Maman

Spiders, mothers, and others

Worshipping at the altar of Louise Bourgeois

The Sunday Letter #11

Four years ago, I was new to Ottawa, having moved to Canada’s capital for grad school. I’ve written a bit about that lonely time here, but really it was a propulsive kind of loneliness: to live alone for the first time, so far from friends and family, felt like a necessary shedding of an old life. I would walk around Centretown, nowhere to be and no one to report to, taking in a city four times the size of my own hometown. I’d stop by the used bookstores, or the gorgeous cafés in heritage homes that served as art galleries and gathering spaces, or the charming canal. But my favourite spot to visit, by far, belonged to Maman.

Created in 1999, Maman is a 30 ft. tall bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. Bourgeois herself was taken by the arachnid theme, which she used to allude to her mother’s own strength through metaphors relating to spinning, weaving, and protecting (Bourgeois lost her mother when she was 21 years old). Here’s a close-up of Maman from below:

Maman was acquired in 2005 by The National Gallery of Canada for 3.2 million dollars. Now, she stands guard outside of the Gallery. She is both creator and protector. To stand beneath her legs on a quiet day, when no one else is around, is to feel an immense awe.

Bourgeois’ spiders even earn a mention in Rachel Cusk’s new piece of fiction in The New Yorker (also linked below): “She [the spider] represents everything that is denied and suppressed in femininity, everything that remains darkly continuous behind its volcanic cycles of change and yet is unknown.”

She is massive; she looms. The first time I visited her, she was crowded by groups of tourists like me, marvelling at her size. I eventually moved closer, and closer, trying to soak up her protection. I returned often, usually alone, just to stand under her legs. How many other people had she blessed this way, I wondered. I wished I could ask her. But for now I just remain in awe.

*

Happy Mother’s Day to my own maman. Here’s us, in the late 90’s, captured by dad on his film camera. Love you always.

Yoojin Grace Wuertz on becoming a bilingual mother: “Finally I realize that we are on two different tracks: she is talking pedagogy while I am wandering the rocky terrain of culture and identity. She tells me to look up dual-language classrooms, and I promise I will and never do.”

A new story by Rachel Cusk in The New Yorker (reading much like a companion piece to her piercing novel Second Place):

To be a mother is to live piercingly and inescapably in the moment. One can acknowledge the necessity for an artist to recognize her material, but the artist who is also a mother is the material—impacted and raw—from which she must cleave herself apart in pursuit of a creative objectivity.

Also, I revisited an older profile of Rachel Cusk in which she discusses the devastatingly brutal critical reaction to her groundbreaking novel Aftermath, which ignited a debate in 2012 around the right of a woman writer to describe her side of a bitter divorce. I adored Aftermath, and I loved Cusk’s note about her writerly routine:

“I don’t want to live a writer’s life,” she said, by which she meant one shackled to a computer, “so I’m unemployed most of the time. My process is very uncomfortable. The hardest stage is to overcome the fakery, and I can’t associate with people while I’m doing that. But the writing part is pure technique. It’s a performance, like getting on a stage, and before I start I have to have rehearsed everything I want to say, and to know what’s in my sentences.”

…which reminded me of this recent tweet from poet Elisa Gabbert:

I finally read that buzzy Harper’s article in which Lauren Oyler goes on a Goop Cruise. I wasn’t very into her novel Fake Accounts, but this article was fun: “I’d spent the summer engaging in polyamory and doing unanticipated quantities of drugs, and everyone agreed I needed to get away from my two boyfriends.” On writing a Harper’s essay about going on a cruise, 26 years after David Foster Wallace did the same thing, Oyler notes:

During the yearslong squabble over which of us lady writers would become the next Joan Didion, no one had tried to claim the title of David Foster Wallace for girls; his reputation as both a misogynist and an author beloved by misogynists meant it was just sitting right there this whole time, waiting for anyone with grammatical flexibility and the courage to try.

From Embedded, “Nobody knows how to post about Mother's Day”:

“People miss their moms and dads, and we don't have a way to talk about death unless they just died or it's the anniversary,” she says. “And these holidays actually give people more of a chance to talk openly about dead parents.”

From Elle, “Why Won’t People Just Let Me Not Be a Mom?”: “It’s as though a woman who doesn’t fulfill her maternal capabilities is like a car with no wheels, or a frog that can’t hop.” This article reminded me of a passage from Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, which captured the feeling of being called to one’s own life:

In Guernica, Yoko Uema recalls discovering that her tap water was contaminated:

I will continue to be there for my daughter when she cries. I will never take her to that promenade with the polluted water again. And I won’t let her drink the tap water here from now on. And yet — I wonder if all these decisions I’ve made are really just a series of small compromises. Will I look back one day on my decision to stay in Okinawa and realize it was a mistake? Will there come a day when I’ll regret not leaving sooner?

Ending on a happy note — An incredible story from Connie Wang, on her namesake, Connie Chung: “All this time, I’d thought the story of my name was special; little did I know it was the story of a generation.” I got a bit choked up by the time Connie describes a photoshoot with Connie Chung and ten other Connie’s, at which point she reveals that even the photographer’s name was Connie!

Reading: “I recently finished Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, an example of exquisite prose. I'm also reading (or, honestly, struggling with) the second installment of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. I need to clear more mental space to finish it, but I don't know how! Fleur Jaeggy's I Am the Brother of XX and Anna Kavan's Machines in the Head are two books I will pick up next.”

Watching: “In April, I watched a documentary Senna which left an indelible impression. During a long-haul flight, I noticed a guy watching it, and in just a few minutes—even if I didn't have any sound and was observing over his shoulder—I was gripped by the story and couldn't budge from my seat. Unbeknownst to that guy, I watched the whole documentary together. Later, at home, I rewatched it properly. Editing, storytelling, and the music… The word 'beautiful' doesn't do it justice. Other than movies, I watch my favorite channels on YouTube. I particularly enjoy Alana Estelle's book reviews (please visit her channel when you have a chance).”

Listening: “These past weeks, I've been listening a lot to Underworld, Four Tet, Patrick Holland, and Peggy Gou.”

Life, etc: “Enjoying May and evening walks by the river. Buying dresses. And figuring out how to start learning Japanese! It's a long-time dream which my recent trip to Japan has only bolstered.”

P.S. You can find Monika on Instagram and here on Substack at je lis trop.