cry in

The drag of taking a resisting/resistant philli to daycare is this morning a heavy weight. The fine line between knowing when to insist and knowing when to listen to your child may already be crossed when one begins thinking and talking about the fine line and its being crossed... Better: there is surely a reason that Philli does not want to go to Amys house, but is it one that needs to be pushed through or one that needs to be heeded? It occurs to me that Winnicott would have something to say about this issue, and in thinking about it I recall his essay on the reasons for crying in infants, and wonder how it translates into the toddler world--so much more complicated and dramatic, it is. At the time when I read Winnicotts essay (which I cannot now recall exactly what it was), probably two and a half years ago, it was a remarkable relief to find that crying often had to do with frustration, and that crying was a expression of satisfaction, an act that in and of itself did not communicate any content. Perhaps this is implicit in todays question as well--the extent to which acting out is communicative rather than expressive, the extent to which the message is what is manifest in the content of speech. Still there remain only questions--how does the attached-to mother act in such situations? Surely, she cannot help but feel like everything is a matter of this attachment and wish that her morning was more like that of the other parents who walk in, set their children down, say good-bye and leave. Instead, leaving a writhing, screaming mass takes some hours to let go of, in itself.

philololae

A few weeks ago, it was Philomena's 14-month birthday. Reminding myself that it was okay to still count things with this in mind, I took her picture, thinking "Philomena: 14-month-old." More a title than a descriptor. The truth is, I don't know where I am anymore. This title seemed to be the most accurate and comprehensive sense I could get of being somewhere, in a way that I have not felt I needed to for quite some time. It makes little sense to me to make an account or to take account of all of the factors that have pushed me overwhelmingly into this situation, but in lieu of such a thing, which also always comes in as a matter of course in conversation, I wonder if there is something that can be said for images that work, not to account, but to give a sense.

picture: Philomena, at Chango Coffeehouse in Echo Park. April 23, 2010.

moving on

Reading through my journal of the past months, nothing of much substance is to be found, just lists of things to do, and things done, notes about how tired I am, etc,... There are a few passing comments about wanting to see Philomena's dreams. The blog began as an effort to write alongside the dissertation, and now that that's past, I feel the paucity of new material. Or the overwhelming nature of white space. So, squiggle. I mean, that's one answer. I've been thinking of organizing some thinking on mobility and childhood aggression around the figure of the squiggle, D.W. Winnicott's game for the analysis of children. It's in line with blind contours, at any rate. This is just to mark the end. And, just now, the beginning of the wiggle: meaning, Philomena started crawling today.

philomena, phenomenophile

Although I had the pleasure of reading almost all of Rei Terada's recent book, Looking Away, before it was published, I must have forgotten most of what I read. Like the flat cow that Philomena had in her crib, as Rei noted, we get to know things, in order to forget, in order to remember, to be reminded of an elusive familiarity. That's the point. So maybe all along, I've known that Philomena is a phenomenophile, and it's just taken a while to put a name to the face. If the woman at the Hollywood farmer's market, who so rudely told me that Philomena's name did not suit her, was just asking a hypothetical question, it's too bad; I thought she really wanted to know how babies think. Like little Isabella's mom, who I met today outside of the Downbeat Cafe, put it, "I try to look at her at least once a day." It's an expression, I think, of trying to see change, to see (if not to remember) its gradations. I tried to tell the woman at the Hollywood farmer's market that I thought babies thought by perceiving contrasts, between light and dark for example, because I have noticed how Philomena becomes fixated by various forms of light--shadows on the wall, or the glow of sun from being a curtain, a certain shine to the ceiling where deflected light is hitting. Or because it seemed like she tried to focus, in her early days, on the contours of things, trying to discern an edge, a line, a frame. Now she can see the cat, but we're still talking about tracking movements, as a form of recognition.

picture: Bellman Bar, Berlin

the saga of sleep

i hate going to sleep early. as you might be able to tell from the above picture, someone else hates it too. so that means that i get less and less sleep, because i do things like stay up for hours knitting and looking through my dissertation notes and then feel compelled to write about it. but today is philomena's 4-month birthday, so it seemed like reason enough to write. and we went to a party tonight, at yuting and nasia's, which went okay. philomena slept on the way there at 7:30 and it took us a while to get there in the newly-mufflered mauto, also because we were talking about science fiction poetry and this last chapter. i wasn't there when she and daddy walked in with her in the baby bjorn because i was returning the stroller to the car, but she got upset enough to take them both (and yuting and zen) back outside. she takes a while getting used to a new environment before she can deal with the people. she has to do things like check out the light fixtures and the art collection before she decides that it's okay to look at them without screaming. it's a nice quality. she made a friend with a grad student in applied linguistics who was holding a glass of wine that she was very into. the friend said that she thought that philomena had spotted it when they were walking down the stairs, from across the room. she also liked the little bee magnets on the refridgerator. i will kick myself at 6 a.m. if i don't know to sleep right now (or at the end of this row).