Some things you already know about me

I keep telling you that I’m lonely; and you keep believing it, as if anything I’ve ever  said is true. In a month or so I plan on moving to Florence. I’ll live up in the hills near where Henry James did when he was doing his writing. I’m going to live alone, or maybe I’ll keep a cat, and I’ll learn to draw, and record his movements with a sketch pad, batting at a piece of light, or curling up in the base of a misshapen window. 

I intend to be alone, far, far away from everyone I’ve ever known. I’m going to read everything. I’m going to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of flaura and fauna of the late Jurassic period and then write a play about dinosaurs. I’m going to take up sailing, and turn my small house into a boat, and paddle through the clouds.

You can see that I’m not doing any of these things from your seat across the table, eyebrows raised just so What I’m really best at is lying to myself—stretching the truth until one day dissolves into another—capsules in water. I believe the essential difference between us is that you see life as a construction project, and I see it as a piece of art. In the mornings, I often feel that I am wrong about everything, and I slide across the bed and touch your cold feet. In the evenings, if I pay close enough attention, I can feel how fast the world is spinning and how still I am in comparison. I want to hurtle through space. I want to buy a cat and live in Florence, but you already knew that about me. Everyone knows that about me.