Dear
Darling, July
27, 2013
In
Washington Square today, in addition to the usual acrobats performing feats of
flexibility while standing on their hands, I saw a woman singing and playing
accordion in the company of a golden bull. The bull, slightly taller than the
woman, had a purple velvet mane and six or eight spindly human legs underneath
it, one pair of which was, in turn, propping up a pair of green-checkered
shorts. The woman and her songs called to mind the word bawdy with her thick
build, her gypsy-like red skirt, its folds piled up like a bustle around her
waist, her blonde hair a combination mohawk and dreadlocks and a singing voice
close to a yell. People threw bills into her backpack to which she had fastened
a cardboard “tip the bison” sign.
I
was there on a park bench marveling at not being hot under my cardigan and reading the William Styron book,
which I decided to buy after missing it once I had left the bookstore. I
definitely have to read Sophie’s Choice. Have you read it? I am
up to the founding of The Paris Review.
I
keep meaning to try to write a very long sentence that spans a lot of space and
time. By “a lot” of time, I mean something like 29 years. Subject? New York. In
sixth grade, I sent away for School of American Ballet brochures, pasted them in
my green notebook, and posted a subsequent letter to New York, the town where I would
gleefully attend graduate school less than 10 years later to study not ballet
but writing, saying that I hoped to be a student at SAB but, alas, was stuck in
a remote New England town thirty minutes from the closest ballet class, an hour
from violin lessons and, I would observe, once I started learning the language
of ballet, time zones away from France and an entire astronomical unit from the sun, so could you please continue sending me
souvenirs of my inexperience as a New York City ballet kid and perhaps also
some letters of encouragement to my parents?
Alright
mon cher, goodnight. I challenge you to write a longer sentence. It doesn’t
have to be true.
Yours truly,
Katie
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