A Coherence of Beingtrying to grasp something tangible but being utterly frustrated until she passed into darkness. She felt herself transported by some invisible means to an unfamiliar place to join a waiting throng of people where she felt peace and contentment, in harmony with all her fellow beings. Then the vision of what she thought was heaven ended abruptly, and she became aware of her hospital surroundings. She wrote: "I felt as if I had been snatched back from the very threshold of eternity; my earthly life yet incomplete." When my mother gave me this story to read, I was astounded. I had been part of her most tenuous moments of life and yet had had no knowledge that I was involved in such a drama. My aunt, who had been my mother's nurse, added to the story, explaining that she had tried to help by holding me to my mother's breast so that I could eat and with the easing of my mother's fullness, give her some small comfort, calming her restlessness. What must it have been like, I have often wondered since, to have had those warm arms of my aunt, holding me up to the still and cooling breast of my mother Was I aware of the two heartbeats of women who loved me: the slowing of one toward death, the other speeding in anxiety at its nearness What kind of syncopation did my body experience as I absorbed those early stirrings of my life Susanne Langer (1953/1967) wrote that it is the rhythms of life, organic, emotional and mental that compose a dynamic pattern of feeling. Hearing the story of my aunt holding me to my mother's breast explained such a strong thread in my lifey swinging between stability and risk, liking to be out on a limb while still being held by strong hands. If my mother had held me to her breast, would I have recognized the body rhythms of my gestation, felt a greater sense of coherence I can never know for sure, but I do believe all such experiences engage our bodies in a rhythmic relation, reminding us that we are part of the complexity of life. In this chapter, I explore rhythm and its relationship to writing; that is how we first feel the embodied character of writing through the rhythm enacted by the repetition of sound, syllable and image. This awareness developed in part through my work explor-29
