#1

Waxing gibbous rising in Temecula Valley, eve of my 56th birthday, at the hour of my solar return, 2/21/24

Dear friend,

— that I’ll forget this day, this place, this dream

— that I bought a black ceramic mastiff five inches tall at a charity shop tucked under the slope of the wealthiest suburb in San Diego, where reside, or where once resided, or where occasionally reside: one Arnold Schwarzenegger, one Bill Gates, one Jenny Craig, one Mike Love, one Tiger Woods, one Crown Prince of Iran, one Richard Simmons, plus numerous pro ball (base, basket, foot, tennis) players, among others, but others numbering no more than 3,156 at the last census

— that gradually and then suddenly the collection of people older than myself take on a new clarity, no longer so alien, given I’m about to become them

—that form and content ought to be considered more carefully

— that the dog cost fourteen dollars, that the dog is not a mastiff but, more prosaically, a lab

—that Rabindranath Tagore (polymath, poet) turned to painting at age 67, and died 27 years before I was born

—that Rococo is Late Baroque

—that happiness is a shape inside one… …ceramic dog that cost fourteen dollars?

—that “poet” is “polymath” not literally, but by definition (or vice versa)

—that I texted mom to say it was my birthday, and to thank her for the gift of life

—that this is a page, that this page is blank

—that mom in her dementia lives in a continuous present, that she continues to continuously love me, in the shape that love is for her, which shape is opaque to me, yet comforting to me

—that the rich, the dead, the white,

—that I was seated at the edge of the land of adulthood — entirely appropriate though I was already in my mid-forties — and that to my left the long table was populated by an assortment of shorties under age 7. That the luncheon was a real excursion for a childless kid-novice like me, these miniature language-fabricators dialoguing cross-table on matters entirely unrelated to the world as I could presently grok it, sentences a-hingedly structured and ambulating, with flavorings, desires, attentions estranged and vivid—

—that polymathy gets a boost when one is a wealthy prodigy

—whatever love Means for her, however it Appears to her, however it Appears to me

—that form and content ought to be considered more carefully

—every thing that I know, every shape that I love

—that the dog was a bull mastiff, that the dog was a black lab

—that this is a page, that this page is blank

Yours,

Suzanne

Thank you for the gift of your attention. Know someone who might enjoy FLORENCE? Share it