Calling

In Aotearoa when two tribes meet a powhiri is held, a ceremony of welcome joining host and visitor as
one tribe. In high school, my Maori class visited an elementary/preschool and I was chosen to lead our
tribe. I acknowledged and thanked our hosts, I presented the koha/offering and lead our final chant.
During this, a serious 2 or 3 year old girl from the preschool wandered across and stood in front of me.
She examined me for a second and then sat on my knee for the rest of the Powhiri.
I was thirteen and that was the first time I thought about being a father.
Eight years later I was a failed astronomer and physicist, a mediocre philosopher and an improving
dramatist. I was also having an affair and was stupidly in love.
We had a pregnancy event. For three days we/not we waited to find out if we/not we were pregnant/not
pregnant. By the end of day three I had decided that if we were pregnant I would quit university, get a
job and be a dad. I discovered that I was quite excited by the prospect and inordinately disappointed
when it didn't happen.
On day four the words "If I were pregnant, my boyfriend would be the baby's dad when he comes
home" quite effectively shattered my heart.
I slipped back into the rut of depression, and had been there three years when I came across Chaos
Magic in a comic, then a book, and online. Chaos magic was a rational framework for using irrational
means to manipulate reality.
I read a lot about it and thought "Why not?" I cobbled together a ritual of sigilism, Radiohead, and
sleep deprivation. I executed it and sent a request into the universe.
Now, I can't remember what the request was. Exactly, ironically, what the books suggest. Forgetting
helps the forgotten request slip into the subconscious, where it mustard seeds into reality.
I spent seven years rebuilding myself. I retreated into the depression occasionally washing up in public
to look after friend's children. Every visit a reminder.
At my lowest I considered a vascectomy. Who would love me? Who would have children with me?
I contemplated erasing myself; to throw all my documents onto a fire and walking away.
I read and wrestled with evil. Oppression, murder, genocide, war crimes. I continually asked myself
"Which side of the wire would you be on?"
I read Pinter and Beckett. I read and re-read King Lear. Silence and nothing became my companions.
I grew sick of violence. Sick of hate. I worked to turn fear into curiosity; frustration, anger and sadness
into my facade of calm peace.
Half way in I met Lilith.
She sat and watched me. She never spoke. She didn't move. She simply watched. I asked her "where is
your mother?" and she replied "I don't know." She looked like my cousins. She looked like me.

She always visited in dreams around October, growing up each visit. Becoming more herself. We
would talk and she would lead me through wooden paneled hallways, and tiled floors. Questions about
her mother stopped as if she never had one.
It's all my fault. I take my magic marker and I circle "chaos magic," I circle "desire to be a father," I
circle "Lilith," I circle "poorly thought-out ritual." I draw lines connecting them all.
The ritual worked and I have a daughter. I don't know if one follows the other but let's say "Why not?"
Names have meanings, accreted the way trees have rings. Words have power.
The Talmudic Lilith was banished from Eden by her father for being her own person. When Lilith visits
I know she is not mine. She is of me but not me. And, like Jehova, I am separated from my daughter
because of my own idiocy.
Carmen saved me.
She walks with me and we offered each other what we thought we may never have: a family. Yet,
despite our hopes. Despite trying for 4 years. The reality we face is that we may never have children.
The call of fatherhood is still there.
It is the wind shrieking through the holes in my pieced together heart.
It is the sea of expectations and pressures.
It is the Siren's song that draws me to treacherous shores.
At writing, Lilith is sixteen. Her last visit four years ago. I miss her. I hope she's okay.