Mojo is the dreamy, far away look in the eyes of a very small baby, curled warmly on your chest as you lay on the couch on a sun-warmed Saturday morning. I never would have believed it, but it’s true.

Let me explain.

In days past, whenever I heard the word ‘mojo’ the first thing that sprang to mind was my cock. Can you even say ‘cock’ in Meniscus Magazine? Well, I guess I just did. Cock.

Sorry. Let’s move on.

For me, the algebra ran something like this:

1) Mojo is some sort of quasi-sexual life force as represented by the Canadian, comedic actor Mike Myers in the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. This is the second film in that series. I’m sure it’s available at your video store.

2) Whenever I hear “life force” I think of Schopenhauer. I did a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, much to the chagrin of my parents.

3) Schopenhauer wrote a lot about life force, though he did it in German, and my German was never that great.

4) Anyway, I’m pretty sure what he was getting at (at least this is what my friend Charlie told me and he actually did the reading (ok, also remember that this is only an approximate translation and of course I’m totally paraphrasing)), is that life is basically driven onward by a massive spiritual erection, a constant striving for ejaculatory release that produces the most sublime art, philosophy and technology you can imagine.

5) So to sum up, if mojo = “life force” and “life force” = cock, then mojo=cock. (If A=B and B=C, then A=C).

6) Seriously, don’t blame me if you slept through algebra in 7th grade. I’m not making this shit up. I’m not that clever.

And here’s where it gets tricky.

For the longest time I bumbled and stumbled along in life equating this tyrannical force in my shorts with the beating and pulsing of the universe, the very respiration of life itself. If the world was a flower, I was the stamen, or is it the pistil? I never paid much attention in biology either.

But then adulthood happened and love entered into it. A beautiful, brown-haired girl stole my heart and pressed it in a book. She preserved me and kept me for her own, and we moved in together and then we got married and bought a house and then we decided to make a baby.

If you don’t know how that works, I don’t actually have the time or space to explain it properly here, but suffice it to say my prior understanding of mojo was brought to bear in such a way that transformed that beautiful brown-haired girl into a walking embodiment of our love. I almost couldn’t look at her directly without withering she was so goddamned beautiful. Butterflies moved into my stomach and hung curtains. They set up housekeeping for Christ’s sake.

The day our baby was born was the day I discovered that the human equipment (heart, brain, lungs, etc) isn’t entirely up to the task of processing the birth of a child in a neat and tidy package. Emotions spill out at the edges. Systems bog down, threaten to reverse course. Can you say ‘mind fuck’ in Meniscus Magazine? Can you?

This is the logical leap I need you to make, that a force is sometimes indistinguishable from its products, that mojo isn’t only this life force but also the result of that force made manifest.

Until my wife was rent asunder and our son flopped free, still covered in blood and misshapen after hours of unruly labor, I didn’t get that. But now when I lay my eyes on that baby, his soft skull pulsing gently where the pieces haven’t yet hardened, his pink little hands grasping for my shirt collar, I know it’s true.

Mojo is the force that creates the beauty, and mojo is the beauty itself, the dreamy, far away look in his eyes, the warm truth of him curled sleepily on my chest as I lay on the couch, sun lighting the blinds, mid-morning on a Saturday. Or any day.

Emlyn Lewis