When I was Stung by A Wasp

and again and again and again (with thanks to Nick Laird)

Because I am writing about inheritance and because writing is mostly thinking, I am thinking a lot about patterning and repetition and maybe I am thinking about this more than usual because I am writing about or around Louise Bourgeois, and all her work is patterning, repatterning, as I am coming to believe all work is in a way. I see now that most writers, me included, have one or two stories to tell, the art lies in how we tell and retell and conceal this retelling.

Inheritance is a strange. Some cocktail of genetics and circumstance. I am half-Scottish, half-South African, half-Christian, half-Jewish; in short, wholly nothing.

I think of this incompleteness. We are born incomplete. To make the idea of this more palatable we make myths to believe somewhere else there is the other half. We devote our lives to finding that missing half, it is, however, uncomfortable to be someone’s missing half. To be described as the other half, rendered once again to wholly nothing.

Recently I read an essay in a magazine whose theme was ostensibly given over to music. Only the essay did not mention music. There was little musical about it, little lyrical either, although some of the lines I’d have killed to have written. I puzzled over this essay for a while. After all, I’d submitted to the same issue, receiving a detailed and polite rejection. Why, I wanted to work out, had this been chosen over mine. Until I realised, the most elegant way to write about a thing, is to write around the thing, at least some of the time. Staring the thing in the face becomes boring, dictatorial. This writer, in this piece, had written about music without writing about it. They had written about patterning, repetition, and silence, which as any composer knows, is the backbone of all music. This essay then, WAS MUSIC. I was annoyed by this; how obvious. How elusive. How stupid I was.

And now I think of my own patterning. And what I know of my patterning is this:

What I know of the fire is this; that I am always drawn back to it.

I am three years old when I learn this. I forget about it, until it is necessary to remember. This perhaps is the function of memory, that it reminds us before it is too late. Or we remember after it is too late. I am not sure I want to know which way round it goes.

I am three years old when my mother warns me not to touch the oven. It’s hot, she says. And maybe other children would see this as a deterrent, but I see it as an invitation; how am I to know she is correct other than to check it myself. I touch the oven. I burn myself. Perhaps she consoles me. Perhaps she chastises me. Likely a combination of both. The following day, I touch the oven again. Perhaps I have a problem with object permanence, but the possibility of this is not entertained. This second touching renders me foolish, as does the third on the following day. I like the oven. I like its warmth. I like the searing heat. I am not forgiven for this. It is possible to forgive a child once, twice at a stretch, thrice, certainly not. I do not forget the oven or its heat. I like to sit close to it, on a stool, next to the wide mouth of the washing machine, where I sit with my head in its chamber, spinning the drum, listening to the answering echo; this at least keeps me from the oven; from the fire.

I am still three when I learn the next thing about the fire. I am stung by a wasp. Perhaps it finds me. Perhaps I find it. Certainly, there is the fact of a sting, and the searing pain afterwards and my body is too little, too young perhaps to contend what has happened to it. My mother has warned me about wasps. I am not to go near them. The sting is evidence I have ignored this warning. Perhaps she consoles me. I am intrigued by this new burn in my skin. The following day, I catch a wasp. Perhaps I am a sensationalist, perhaps I am looking for a reaction. It stings me. This sensation is pleasant in its predictability. I take it inside, where my mother is working at her sewing machine, her head bent low over the material, her foot heavy on the pedal. Louise Bourgeois says a needle is not a pin, it cannot hurt, it enacts repair. But then, she never met my mother, the way the needle was forced through the material as she sat, tongue between her teeth, hands feeing the material to the steel; her eyes blazing, the needle executing rows of puncture wounds; exit wounds. I show her the wasp’s puncture and exit wounds, but these are my fault, after all, I sought out the wasp, caught it, knew the consequences.

And so it goes again, the round of chastisement and consolation and the next day, I do the same again, the fire of the sting in my skin, the next day, the same. I am stung and stung and stung again and I am wounded and sore but these wounds render me victorious because my mother has looked up and away from her machine; I am the centre of her world again, for as long as I am in pain she loves me; and what I know about the fire is this; Cocteau was asked if his home was on fire, what one thing would he save? The fire he said, only the fire.

And what I will save, again again again, are only my own acts of immolation. The fire. Only the fire. Always, the fire.

(with thanks to Nick Laird, whose line on Cocteau comes from Up Late published by Faber, and possibly the best collection you’ll find this year.)