"A moment comes when what one has done, what one writes, one's work, one's practices, all of it seems a little like an endlessly repeated substance doomed to repetition....And then suddenly you see the future that remains to you, the future of writing, the future of work, as a kind of foreclosure of everything new..." [Roland Barthes, Speech delivered at the season's James Lecture, New York University, Autumn, 1978--quoted in Blonsky, Marshall. "Introduction: The Agony of Semiotics: Reassessing the Discipline." _On Signs_. Ed. Marshall Blonsky. John Hopkins U Press, 1985. xiii.]
Barthes is indeed Barthes, who can see so clearly into life and expresses his ideas so well. Isn't his vision what used to haunt me in an unspeakable but tangible way? Yes. Used to, that is, before Beibei was born. When I actually read this passage with her in my lap, soundly sleeping, I smiled, feeling Barthes was not all right.
Is she a repetition? Whenever I smile involuntarily at her involuntary smile during sleep, everything around seems to start to life, asking me to rearrange them into Beibei's life. Surely, the other day, sunshine knocked at the pantio door, inviting me to take Beibei out, and for the first time after a long winter, I noted there were so many greens already there..."This is grass, That is tree." I was teaching Beibei: or maybe it was me who should have been--and probably was--the student?
2 comments:
There are so many factors that shape this thing called "language"--emotion, tone, facial expression attached to it, material stuff such as handwriting... I am sure Barthes would feel different if he had the chance to repeat these same words. Once all aspects of life--writing, laughing, panicking, blanking, dozzing-off--are considered an organic whole, we realize that there is always something new waiting to become the next inspiration. When it comes to a baby, who even knows what each "utterance" mean?--Love the way you rethink Barthes with motherhood experience.
you make the task of raising a baby so fun and rewarding, dear. i know in theory about a thing called the beginner's mind or the mental state of three year or younger baby, which was highly valued but rarely attained even for those greatest monks. now you are giving me hope:)beautiful!
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