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the school of dreams
Cixous writes: "In order to go to the School of Dreams, something must be displaced, starting with the bed. One has to get going. That is what writing is, starting off. It has to do with activity and passivity. This does not mean one will get there. Writing is not arriving; most of the time it's not arriving. One must go on foot, with the body, One has to go away, leave the self. How far must one not arrive in order to write, how far must one wander and wear out and have pleasure? One must walk as far as the night. One's own night. Walking through the self toward the dark."
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As bad as nearly bleeding to death is, the secondary infection is what almost kills me. Ten days on the edge begin to tear apart mother and child bonds, my bond with my baby, my mother's with me. And just there, I have arrived at a truth I hadn't known until I set out, wandering, as Cixous says. The depth of killing in the parent-child separation.
But in the end, I do get up from the bed, and I cry as I leave it. I cry because to die is easier, to be immortalized a heroine, "died in childbirth," the headstones that stop you as you wind through cemeteries. Easier because the damage done to the family from my near-death can't be undone.
But instead I rise from the bed, at the moment of staying or going, I both stay and go at once. I rise from the bed to write. I stay to dream.
