On becoming visible

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about ways of living, and about community. When I was in high school, I read a poem about love by a probably very pompous poet. It was as if I could hear his violin playing as he wrote that he bought his love with money, that for him, there weren’t other options, but that love was love anyway. I still know it by heart, some thirty years later.

I live with love, although not the kind he was writing about. There are other ways of living. This summer, I opened a show I’d been so happy to work on with two inspiring artists—one of whom moved out of society when she was young in order to, as the title of this text goes, become visible.

The project took me to France for a month, and during that time I went on three lovely dates with an equally lovely man. Only on the third date did he tell me—while sort of folding his upper body in a sorry—that he lives with someone. I still think more could have happened had he owned it, but I was happy, in any case, for the new encounter.

You see—and please know that no violins are involved while I’m stating this—I’ve come to realize that I’m different from the poet, and my world is different from the one he lived in—it's more fluid. Meeting someone would be an added bonus. But it is not a must. And this is it. This will be my poem.