News

Dear readers, Aimée, my beautiful, brilliant wife, is pregnant, due to give birth in early August. We are, naturally, excited and nervous and thrilled and terrified. I turned 38 a little less than two weeks ago. Some time before then, when considering the birthday that was coming up, I was astonished to realize that I already thought of myself as 38. I've never been too wrapped up in birthdays, but this is the first time I've ever thought of myself as any older than I already was. I've decided that this is because I knew some months back that I would be 38 when our child would be born. Who am I going to be when this new person appears? Who will I be to him or her? How have I gotten where I am now? I am not in the practice of writing about my personal life here, other than the occasional exception for special announcements like this. However, I have been considering a more personal approach--the shift referred to in my last post. I'm considering this, not because I intend to stop writing about the things I've been writing about here, but because those things seem to require that I make such a shift, however subtle. For it seems to me that my ongoing concerns here at The Existence Machine are intimately tied in with my concerns about being an authentic person and about raising a child in this world.

Let me tell you something else personal: knowing Aimée has forced me to come to terms with hidden aspects of myself, forced me to take emotional risks, allowed me to begin the work of breaking down the protective veneer preventing me from, at times, being fully present in my own life, and allowed me to see this work as both possible and necessary. This is what love is all about. These processes are also wrapped up in my writing here. Not to worry: this blog will not morph into a personal diary about my most intimate hopes and fears, but it will at times be a place for me to try to translate literary and socio-political concerns into personal terms.