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July 13, 2009 :: All You Need*

I want flowing dresses and the easiest summer beauty, full of sunlight, with tousled hair and gossamer jewelry. I want good walking shoes, red with a buckle. I want smoky green tea kissed with honey. I want fiction to pour from my fingertips--just the right words, just the right story. I want cool sheets in raging air conditioning, a warm cat snuggling the small of my back. I want tomato-avocado sandwiches. I want a clean house, a bright house, an organized house. I want checkerboard rugs and claw foot tubs, back-deck awnings and grilled salmon on the Weber. I want more time in the middle of the day to sit and read. I want caramel ice cream and a Law & Order marathon. I want, sometimes, a new town and another house, somewhere breezy and northern or western, where artists have reclaimed a sad neighborhood; where Blake packs out clubs and I write for companies from our kitchen table and visit flea markets in the afternoons when my work is done.

That's what I want. But I have what I need and more. And for that, I'm feeling particularly lucky today.

*Phrase painted on the CSX railyard wall near our house, on my walk home from the train. Now painted OVER in putrid green, like every other inch of the wall, by overzealous neighbors who don't see any value in public art, even though they've all chosen to live in an historic, artistic, intentionally quirky neighborhood. There's something rotten about that, and it bothers me every day.