“God is a place where some holy spectacle lies / God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life.” - Two-Headed Boy, Pt. Two by Neutral Milk Hotel
If you have ever seen me past midnight after a few cocktails, you have probably heard me extol the virtues of Paris Hilton’s 2006 reggae fusion pop song “Stars Are Blind.” It’s actually sooo deep, I might say. Perhaps this is because it validates my own superstitious worldview, one in which fate, karma, and penitent Catholicism mingle casually, though I’m hardly casual about anything, let alone faith. I was diagnosed with OCD at age six, and my psychologist used me as a case study on an informational DVD tutorial for his students. I am predisposed to believe in a vague “higher order” that I could piss off or disturb at any moment. When Paris sings of falling in love even though the gods are crazy, even though the stars are blind, I understand the sentiment perfectly, having placed my personal life through a series of nonsensical tests that always spit out a flashing ERROR message.
Then, I read Sheila Heti’s Motherhood. It was recommended to me by my roommate, and when I asked her what it was about, she explained that it was kind of about the menstrual cycle. Having read Heti’s Pure Color, a strange but lyrical book in which a woman turns into a leaf, I went in feeling prepared for what was to come. In Motherhood, Heti is narrating from the vantage point of her late thirties as a woman with no children, unmarried but in a stable relationship. Stuck in a state of inertia, she begins experimenting with I Ching, a Chinese divination practice also known as Book of Changes. In I Ching, the querent crafts a hexagram based on the results of coin tosses; perhaps because it’s numerical, I Ching prevents the querent from wriggling out of any uncomfortable answers. In other words, had I practiced I Ching as a twenty two-year-old instead of shoddily pulling The Devil from my tarot deck after inquiring about my then-boyfriend, maybe I wouldn’t have dated him three more times! “Is that good?” I asked my friends, holding up a card that shows tiny figures in abject misery.
For Heti, I Ching became both a way to structure her new book and a decision-making tool. As she approaches an age when conceiving a child becomes more difficult, she still can’t come to any conclusion about whether motherhood is something she even wants. She writes, “I shudder to think of how I have let myself fall into the deepest sleep, like a fairy-tale princess wasting her life in dreams. And the sleep will continue if I don’t wake up, shake myself and not lie to anyone anymore. I will have to become one of the straight ones, one of the unflinching, who suffer the consequences of whatever they say and do.” I recognized myself so much in her words that I suddenly felt less alone — not that I am alone. But you know what I mean! I sometimes feel alone in the sense that I am just a singular human being in the world. I’m not married, I don’t have children, I don’t even have a pet (besides my roommate’s cat, whom I love, but he doesn’t depend on me). The only life I am responsible for is my own, and sometimes that leads to living in my head. That’s the lazy, indulgent, but not evil selfishness of your 20s — if you’re lucky, or if that sort of life appeals to you, which it does to me, at least for now.
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