phoenix {rising}
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How It Works
<<2004-09-04 - 3:29 p.m.>>

We saw Childe Hassam at the Met, the thick oil catching the light, the streetlamps haloed through the rain—the haloes implied the rain, drew the rain up into an invisibly present veil. And then we visited the Dutch still-life, and I tried to explain about Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, how the things imply the people like the fuzzy rings of light imply the rain. And then we visited the first half of the twentieth century, and Ken told me about an overlooked Miro sculpture in Chicago, in the shadow of a famous Picasso.

Coming out of the Childe Hassam, Ken heard some people discussing Chicago and turned to talk to them. He's from Chicago, he explained, and so he too had felt a resonance when the paintings turned to streetcorners he vaguely knew. They explained that they had lived in Chicago a long time, and they knew their own corners, and he said yes, he did too, and now he was getting to know New York. They asked me where I was from, and I told them, here, and the gregarious older man looked at Ken, and nodded, and said of course, of course, you move to New York, you should meet someone from there and then told a lengthy story about his wife's grandfather, who emigrated from Hungary and ignored all the American girls in order to return to Hungary and find a wife there. Isn't that so? he asked his wife, and she nodded. So, the man said, looking at me. You're in trouble; you're gone.

We stood up on the roof garden, looking around at the way the buildings line up in their inevitable stagger along the clean edges of the park. Ken said that he decided, looking at the Hassam paintings, to quit his job. It is, he says, freelancing or death. I suggested that he continue on at Tekserve until he's found a freelance project, and offered to introduce him to Hank.

We walked around the Reservoir and talked about meaning. Which is terrible, of course, but also great, because we argued and the sun slipped over and over the ripples in the water, and when we reached the hill that is hollow, I pointed it out and we talked about that instead.

We took the train to Queens to visit Arthur. We drew cartoons on Arthur's bathroom wall, cartoons Chloë and he had begun. We split a cab home, and when he got out, he ruffled my hair and kissed me on the forehead.

But this is how it works. For normal people, I mean. You meet someone, like them, exchange phone numbers with them, walk around and talk with them in a way that is not about fending them off or drawing them in but rather genuinely about talking to them. And the sun shines on the water. How wonderful, to begin a relationship as an adult.

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