year.
Arakawa in 2010. Yes, it made me sad to think of them gone, but also, I always wanted to believe that they truly would never die. I imagine they’ll always be there in that factory-coverted-to-loft restructuring architectural models and rethinking the nature of the human being. In fact, I have decided not to believe that they have died. The vibrant colors of their models live on as actual buildings in Japan. Their philosophies underlie the work of countless other artists and writers, and I for one, cannot think of my own writing as anything other than intricately interwoven with their influence.
Here I am years later, bald, chub-cheeked baby in arms. His cries mewl softly into my ear as he looks to me for nourishment or with laughter or with tired eyes. The rules have all changed.
I think that is what Madeline and Arakawa intended to say, at least in some small way, there are many ways to become infinite, but you have to pay attention.
I didn’t understand what Madeline meant when she told me that discomfort helps you live forever. “Who wants a life like that?” I wondered. Now, after enough time and travel has passed I realize, I want a life like that. I do.
