Dear reader, I hope you will consider buying a copy of The Melting Season paperback from WORD Brooklyn or from another local independent bookstore, and also suggesting to others that they do the same. (If you buy it from WORD, it will be autographed. Actually you can buy any of my books there and they will be autographed.) It would mean so much to me that you support this bookstore close to my heart, as well as support my writing, my publisher, books, art, culture, Brooklyn, New York, America, the world, and the universe. (Even just supporting the bookstore would be enough, of course.)
Thank you very much.
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Last night I was telling my new friend Sonja about two recent realizations I had about my identity. First, I need to recognize that my value as a human being is not based on my value as an artist. And second I need to recognize that my value as an artist is not based on my financial (and, I guess, while we’re at it, critical) success as an artist. I can’t figure which of those two leaps is a harder one to make. I suppose the first.
So that feels important to say out loud. And I don’t even know if I’m there, like if I really believe what I’m saying, but realizing I need to say it is half the battle.
I spent the last decade tying all of these things together inside of me and now it’s time to loosen the thread.
Sonja swore everything would get better in my 40s. Kate tells me that all the time too.
It’s so warm here. Sixty degrees, I think. The sun felt so good on my forehead and cheeks and lips. I think this city has real character. It’s good to walk here. Real good. I walked around all day long, down Las Ramblas and to the waterfront. I got lost only once, but it was for a while, so by the time I found MACBA (the contemporary art museum), I found myself being critical of the interior, which was lovely and clean and white and, you know, modern, but also looked like every other modern art museum on the planet. Meanwhile it was FINE and gorgeous and I just need to shut the fuck up sometimes in my head.
Anyway I pushed my brain through it, and it was worth it for the two great things I saw, one of which was the Benet Rossell show, the other being this Curiosity Killed the Cat video featuring Andy Warhol walking around in the background being weird.
I ate my way through much of the day. I can’t stop eating sweets. The same thing happened in Italy. I’m such a savory person, but then when I hit Rome I was all about the gelato. Every day, more gelato. Here it’s the pastries. There are bakeries everywhere, and I keep noticing them, and then I keep stopping in just to take a peek and then how did those little chocolate croissants end up in my hand? How?
Barcelona!
Tonight I will meet another new person, and tomorrow two more new people, and the next day two more, and then I will go to Montserrat and speak to no one at all, and then I will be home again, shifted slightly, I think.
