Nelle would not be without our tribulations, including the loss of Photon.

- December 24 cont'd.

Every so often, I look at how my life has changed, and expect to feel resentful; I am surprised to find I am not.

Barthes, in A Lover's Discourse, somewhere (p. 169 'Clouds') speaks of spurned emotions as a sign for an other; thus, any resentment would be towards or for an other—a tantrum, a lashing out. But, for the most part, this lashing does not occur.

- December 24.

I think I've started to handle the anger better. Listening to the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast on the Stoics: an emotion requires that I assent to it. For the Stoics, this is because emotions are grounded in reason. For me, it is because I can (and must) respond to my emotions. (Getting pulled into reaction is to be pulled into (the creation of) a rut.)

In Kung Fu speak, it is as though I am dying to be reborn—to resist this process will only make it difficult for me. I must accept this, my death—yet another one on this journey. My birth—yet another one on this journey. For one must constantly die to oneself to be reborn as (now) one worthy of raising another human.

(An attempted solace: babies are stimulus-impulse neuronal network beings: i.e., they have no choice/choosing faculty. But this feels like I'm abrogating/abnegating my responsibility towards this fragility by thinking it 'less than human.' Sure, she is developing and is not fully choosing, but the emphasis could rather be on her way of being — how she is — and our/my responsivity to her.)

(I get angry towards technology and the baby: the 'inert' permissibility of emotional release?)

- December 16.

I have had a theory women forget childbirth—this enables future children.
I now think men forget too.

We recall how cute the newborn was (the new-newborn), and so are called and seduced back by our past, towards futural children.

But let us set down reminders: raising a newborn, one in 4th trimester, is hard. It is draining, frustrating, aggravating. I feel anger at times. Newborns offer very little responsivity—in a clear feedback way—so one's efforts feel unappreciated. (— This should be a call, then, to reevaluate and rethink ethical terms such as 'responsivity,' 'acknowledgement,' 'choice' (she's not choosing to be difficult), 'gratitude,' and so on.)

- December 11, one month old.

Am I stubbornly holding on to modes and practices from pre-child, frustrated when such routines cannot be re-established? i.e., am I inflexible and obstinate?
(See December 7.)

- December 9.

Raising an infant is like living a Philip Glass, or Steve Reich, piece: repetition with slight, gradual variation, such that one forgets where one came from.

— A total sound-landscape.

- December 7 cont'd.

If the greatest message for Nelle—a new child—is the question How should I be?, How should we be?, does this not call me too to be more responsive, sensitive, aware of my own ethical disposition towards her? Her plaintive cries and perceived stubbornness can be aggravating, but in closing off, I am refusing myself the greatest message I would wish to teach her. How should I be? must be an ethical question, concerned with character and qualities. (It becomes ontological, onto-ethical, of course, but can start with character.)

Am I kind? Caring? Responsive? Sensitive? Aware? Alert? and Considerate? —

- December 7.

Does she have a sense of her self, her body? —

(As a sidebar—here we must be careful. I suspect all metaphysics could be tied back to, almost as a sapling to a seed, the child. As though the child were a (here I have tongue-in-cheek) 'blank slate' upon which much of which we throw sticks. And so a responsive approach must heed this fact.)

Because she is more opening- than -while-holding-back, I doubt she has a strong sense of self. (Self just is this opening-while-holding-back.) I do think she is bodied, if not terribly aware. In other words, she is not consciousness/awareness that only gradually becomes tied to body. While there may not be a strong self/other distinction, so that intensities write themselves through the world across her being, vividly, I do suspect there is some differentiation, as when her eyes are wide open onto her surroundings. These intensities come and traverse her. (This is likewise for us, though our modality is one with theoretical interpretation, including self/other—however this is severed or healed. For her, the distinction is not thematized. Thus, new relations are perhaps more overtly sticky—as are ours, without us often noticing.) Thus, she participates in the world, in her perception—or she is participated by, within, the world. Rather, there is a participation within which she is put in play.

As example, when she sees a brightness, it runs across her own body, and is thus 'paired' with bodily 'sensations,' in a kind of connected-yet-distinctness, a dance. It is in becoming attuned to distinctness-in-connection that her world will become clearer—i.e., difference and repetition. As she detects arrayed patterns. (Which are never sameness, but similarities. For intensities are always distinct.) And she has always already begun this work.

- December 5 cont'd.

No doubt this world is different for her, maybe not composed of things. Deleuze's (Klein's) partial objects? Or not even an object, even if partial? Not stimulus, not pure flux, not pure content or matter without form. Not sensations. Does she gradually awaken to things (discrete) or is she fully aware of "things" (things-without-things)?

— Why not flux or sensations? For what would this mean? Pure colour without context or form? How would she encounter that? There are edges, boundaries, contrast. Stimulus? This is the reply of the outsider looking in. How would a non-stimulated responsivity—proper to humans—emerge from this stimulus-machine/apparatus? When would it arise? From whence and how? Is she animal, becoming human—does reason awaken or enter like a delayed essence?

— Why not think along these lines: she encounters world as we do, unthematized as things: intensities gathered in pockets, in places—dependabilities (as she comes to grasp temporality) (not yet regularities). Not demarcated as for us, yet demarcated: distinctions and flow. For there is no flux without some stability. There is no commonality without difference. I.e., metaphoric being.

- December 5 cont'd.

She seems to be aware of light/dark contrast, edges of faces—gradually, mouths and eyes. Her awareness is blooming.

I often wonder what her existence is like—how is her being?

Apparently, Freud thought babies (newborns) were entirely closed off, and Piaget thought they were entirely porous. I would side more with Piaget here (assuming the fidelity of these interpretations). Newborns are a tender opening-while-holding-back: more opening- than -while-holding-back. Like a sheet in the wind—and you hope they - she - will stick around. The world blows through her.

- December 5 cont'd.

"And, still Caroline cried, and Martha's nerves vibrated in extraordinary response, as if the child were connected to her flesh by innumerable invisible fibers."

- The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp, p. 21

Our body connects to that of the infant, our literally-metaphorically fibers, intertwinned like a vine.

• I wake up, dreaming-at-the-cusp of holding the baby, and have to remind myself I have set her down elsewhere.

• I walk away from the shopping cart, and feel like I've abnegated my paternal responsibilities, before recalling it is not the child.

— I am scrambled, and recomposed, by the being of this other.

- December 5.