London, September 2019

St. Athans Hotel, Bloomsbury

This is the second time we've stayed here. I hope we always stay here when we visit our London people and bookstores. I hope bambi remembers it. Remembers its narrow, creaking stairwells and halls, the sudden seams where three townhouses were melded together, the airy yet dim rooms with views of rooftops and dusk, the miniature washbasins, the perfect shabbiness, the book filled parlor room, the file filled office awash with desks, the thrift store furniture, the toilets down the hall, the garden level coffee house with food we could eat, the Woolfs down the street, Skoobs under the Waitrose, London Review Books just across the square, Coram's Fields filled with friends, Jesse and I drinking tinned g&ts or ciders in the bed next to her and whispering in the light of the streetlamp, the mantel filling up with books I dread packing into my bags, the table with a pile of supermarket bread and apples and currants for the next day's picnic lunches.

Barcelona, September 2019

Pentax Spotmatic F, Kodak Gold 200

1. my twin family members, new york ad man tan
2. morning light in office of the church around the corner from our hotel
3. playing on steps of said church
4. playing in plaza in front of said church--we never venture far
5. morning on hotel balcony
6. street between hotel and the cafe and bookstore where friends work
7. vermuts and late lunch at cafe in above mentioned plaza
8. postcard browsing
9. sorbet the afternoon we arrived
10. pre-nap beach stroll
11. semi ruined building full of plants in that big park by their arc de triumph
12. reading bills on steps of said building while we waited for Jesse to bring dinner to hotel
13. still waiting on steps... not a great point in the trip. All three of us threw tantrums.
14. next day back in comfortable plaza writing postcards
15. walking back to hotel from aforementioned cafe where we ate all our meals that weren't picnics
16. building in evening light on walk back from beach

The Day A Man Had A Gun In Front Of Our Apartment And A Famous Photographer Took His Photo

The Day A Man Gave Our Bambi One Hundred Dollars On The 6 Train Between Astor Pl And 14th Street

my tenement kitchen, summer 2019
Chinatown, New York City

Nap time tea amid uncleared breakfast things.

My world has gotten smaller and more full of words. When bambi was so small I spent hours on long distance friendships. I was happy to finally have a community based on beauty, light, darkness, books, lyricisms. Now bambi can talk and my days are filled with the volley of our own lyricisms. We breathlessly gaze out the window, paused mid play to greedily devour a sunset between the spires, the cat outside the winkle shop, a traffic jam of busses.  We list beautiful words, we have drawing parties, we dance wildly to music. And while she naps I write and write and read and read. I have no words leftover to be consumed by people I cannot physically bring myself to see or need. I hope we'll all wait for each other.