pink smash

Third person

Main characters

Very chronological. This is FICTION. Use your imagination. Southwest Harbor vs Northeast Harbor. Grit of sailing center. Routine of it, like Candide work is the answer. Sheer exhausting beauty of IOD racing. Finding who you are and who you aren't.

Pretty much if it’s Spring, you can live there

Why do I leave all these people I love

4321 paul auster

Stoner vintage Williams

Ceiling to floor on window wall is 103 inches

Vanity Wall to window 5.25

Window inside dimension 34 inches

Wall to the left of window is 18.25

Window height 75.5

Depth of window is 9.25

Floor to bottom of window mounding is 17.75

Floor to bottom of window is 23.75

Faux real

Anthracite

Roadside attraction

Cut corners

Zebra crossing

Floweret

When people pass immediately ask them to return or destroy materials

The feeling is deep vulnerability. I feel like I have eyes on me through these big decisions - with friends, colleagues, family but most acutely I feel it with my younger female colleagues who are looking to my example. What if I fall flat on my face? What if the house is a big mistake? What if my baby isn’t ok? What if people look at me like “well thank god I didn’t make the decisions she did.”

Greer (“Gigi”) Barmat Steel

Lyle Dolores Steel

Celeste Barmat Steel

Celeste Dolores Steel

Question for Doctor

Weight and height

Check ears

Check belly button

Head and neck view and advice

Teething

Crawling - or lack thereof

Advice on food vs bottle

By august you feel radiant

Story about today

Overlapping Betsy, Mark, Richard, Tory, Tyler

Whoops

It was a girl. The next 20 years ensued.

Zurich Airport List

- [ ] Pump around 10:30am

- [ ] Water

- [ ] Meds

- [ ] Food

I feel better with two hands on the stroller, 

pushing ahead

I feel better with a free hour, 

contemplating the trees on the street, 

which front door colors I prefer, 

imagination breathing and unwinding itself.

My multitasking gets in the way, often. 

The phone takes one hand, pulling me in.

Poetry seems too light these days, too celestial. 

Why can’t poetry be practical, help me with these heavy days.

It seems that is the purpose after all, 

to make us feel understood, 

as we carry through on the ground.

What if it is not all aspirational, 

what if I don’t have a capsule wardrobe, 

or a picture on vacation, 

sunglasses on, lips parted.

What if I don’t have beautiful words, 

just long lists of things I must do.

Here I am, 

waving from the ground, 

trying to find meaning, 

trying to find space.

Let’s talk about how the week is chaos, 

she’s dropped her spoon a million times, 

and every night I’m cleaning the floor. 

Let’s talk about sitting down to work, 

squaring my shoulders, 

and losing myself to the day.

Let’s talk about the stock market, 

the twenty four hour news cycle, 

my phone weighing one thousand pounds. 

Let’s talk about waking her up each morning, 

feeling like a piece of the divine was dropped on my doorstep, 

I had a new, fancy, highly compensated job. The money was rolling in. I got it in my head that I wanted a large landscape painting for my living room.

I impatiently searched, and eventually stumbled across one I loved halfway across the world. It was the right size, the right color. It had modern aspects reminiscent of Salvador Dali and classical aspects reminiscent of the old masters and the pure ancientness of art. It glowed as if from the inside.

After expending considerable energy and capital, I found a way to import it. I pictured it on my wall.

During the time it was in transit - wrapped in multiple protective layers, tossed into the storage holds of airplanes, carted through multiple checkpoints and warehouses - I began to fall apart. I loathed my new, fancy job. I doubted my future. Everything turned to fear. I lost my sense of worthiness. I couldn’t see my beauty.

When the painting arrived from its journey, I had quit my job. It was a sunny, cold Tuesday afternoon. I saw the future rolled out in front of me like a total blank space. I didn’t want to feel too much. Just go through the motions, process the facts. Leave out the story.

The painting had a giant hole in the late afternoon sky. A jagged eighteen inch tear that made me realize the picture was two dimensional. Presumably, a forklift stabbed through the box at some point during the trip.

I wanted to blame myself for the damage. Who was I to fly a painting halfway across the world and expect it to be okay?

I decided to fix it. I called an art conservationist. I submitted an insurance claim. I told myself, accidents happen, and they do not care if your intentions were good or bad.

Baguette, prosciutto de parma, camembert, and nectarines from the supermarket, eaten on a bench down a sunny side street.

Meeting Laura at her grandparents house, or rather, chateau, which has no modern conveniences and is like a trip back in time, complete with a dumbwaiter. It is on top of a cliff overlooking the aquamarine water.

I take a wrong turn getting to the chateau, down a bumpy driveway on the cliff. I have to reverse up it my manual rental car, with sweating palms. But I make it.

Hearing of Laura’s childhood summers in Bidart. Hearing her current musings on life, her fears, excitements.

A long walk from St. Jean de Luz towards Hendaye, stopping at the “digues,” which we debate the English word for. Waves crashing, no two alike.

A meditative sauna trip.

I am putting this

in the most literal sense

in order to bear my teeth

to confusion:

We met by a giant vagina

and words fell out of our mouths for a spell

(a spell = 1.65 hours).

We took out some Elmer’s

and cemented our hands together.

Through West Hollywood and 

screens of men and women and other images,

the glue dried and our hands never moistened -

which is peculiar.

We emerged from a moving picture cave to

find a bigger, brighter cave - with art.

He led me into a lopsided box, 

which made me dizzy.

We stumbled from the box, our hands still dry (how peculiar!)

and took a moving cube to rise the floors to my room.

We stitched our lips together inside the cube.

Haphazard,

but not a bad cross-stitch.

And we made sure our tongues had room to wiggle around.

And when we finally ripped them from the seam,

our hands were spliced from the glue-bridge,

and I found that he had a fan under his sleeve -