Wondering how she knew this was exactly relevant to what I’d been thinking.

“But that’s not just burakumin, Sean. If you guys happened earlier, during the war, like happened with a lot of American soldiers and Japanese prostitutes, there was a time when, if the baby was born in Japan, the Japanese government wouldn’t recognize the Western name. So they’d be denied papers. And, until Naturalization passed, America wouldn’t grant them papers either! Since they weren’t born in the U.S. They’d be in limbo! No names.”

“Goddamn,” I said. “And I got both!”

“You got both,” my mama said, laugh-sighing like Oh my.

V

Winter

From such severe sickness…one returns newborn, having shed one’s skin, more ticklish and malicious.

—NIETZSCHE

1

WEE LAD

January 2019: Los Angeles

In a week it would be back to Philly. To the cold.

To a nebulous plan of ‘mish it belligerently, in my van, to NYC.’ To ‘make something happen.’

Don’t think I actually thought I was home free; there was still some cycle I was caught in: all the old skin would shed, then I’d have this new layer, but the new layer was never fully ready to face the day; it would be, for some days, but then it’d be so sensitive, so thin, the slightest scratching would slightly irritate it, slightly disrupt its surface; this wasn’t a biggie till it wouldn’t follow through, wouldn’t commit to regenerating.

Would jump ship last minute and start shedding again.

Abort the mission and flake to the floor.

If somehow still unclear: ex bae’s abortion was what fucked everything.

What made me no longer able to outdo the ole man.

What made me no different than the ole man.

Ex bae had been my ticket to not becoming the ole man.

The idea of the inevitability of us eventually procreating had been.

Day of my last flight out here, autonomous bae hit me with her copy of Sheila Heti’s Motherhood.

Surprising me at the departures gate, after learning of my departure time on the low from the homie N, who’d driven me out there—she’d just landed in Philly, at the arrivals gate, from a Thanksgiving fam hang back home.

Such sweeties, the both of them.

Read it over the month I was out here; I was about to head back, so had to commemorate what it had made me think, in the place I’d thought the thoughts it birthed, before I did.

To log it.

Reading Motherhood while posted at the ma’s was part of whatever Motherhood had made me think.

The ideas inextricably tied to the reading-event site.

It was January 2nd but LA so pristine out.

After the day’s lone coffee, I knew I had maybe an hour of semi-coherent thinking.

Semi-coherent speaking.

Geared up for a stroll and, equipped with my voice recorder, got to walking-talking.