five days young

overcooked

Overcooked.
40 weeks + 1 day.
Come on, lil girl.

button

All eyes latched on this, the protrusion of the button.
5 weeks to go.

31 weeks

My baby girl fetus is 31 weeks old. Pretty wild in there. My wife is so goddamn cute. Things can be pretty alright sometimes, can't they?

On hearing our baby's heartbeat

Week 15 heartbeat.mp3

I wanted to capture its rich dimension, so as the man was smearing KY Jelly on my wife's mid-section, I started booting up my Olympus LS-10. The low battery screen started flashing at me right away. It wasn't going to happen. Luckily, I had my iPhone. Fired it up. Voice Memo stepped in and did its weak-kneed bidding.

So, what I captured isn't as crystalline and dynamic as I would have liked. But it's something. And by something I mean proof that the tangle of genes, atoms, and obscure shapes has a heart that makes technoish sounds, that it's alive, that everything is ok. Or better than. As you can hear the doctor say, "Nice and strong."

Before we went in, we heard that this sound can be life changing. Honestly, it was pretty cool, but didn't quite stir us in ways people'd threatened us that it would. Our eyes didn't leak. It was almost like, Oh, there's a beat. It's steady and rapid as gunfire, but almost phony.

Maybe it's the fault of the machine that delivered the sound. It pinched it. Stripped away too much organicness.

To me, the last ultrasound was way more holy shit-inspiring. Sure, there was surreal and limiting trappings of the screen. There was a dearth of real dimension. There was no real way to prove what we were seeing weren't just the ghosts of electronic pulses.

There was nothing to touch.

But still, when you physically see that caterpillarlike spine, the speck of heart flexing and releasing, well, everything in you gasps.

baby & los bravos

Baby is culling the herd.
Baby runs scared, fire in the lungs.
Baby vanishes and then reappears.
Baby gets famished.
Baby gnaws on lemongrass.
Baby loves the word but hates the taste.
Baby watches a tide of hair recede and vanish.
Baby can be two men at once.
Baby can be a woman too, very easily.
Baby cowers.
Baby climbs a deciduous tree.
Baby shoots at the windshields of the cars that pass below.
Baby misses more than you could ever imagine.
Baby has tried and will keep on trying.
Baby lands and breaks every last bone.
Baby is not discovered.
Baby becomes peat, a mush among branches and dead leaves.

His soul ascends, but only slightly, knee-level or so.

Download: Los Bravos - I Want a Name (.mp3)
(biog)