Breasts and Eggs

by Mieko Kawakami

It wasn’t really Chanel she loved, so much as the sound of the word and the shape of the logo. One time, when a young girl at the bar asked, “Where was Coco Chanel from?” the lady answered “America,” as if anyone who was white had to be American.

“I’ve never counted. A normal number, though.”

To me welfare was just money, plain and simple, and had nothing to do with shame or dignity. I asked her what the government was for, if not to help you out in times of need. When things got rough, you ought to step right up and exercise your rights. It’s called welfare for a reason.

Rational queen

But normal was a far cry from sustainable.

From birth to death, you have to keep eating and making money just to stay alive.

Do they, though? I mean, have they ever really thought about it? When I’m alone and thinking about this stuff, it makes me so sad. At least for me, I know it’s not the right thing.

Except that never happened. My monolithic expectation of what a woman’s body was supposed to look like had no bearing on what actually happened to my body.

People like pretty things. When you’re pretty, everybody wants to look at you, they want to touch you. I wanted that for myself. Prettiness means value. But some people never experience that personally.

My prejudice had biased my imagination.

These were the undisputed giants of literature; but from a different angle, this classic lineup was a shameful, even mortifying symbol of my willingness to truckle to the received wisdom of the canon, a stance that undeniably marked me as an amateur.

But more importantly, I felt awful, even wounded, after hearing myself call my work a “hobby.” The question of whether the thing I was writing qualified as a novel was open for interpretation. That much was true. At the same time, I was sure I was writing a novel. Absolutely sure. Maybe it looked like I was wasting my time. And maybe for everyone but me, that was all it would ever amount to. An enormous waste of time. But I knew that it was wrong to dismiss my work like that. It felt like I had said something that I could never take back. Writing makes me happy. But it goes beyond that. Writing is my life’s work. I am absolutely positive that this is what I’m here to do. Even if it turns out that I don’t have the ability, and no one out there wants to read a single word of it, there’s nothing I can do about this feeling. I can’t make it go away. I recognize that luck, effort, and ability are often indistinguishable. And I know that, in the end, I’m just another human being, who’s born only to die. I know that in reality, it makes no difference whether I write novels, and it makes no difference if anyone cares. With all the countless books already out there, the world won’t notice if I fail to publish even one book with my name on it. That’s no tragedy. I know that. I get that.

Writing as a vocation.

“Life is tough, but you gotta keep living until you die, you know what I mean? Sometimes you just need to escape, from your own life.”

We live in this place, in this world, where we can share our words but not our thoughts.

but I can understand how it would sting to give your name up. I

When people say they want kids, what is it they actually want? Lots of folks would say they want to have a baby with their partner, but what’s the difference between wanting that and wanting your own baby?

Oh, I know it’s still America, even if it’s going to shit. That’s true. There are different ways of going to shit, though. We can certainly think about how and why something is going to shit. In fact, that’s our responsibility. You know what I mean?”

I wanted to speak up and ask the woman whether she thought there was any form of childbirth that did not involve the egos of the parents, but I decided against it. Up

“You can’t really talk about stuff like this with people, you know what I mean? Family and money and all that, even if it’s on everybody’s minds. It feels a bit weird, right? To talk like this.” Rie looked embarrassed. “It’s the kind of stuff people only say online.”

Rareness of intimacy in 1:1 relationships people export intimacy and vulnerability to online

“When you say you want to have a child,” Aizawa said, “what is it you’re after? Do you mean you want to raise a child? Give birth? Get pregnant?”

For better or worse, living with someone is nothing but friction, the collision of incompatible ideals. It takes trust to make it viable. I mean, love is basically a drug, right? Without love and trust, resentment is the only thing that’s left.

Why do you want to bring a child into the world? What would possess you to do that?”

Why is it that people think this is okay? Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it’s not an act of violence. You force this other being into the world, this other being that never asked to be born. You do this absurd thing because that’s what you want for yourself, and that doesn’t make any sense.”

Resonates too much

“The whole situation,” she said. “You’re betting that the child that you bring into this will be at least as happy as you’ve been, at least as fortunate as you’ve been, or, at a minimum, that they’ll be able to say they’re happy they were born. Everyone says life is both good and bad, but the majority of people think it’s mostly good. That’s why people go through with it. The odds are good. Sure, everyone dies someday, but life has meaning, even pain and suffering have meaning, and there’s so much joy. There’s not a doubt in your mind that your child will see it that way, just like you. No one thinks they’ll pull the short straw. They’re convinced everything will work out fine. But that’s just people believing what they want to believe. For their own benefit. The really horrible part is that this bet isn’t yours to make. You’re betting on another person’s life. Not yours.”