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I don't know how many of you are fans of PVP, but it's a terrific online comic. The recent story line concerns the possibility that one of the characters, Jade, is pregnant.
From Scott Kurtzman's blog, which accompanies the comic, comes the following:
Angela is not pregnant
Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005
The new storyline is NOT inspired by a real life pregnancy.
I only wish that were the case.
I will say the storyline is inspired by my recent deep thoughts and reflection on whether or not I will ever make a good father.
For some reason, this makes me unutterably sad.
For the first time in at least a decade, there is a part of me that is missing babies. I don't know if stumbling across birth stories has triggered it, or if the final ticks of the biological clock (I am, after all, 47 years old) are suddenly making me more sensitive to birth stories, but there is a certain melancholy, a sense memory of the weight of a newborn in my arms. A longing.
Strangely enough, this is not a feeling triggered by the presence of real babies. We went the home of our friends, Kat and Eric, for an open house today and I played with their toddler, Carolyn, without a trace of nostalgia or need. A coworker who is on maternity leave brought her newborn in and I held her and cooed, but felt no maternal pull. I have no envy, no neediness, in the face of other women's babies.
It is abstract babies that stutter my heart. Remembrance of my own babies, brought on by fiction or birth tales.
I understand that this is the biological imperative, the last cry of the primitive brain whose function is to guarantee the continuance of my DNA in the genepool. But the intellectual understanding of the motivation behind such thoughts does not quell their grapple for attention any more than the intellectual knowledge that there is no such thing as a zombie prevents me from being scared at the movie theatre. The reaction is base, gutteral, instinctual.
And, honestly, not nearly as all-encompassing as this entry makes it seem. I feel sad for Scott Kurtz, to whom a baby is not coming despite apparent desire. And it triggers empathy. We are strange creatures: our intelligence makes us try to rationalize and understand and explain that which our primitive brain simply feels. A toddler sees another person get hurt, and she cries because she understands what it is to hurt. She feels bad for the pain of others, but she doesn't have to try and explain it, analyze it, catagorize it. But then you grow up and you can't just cry because someone else hurts and you understand that pain. Everything has to relate back - except sometimes it only relates back to plain, raw empathy.
Pain is pain. I understand Scott and Angela's pain and wish them the best - even though they will never know who I am.
From Scott Kurtzman's blog, which accompanies the comic, comes the following:
Angela is not pregnant
Posted on Monday, October 10, 2005
The new storyline is NOT inspired by a real life pregnancy.
I only wish that were the case.
I will say the storyline is inspired by my recent deep thoughts and reflection on whether or not I will ever make a good father.
For some reason, this makes me unutterably sad.
For the first time in at least a decade, there is a part of me that is missing babies. I don't know if stumbling across birth stories has triggered it, or if the final ticks of the biological clock (I am, after all, 47 years old) are suddenly making me more sensitive to birth stories, but there is a certain melancholy, a sense memory of the weight of a newborn in my arms. A longing.
Strangely enough, this is not a feeling triggered by the presence of real babies. We went the home of our friends, Kat and Eric, for an open house today and I played with their toddler, Carolyn, without a trace of nostalgia or need. A coworker who is on maternity leave brought her newborn in and I held her and cooed, but felt no maternal pull. I have no envy, no neediness, in the face of other women's babies.
It is abstract babies that stutter my heart. Remembrance of my own babies, brought on by fiction or birth tales.
I understand that this is the biological imperative, the last cry of the primitive brain whose function is to guarantee the continuance of my DNA in the genepool. But the intellectual understanding of the motivation behind such thoughts does not quell their grapple for attention any more than the intellectual knowledge that there is no such thing as a zombie prevents me from being scared at the movie theatre. The reaction is base, gutteral, instinctual.
And, honestly, not nearly as all-encompassing as this entry makes it seem. I feel sad for Scott Kurtz, to whom a baby is not coming despite apparent desire. And it triggers empathy. We are strange creatures: our intelligence makes us try to rationalize and understand and explain that which our primitive brain simply feels. A toddler sees another person get hurt, and she cries because she understands what it is to hurt. She feels bad for the pain of others, but she doesn't have to try and explain it, analyze it, catagorize it. But then you grow up and you can't just cry because someone else hurts and you understand that pain. Everything has to relate back - except sometimes it only relates back to plain, raw empathy.
Pain is pain. I understand Scott and Angela's pain and wish them the best - even though they will never know who I am.
