September 24, 2008

A place before stories start

“I suspect, as I search the room for the hunger by the fireplace, or the hunger in her cry, that I have found a place before stories start. How else can I explain the shift from language that has happened in my brain? This is why mothers do not write, because motherhood happens in the body, as much as the mind. I thought childbirth was a sort of journey that you could send dispatches home from, but of course it is not– it is home. Everywhere else now, is ‘abroad’.” –Anne Enright, “Milk” from Making Babies