Taking it in

You're Cleo, and you're about three and a half months old now. Over the past few month or so, you've generally stopped clenching your fists - like a miserly midget or a petulant diva throwing a backstage tantrum - and as your hands have melted, you've started to realize that you can use your ten fingers to reach out for objects before you. You feel the smooth plastic of a disk that's suspended above your chair. You bat a stuffed balloon; wrestle a stuffed monkey to a draw. And while you're out walking, when you happen to come before some low-hanging leaves, you feel a few of them, and then abruptly try to stuff one in your mouth. And why not? The world is no longer inchoate and overwhelming; there are patterns, and you know them, and your hands can help you learn even more about them.

Or you're a new dad, three and a half months since your world changed utterly, and you're just now starting to figure out how to balance old interests with new duties. It's Sunday evening and you've got - rare, after 7 p.m. these days - some energy, and the weirdly powerful spider bite that you'd originally diagnosed as tendinitis and which had left your right arm literally 40% weaker than your left has nearly entirely receded. So you go to the gym, and your body enjoys the feel of returning strength, of something other than carrying a baby or typing on the laptop, and as you leave your IPod happens to offer Nikhil Banerjee's Raga Mishra Khamaj. The sitar hums; the tabla weave a dense pattern; the music seems a gossamer grace. Your baby sleeps at home; your wife awaits; there are patterns, and you know them, and you try to take it all in.