Monat: November 2015

263

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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No doubt about it, we are at the mercy of our baby. Completely, utterly, forever. We recognize this instantly. An insight that puts all our courage to the test. Courage especially to meet that tiny sting (where did it suddenly come from?) that is part of the insight and that declares the insight to be impossible: it can’t be, not this little creature, look at him, he can’t even stand properly! Yes, it takes courage  to interpret our helplessness as the most important aspect of our perfection (something at least that gives us instant comfort), but what surprises us more than this courage is our (stingless) consent. (And yet another surprise: forever and at his mercy, is that not the ideal two-tone harmony in our euphoria?)

 

 

 

262

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The baby endures the tooth, just as he endures the pain of its gradual advance. Nothing can stop the process of teething (we need to imagine this: something is happening in us and with us, so unavoidably that the notion of impotence in the face of this event cannot even be stated). Saliva flows in such quantities from his mouth, which is always slightly opened (sticky, elastic, thick threads that start wildly swinging with every breath and every turn of his head), that we ask ourselves if the baby is taking in enough fluids. No change takes place without pain, but pain itself seems to change in the course of life. In the beginning it is the greatest surprise and an astounding puzzle (which possibly makes it more bearable). What are you, pain? – we read the question in our baby’s eyes. We cannot answer him, try do so anyway, and for a few moments we see our reflection in the shining bubbles of spittle that are slowly gliding along our baby’s lower lip.

 

 

261

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Of course we also wait for the tones, the sounds, the precursors of words, and the words themselves. We do not wait for silence. It is already there. Often our baby sits on our lap, rolls over on the rug, or pulls himself up on a fencepost or the leg of a chair and is silent as he does so (not mute). The general objection to silence, the discomfort it brings to a convivial gathering — the baby relieves us of a feeling whose obtrusiveness we scarcely notice any more. But now we succeed in sitting still (not at all in the spirit in which we were compelled to “sit still!” on our school benches) in order to watch our baby as he does what he does. And if he suddenly emits a tone, a sound, the precursor of a word, these do not dispel the silence. (And we think: what begins as practice remains practice and ends as practice.)

 

 

260

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Sometimes when we look at pictures (in museums, churches, on posters) we see ourselves. We too (the baby, you, I) are part of a picture, or everything that we are looks to us like a picture. On a small, accidental pilgrimage, high above the rich city, in the baroque basilica (as friendly and childish a church as any we have ever been in), we came upon a religious image decorated with multicolored shells: mother and child. Both are wearing large crowns. The baby’s is the larger one (considering his small head). Both wear their crowns as if they did not feel their weight. The baby is lying on transparent gauze, which the mother is carefully lifting with her fingertips in order to cover all of the naked baby’s body with it. But for what, we ask ourselves, this material can’t hide anything, everything would be as visible after being veiled as before. And yet nothing can stop this tender care. That is our picture.

 

 

259

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Our baby is growing and we (you, I) are growing with him. It is not an external growing (we see this immediately when we look at each other), so it must be internal (of course, we are maturing, our capacity for empathy is increasing, our minds are less stubborn – those kinds of things). But there seems to be a third kind of growing that is neither external nor internal. Our baby’s growing is our growing. (We almost lapsed into our old habit of separating what is connected and of connecting what is separate. We almost fell into the old belief that we could distinguish between external and internal. But thanks to our most recent growth, that did not happen.) 

 

258

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What is it like, we ask our baby, when something stays the same? Does everything then abide in its original peaceful nature, in the commonality of being, the goal of all our longing, which we so regularly lose sight of? (This and more we say to our baby, when shocking things happen that we wish we could refuse to believe. Then our baby looks at us with his unimpressible gaze, a gaze we feel a little afraid of, because we feel something singularly invigorating in it, a confidence, at a moment when confidence seems to elude us. No blinking interrupts our baby’s gaze, it is the whole gaze, undimmed by anything that could be removed by a silent swipe of the eyelids. The whole gaze, we think, and try to imitate the baby’s gaze,which saves us many questions.)

 

257

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The two of you (the baby, you) are closely entwined in sleep. I want it to always be this way. And that a cause for this fabric of union to unravel will not arise. (But such cause will not fail to arise. Only daily practice and devotion will protect the threads from splitting. Thus the terribleness that dwells within us cannot escape love and remains under its spell. Is this not the only thing we have to fear: no longer being able to be good?)

256

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And then I envy our baby for his ability to give himself over to tiredness (which seems to drop down on him all of a sudden) and shift to the side of sleep without delay. It’s almost as if I had forfeited my right to this obvious possibility (I tend to confront sleep with a moody, capricious attitude, stalling, negotiating, quibbling – always with good and important reasons. Or else sleep for its part withdraws from me, as if insulted). The baby regards waking and sleeping with the same consent (what else is indifference?), which is a daily puzzle to me. He doesn’t care about the difference between these two states. Surely only he knows how to do this, because he knows something that I don’t know. What could it be? (Surely it has nothing to do with the fact the baby now, at this early morning hour, is pulling a blanket off my body in order to begin waking?)

255

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Having a baby suddenly turns out to be a huge bad break: it comes with a certainty (yes, we are quite certain) that our child will outlive us. We are not fully convinced of our finitude, and even if it were so, this is not the cause of our misfortune. No, we are actually convinced of our infinity; so that’s what it is (it must be) that is bringing us this rare and strange sense of terminal loss. At this point, concerning our own death, we cannot see clearly. But we can see our baby (nothing veils our view of him) and be glad that bad luck is so often tremendously fleeting.

254

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One exercise involving our baby requires us to redefine the meaning of a word. Most words are old acquaintances, things used a thousand times, petrified in their knownness, in their use: thus we regularly slide into abstraction, a little sad about that, but also proud of our intellectual capacity. We already knew what duration is, we just weren’t familiar with it. Our baby’s appearance (another well-known yet unfamiliar word that strikes us) permits us to see duration. It works like this: We see the baby and see duration. And like this: We don’t see the baby (perhaps you or I have gone somewhere with him) and see duration. Naturally: Duration is that which cannot be interrupted. Very simple, this exercise.