three pines

83 year old dad got mad at something new the other day, it started with "girlfriend". what is the world up to these days that everyone has a girlfriend and none have wives. then it moved into ivf babies "how would you feel if you didn't know who i was" he demanded.

i wouldn't know who i am, if i did not know who my father is. i'd be a strange amorphous ego projection of mother, a masturbation, a set of eyes that see only her, her independence, her valor, her supremacy. without father who wanted me, i don't think i'd have a soul of my own. 

they're conceived in petri dishes, under hard laboratory light by chemists in silicon gowns and gloves, not sex in the dark, when two exhausted bodies are deeply asleep but fucking anyway. 

midw ivf ery, that's the whole dole. my 85 year old mum, who is still mad at crusty dad for marrying someone better suited after divorcing her, has about ten or fifteen more years of life in her. same condition all the way out, crotchety. but all around her, my stepfather built home base, steel frame houses encircled in a river's curve. 

if i want to have the money from the rent of the apartment i built here, that she rents out to upeacers "you can leave" she always says. in the absence of father, mother is landlord. 

husbandry for family, that's the article. this is the property. in february, colin's 60th shindig blowout. my four brothers at one table. "we should build our mom her own apartment" i wish to say, but won't. "build it up out of the room we built for Artemis in the 80s. use solid brick and wood panelling, glass double doors, a bathroom fit with in and outdoor plumbing, designed for lives (plural) the notion that these spaces will hold hundreds of lives over hundreds of years".

father won't be at that table. without him, everything feels performative. three of the four brothers are divorced, so they're useless to me. ali is married to a woman who's name i can never remember, ilke, and they have money, they are useful. and yet, ali too, has also spoken the words, "don't ask me for help". 

they are a tribe of antagonists to my quest for family consolidation. and that "is what it is". still, the articles add up, over time, the project forms out of doodling and prayer. the property is exquisite. it has purpose through parenting.