an argument for analog
It’s December 20, 2024, one month before an inauguration and 2.5 years since a Supreme Court decision. Exactly and almost exactly, respectively. Time is so funny. My son is also 2.5 years old. In fact as I was 9 months pregnant [9 months including those first 4 weeks nobody counts until you yourself go through pregnancy (2 weeks of which is all egg no sperm, 2 weeks that are simply and singularly, becoming)] on May 3, 2022, I sat on a panel with other artists of the bear it / bare it / bear witness exhibit, talking about our experiences of reproductive trauma, one day after the Dobbs decision was leaked to the press.
Anyway these moments in time feel similar because of course, they are connected on a continuum and hardly any time collapsed between them at all. In early May of 2022 we had some idea of what was to come, we were scared and furious, we were both frozen and mobilized in a bizarre limbo of “rights.” And now, since the early hours of November 6, we have some idea of what’s to come and we’re scared, furious, frozen. Let me stop saying ‘we’. I’m tired. This part of the year is made to be slow. Personally, I think the holiday season happens entirely too often. I think once every two years would feel altogether less exhausting, less dreadful, sweeter, more nostalgic. That is beside the point. But how am I just now realizing the pacifying cruelty of the time period between election and inauguration landing during this slow, cold, distracted, hyper-capitalist, exhausted time of year? Maybe because it only happens every four years, just infrequently enough to gloss over this detail.
Anyway, what am I talking about? Okay, I’ve been struggling with this period of time. I know I should use it better. What might I need to do now, before I can’t do it anymore? What riskier organizing efforts will become deadly a month from now? Or I don’t know, shouldn’t I submit my son’s passport application? Yeah, I know that rest is revolutionary and whatnot, but how many critical moments have I wasted, immobilized by overwhelm?
Something that’s been giving me a giggle for a while is the conundrum of menstrual cycle apps. I don’t remember when I started using one, I guess it was probably when I had my last IUD removed many years ago, and I half heartedly used it as contraceptive. Let’s avoid those Days 12-16, give or take. Later when I was trying to get pregnant, I used that same app to track my fertile window. Let’s take advantage of those same days. Let’s record cervical mucus, mark basal temperature at the first moment of waking starting on Day 10. If you’ve ever tried to get pregnant you probably know the blessing and the curse of these technologies. Or during postpartum, measuring the time it took for my cycle to return (almost a year as I continued breastfeeding) and then with awe and curiosity, marking the length of my cycles once they returned (first around 40 days to 35 and then finally hovering around that magic 28, once again in communion with the moon).
Oh right, the giggle. Is it better to use this technology, take advantage of its convenience and prediction capabilities, its automated reminders - to help avoid unwanted pregnancy, or increase chances of desired pregnancy? Or, in this time of artificial intelligence-facilitated surveillance, intersecting with the ultraviolent policing of bodies and reproductive freedoms - eschew the technology, relinquish the tool, potentially increasing the risk of that which is unwanted, or avoid that which is so desired?
There is no clear right answer for all the humans attached to bodies synced to technologies. As for me, it’s less (though not devoid) of the practical at hand. I have my baby. I still don’t know if I want or will have another. However I am 37 (a number I am sometimes bewildered by) and for that and other reasons I am less likely to unexpectedly “fall pregnant”. But even when I had more seemingly practical uses of a period tracker, all those days and months I willingly gave my data in the form of starts, symptoms, sex, stops, cycles - what did it give me back? I got knocked up when it was probably the worst thing that could happen, and I struggled to conceive when it’s all my heart so desperately desired. In other words, I was always a human in a magnificent and complicated body interacting with the magnificent and complicated world.
If I’m too tired for many things and slower to action during this molasses period of time, at least I can engage in more critical reflection on the pieces of myself I so readily give up, to who knows whose hands and for what uses. I don’t feel like it anymore. I still want to be attuned to my cycles, to be in tune with the ocean and the moon. Pen and paper work just fine. There is nothing radical about this, sometimes I just like to hear myself talk.
