Morning and Evening - Jon Fosse

By Jon Fosse

Read the first part. Then on hold since a few weeks. It is a short book, perhaps would try to begin it again from beginning. 

But while reading, given the first part is about a birth, and the beautiful beautiful description Fosse has about the newborn's world view, and the new parents, a tangential thought around birth itself: A woman is very different from a man. To her, a womb. She passes through giving birth has an experience, which in humanity is limited only to the female of the species. Hosting a baby for 9 months in the body, and then the birth. Something in a woman is inclined to creating, or perhaps everything in a woman is inclined to creating, and caring/nurturing for the newborn. Perhaps at the basest code level. Over it comes the 'viscosity' of lived experiences, culture, community, thoughts, words, ideas, stories, would should could. But at the simplest, at her own, devoid of everyone and everything, she creates, she hosts, she takes care. And in it finds her 'self' forgotten, absorbed, the way people find harmony in meditation. To her nature has granted this pathway of creation and absorption in nurturing.

Now this 'creation', given one has ideas around number of children one's own, where else does it manifest? If it is an inclination, the keeping house, the hosting new ideas, the giving birth, the 'infinitely tired and infinitely calm' as Fosse says after birth. An amazing accomplishment one would think. Perhaps writers feel it with their books, perhaps - but the artist in me seems to be in that terrain where it doesn't know the line of 'enough' - it is perhaps discovered. To a mum, nature says 40 weeks of gestation, but to an artist, that discovery too is part of the journey of becoming an artist. Each idea seems to come marked with its own incubation period. That golden time with a project or idea for it to be ready enough to be hosted inside and then given life to… how long does that run? What is 'enough'? The choices to be made takes away the simplicity of birth, where the only role is nesting, birthing which happens as it would, and then nurturing. Perhaps let the ideas too be, handle them as if they are beyond you, coming with their own predetermined cycle, and all you do is be a conduit, a nest provider, a gentle nurturer, not loading it or overwhelming it, but making it be free, nurturing to independence, out of dependence. 

Perhaps in being an artist, anyone can live through being a mother - perhaps that is what art is for in this world, so that that beautiful experience of 'infinite tiredness yet infinite calm' after giving birth can be had by all beings. Perhaps.