Making Arrangements

It turns out the first lesson of painting with perspective is mastering an understanding of the ways in which perspective disappears. Somewhere in the distance, a college president dreams in architecture he can name for the rich. Right up front there’s a boy refusing to go to the beach now that he’s learned about cremains. Sometimes, soap in your eyes, you have to reach for the towel bar, you have to pick up every pear as if you’re a lunar rover. It’s too easy to mistake the angels for insects, to go through an entire summer without walking a dog. There’s a dependlessness to our thoughts, and at some point there’s a moment when we’re sure we understand the great drift, the sum of all tendencies with a new intimacy, but it always turns out to be less than reassuring, to witness life being written directly into its final draft. Victory is going to require the imagination. It’s going to have to be conjured from air. And now that the snow is as everywhere as it will get, and the world has frozen itself back into place, we can see we have all the tools we’ll ever need. Point to anything and name it, it’s not our fault, even if the entirety feels unmistakable from responsibility. According to the experts, true security will require both one thing you possess