Abundance

Growing strawberries under direct sunlight is the summer’s work. Two cartons became one, and I lay down gingerly across a log at the Albany Bulb, pretending to brush my short fringe out of my eyes and waiting for the dog to sidle up beside me again while the waves lapped the comma shoreline. It’s red fruit season, a haul in order. When I was eighteen, I bought my mother a strawberry plant from the farmers’ market, it ripening in a black plastic pot, and we harvested exactly one berry from the parched soil. This year I want to keep my own planter at the community garden—the beginning, for me, of a summer in color. Eschewing grey finitude for a vitality that the flowers bring, tulips on the latte foam bending and curling, hardly a pattern to read sense into before their lines fade into foam.

Today, I modeled my Costco black tights and the slides Tim’s parents bought us during our visit, while in line for a pizza pan. Costco is a place where privacy becomes exposure. To that end, Costco means to bare, to be among others completely; at Costco all the walls that divide seem to lose definitiveness, shoppers brought together over samples and seeking and chicken bakes. I bought a box of Oi Ocha green tea, Kewpie mayonnaise, and oranges, while walking Coco on a short leash, to be cooed over. The days feel full lately, as though brimming over with beauty and verve; sugar in my mouth, Gatsby in my hair. Tim packing his miniatures—two of the tiniest of inlaid teacups, on a cardboard tray—and custom-built keyboard collection, as I eat the last of the coconut candy.

I’ve been wondering about the place of writing in all this flurry of movement. This morning I picked up the keys to our new place and watched in awe as the sun hit the floorboards, undisturbed light forming a true arc below the glass. So much has changed in a month, and my relationship to change is in flux as well, as though I were a single, static part, set into motion by an external force—in this case a wind, or a breath of fresh air. In the separateness of separating oneself out through piece-meal tries at translation—in the proximity of leaning over a neighboring cart in the Costco line, wearing one’s favorite pilling red and black flannel shirt—I feel the world outside pull me toward emotional closeness. Everything has so much solidity. Everything makes me recognize my own boundedness, hovering at the periphery.