Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
– Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
To say that I’ve been a “private” blogger here at the Kenyon Review probably sounds like an oxymoron. Blog posts are, in a way, inherently personal—a missive from a life or a mind at work that is often less formal than a critical essay or academic paper. But while I use the first person liberally in these posts, I have preferred to lean in the direction of authors and texts, away from my “personal” life, whatever that means. Of course, the life of the mind in conversation with authors and texts is also inherently personal and private, even when the end result (a blog post, an essay, a paper, a poem) finds its way out into the public world. I’m thinking about the nature of my past two years of blogging for the Kenyon Review because I’m currently writing from a place in my life where it feels like nothing can ever be the same again for me, personally—from a “You must change your life” kind of place. On May 28, I gave birth to a daughter: Ada Hope Malech-Stine. Somehow, I managed to get pregnant, carry a baby to forty weeks and three days, and give birth without (at least to my recollection) ever mentioning any of this here in my posts. Was I squeamish about the sentimental? Was I hiding something? Compartmentalizing? Perhaps. Or perhaps superstitious. Or perhaps some ambivalences can be healthy as well. I don’t really know what stock I place in astrology, but I know that, as I look for hints of who this little stranger in my home will become, I’ll take clues wherever I can find them. Her name, “Ada,” is a palindrome—it can be read in two directions. She was born under the sign of Gemini, symbolized by The Twins, a sign known for versatility. May she, indeed, have a life that can contradict itself, that can contain multitudes—though right now she is far from large in any physical sense.
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you . . .
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same . . .
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world . . .
Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good . . .
On a hunch, I checked Walt Whitman’s birthday, and was unsurprised to be reminded that he was born on May 31. Naturally (double meaning intended), Whitman was a Gemini.
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand . . .
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.