Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Review of "The Uterine Reckoning"

By: A Certain Curious Reviewer, Whose Name is of No Immediate Importance

Part One: On the Grand Disturbance of Existing Concepts

I am, alas, no stranger to literary peculiarities. I have encountered countless treatises wherein authors, with the most assured pen, declare that man is the measure of all things. Indeed, such declarations tend to soothe the trembling anxieties of those who suspect that the world may, in fact, measure them instead. But here, in this so-called Uterine Reckoning, the trembling man is not soothed. He is utterly undone.

The First Man, that illustrious phantom who has strutted upon the stage of myth with all the bravado of an actor who wrote his own lines, has been most unceremoniously dismissed. He is no longer the central figure, no longer the self-proclaimed “origin” of the world. No, he has been rendered a supporting character - and a most pitiable one at that! One almost wants to pat him on the shoulder and say, "There, there. You were never really first, but at least you tried."

And yet, let it be clear that the story does not content itself with mere mockery. No, the author has done something far more unsettling: she has forced the reader to face the terrifying possibility that the world has never needed the First Man at all. The trembling man, having built temples from his trembling, now finds himself standing in the ruins, still trembling. One suspects he might look up to the heavens for reassurance, only to find the sky quite uninterested in his plight.

But should this surprise us? The Sky Fathers have fallen! Their marble forms lie crumbled, their beards dissolved into dust. The people, once so eager to sacrifice their reason at the feet of these stern-faced deities, have discovered the unsettling delight of standing upright. And what is more horrifying to a trembling man than to see others trembling no longer?

Yet, even now, I fear I may be accused of embellishment. Some clever reader may object, saying, “But, good sir, the author has not merely destroyed - she has also restored! The Earth, the mothers, the midwives, they have reclaimed the story!” Ah, indeed! And that, dear reader, is precisely why the trembling man trembles all the more.

For what is this “reckoning” if not a direct assault on the desperate need for firsts, for fathers, for gods in the clouds who watch and judge? The author has dared to suggest that creation did not begin with a word from on high, but with a cry from below. That existence itself is not a matter of divine decree, but of blood, sweat, and the undeniable fact of the uterus. Imagine the horror!

And so, we arrive at the inevitable question: What remains for man, now that his sky has been torn away?

But before we allow that question to darken our mood any further, let us pause. A trembling man can only endure so much trembling. And I, for one, feel my trembling has only just begun.

Part Two: On the Peril of Remembering What Was Never Forgotten

It is a curious thing, is it not? The author of "The Uterine Reckoning" invites us on a pilgrimage not toward some bold new discovery, but rather back - back through the ruinous monuments of trembling men, back to the soil, back to the body. And yet, what are we to find when we arrive? Ah! Not the sparkling clarity of revelation, but something altogether more unsettling: a truth so ancient it was never truly lost, only ignored.

To “remember” what was never forgotten - what a task! And perhaps that is the reason the priests in the story preferred their parchments and their statues. For, to remember, in the true sense, is not to conjure up some pleasant nostalgia. No, it is to confront the unbearable weight of having known all along.

And what precisely has been known all along?

The story answers without hesitation: No man has ever crossed the threshold of existence without passing first through the womb. A fact so plain it hardly seems worth remarking upon - unless, of course, one has devoted entire lifetimes to forgetting it. Ah! The Sky Fathers themselves could not float high enough to escape this truth. Even in their lofty imaginations, these trembling men could not help but cast their gods in their own image - bearded, booming, conveniently motherless.

But in the face of such gods, the author of this tale asks a most unbecoming question:

“And who, pray tell, gave birth to the gods?”

It is the sort of question that sends a theologian’s quill skittering across the page in terror. No wonder the priests declared the uterus a dangerous thing! After all, how can a man worship his father-god if the mere sight of a swollen belly reminds him that neither he nor his god has ever conjured himself from the dust?

Thus, we are left with the burden of memory. The midwives of the story never needed the trembling man’s approval to do their work. They caught the newborns, soothed the labouring mothers, and bore witness to the truth in blood and breath. But the priests, in their paper-thin wisdom, saw fit to call them witches. It is no small irony that those who wrote the myths of father-gods were so eager to burn the very hands that proved them false.

And yet, there is a moment in the story that unsettles me far more than the mere destruction of temples. It is the moment when the women, free from the shadow of the Sky Fathers, cease to fear. No trembling. No bowing. No need for stories to explain away the unbearable mystery of existence.

This, dear reader, is the true scandal.

For what does a trembling man become when he is no longer trembling? The author seems to suggest that he becomes something altogether unbearable - free. No longer burdened by the desperate need to be first, no longer scraping the sky for gods to save him from himself. The story implies that he, too, could remember what he has always known.

But here I must pause.

For if I were to remember such a thing - if I were to gaze into the void of my own beginning and acknowledge that it was no god but a woman who bore me - why, what then? Would I be required to live without the trembling?

A most unsettling thought.

And thus, like any reasonable man, I shall defer my remembering to a more convenient time.

Part Three: On the Tragic Comedy of the First Man’s Last Stand

It is often said that a man may endure many humiliations, but none so bitter as the loss of his illusions. And so it is in "The Uterine Reckoning," where the First Man, having stood at the summit of his own invented history, now finds himself with no summit at all. The mountain was a papier-mâché construction all along, and the poor fellow has tumbled straight through it.

Ah, but how dignified he tried to be on the way down! One imagines him dusting off his robes, coughing through the debris of his own collapsed monument, insisting to the onlookers that this was all part of some grand cosmic plan. “You see,” he might proclaim, “I merely chose to descend! Quite voluntarily!”

But the crowd does not listen. The people in this story have grown wise to the comic vanity of the First Man. They no longer cling to his tale of fatherless creation. They stand without trembling. Worse still, they laugh.

And truly, what is the First Man if not a most unfortunate comedic figure? Consider the sheer exertion it must have required to fashion a world in which he, a creature birthed by a woman, could declare himself unborn. The spectacle of it! Like a man standing knee-deep in the ocean while passionately insisting that water has never touched him.

But his foolishness does not end there. No, the First Man’s most spectacular jest is that he believes his fall to be the end of the world. The Sky Fathers have fallen; the temples are dust. And so he raves, “Surely all will crumble with me!”

But the earth does not crumble.

It simply turns. The sun rises without consulting the gods. The rivers flow without the need for stone tablets. The midwives deliver babies without once beseeching the heavens for permission. Life continues, and the First Man, who fancied himself the very hinge upon which existence turned, is left standing like a forgotten stage prop.

And this is the true heart of the comedy - the world’s indifference to the First Man’s despair.

There is a splendid scene in which the priests, stripped of their authority, wail about the supposed collapse of all meaning. They cry that without the Sky Fathers, there can be no morality, no purpose, no order. And yet, as they lament, the people are doing the most astonishing thing: they live.

The mothers still bear children. The daughters still grow. The rivers still remember their way to the sea. Not one of these things has ceased because the First Man’s story no longer holds sway. Indeed, it becomes embarrassingly clear that the story was never holding anything up in the first place. It merely hovered like a tattered curtain before the real world - a world that had never required permission to exist.

But let us not be too harsh on the poor First Man. For what is he, really, but a victim of his own narrative? The story that crowned him king did not ask for his wisdom, only his willingness to believe. And believe he did, with the utmost sincerity. One almost wishes to console him, to offer some gentler exit from his humiliation.

But no. The author is far too honest for that.

She offers no triumphant redemption for the First Man, nor any comforting revision of his fall. He is left with the same choice that has always stood before him, though he has never seen it clearly until now. He may either persist in his trembling, endlessly rebuilding the ruins of his vanished gods, or - and this is the greater terror - he may stop.

But stopping requires him to face what he has so long denied. Stopping means remembering. And what could be more comedic - or more tragic - than a man realizing he was never the beginning?

Still, I cannot help but smile at the thought. For while the First Man mourns the loss of his illusion, the world he tried to claim as his own is alive, unburdened, turning. And somewhere, amidst the laughter of mothers and the cries of newborns, the truth pulses on.

And if the First Man ever dares to listen, he may yet hear it.

Part Four: On the Unbearable Lightness of the Gaze’s Return

And so, at last, the gaze returns.

But let us not rush to conclusions! It is a most peculiar gaze, quite unlike the stern and overbearing stare that trembling men so often imagined for themselves. For centuries, they peered up at the heavens, expecting to meet a face like their own - one furrowed with righteous displeasure, or perhaps twisted in divine approval. But now, in the closing act of "The Uterine Reckoning," the gaze has returned without judgment.

Indeed, it seems to return with the most scandalous expression of all: curiosity.

Ah! And what a frightful thing it is to be seen without condemnation. It is one thing to live under the constant threat of a wrathful god, where every misstep confirms your worthlessness. But to stand exposed before a gaze that neither punishes nor praises? That is unbearable. There is no enemy to defy, no father to please - only the terrible freedom of one’s own existence.

And this, dear reader, is the true consequence of the Sky Fathers’ fall. Not the collapse of morality, nor the descent into chaos, but the unsettling possibility that no one is watching.

But what does it mean for a gaze to return, if not to watch?

The author seems to suggest that the gaze of God - if it can even be called that - is not the gaze of a celestial authority, but rather the gaze of the Earth itself. It is the gaze that a mother gives her newborn, neither commanding nor questioning, but simply witnessing. And for the first time in a very long while, the world allows itself to be seen.

How embarrassing!

The trembling men had grown so accustomed to performing beneath the imagined eyes of the Sky Fathers that they scarcely know how to stand without their audience. They fumble about, unsure whether to repent or rejoice. And all the while, the gaze simply watches - not to approve, not to condemn, but to behold.

But let us not concern ourselves overly with the trembling men. They have had their time on the stage.

It is the mothers now who stand most easily beneath the gaze. They do not bow. They do not tremble. Why should they? The gaze does not frighten them, for they have already endured the gaze of their own bodies. They have borne pain without needing to call it punishment. They have brought forth life without demanding to be gods.

And the most unsettling truth of all? They have done this without ever needing the gaze.

One imagines God, upon returning to this world, might feel a peculiar sort of irrelevance. What does a divine witness mean to those who have already seen themselves? Perhaps this is why God, as the author portrays it, does not speak. After all, what could be said to the rivers who already flow, to the mothers who already birth, to the soil that already hums with life?

Still, there remains a question - the sort that lingers uncomfortably in the mind. If the gaze has returned, what will it see next? And what, dear reader, will we do with the knowledge that it sees us?

I confess I am of two minds. Part of me feels the urge to dash beneath the nearest altar and construct a fresh god from the debris of the old ones. A god with a firmer hand, a clearer voice, a simpler gaze. Something to relieve me of the unbearable task of being witnessed without instruction.

But another part of me - a smaller, more dangerous part - wonders what it might mean to live beneath a gaze that demands nothing.

What would it be like to act, not for the sake of approval or fear, but simply because we are alive? To remember, as the women of "The Uterine Reckoning" have remembered, that existence itself is justification enough?

A troubling thought indeed.

And so, I conclude this review with the same trembling I began with. I shall undoubtedly spend the coming days glancing skyward, half-expecting some stray god to reappear and scold me for my doubts. But should the heavens remain empty - and I suspect they will - I may be left with no choice but to gaze back.

And that, dear reader, is the most unbearable freedom of all.