It took me three hours to walk through the Diane Arbus exhibit. It felt like I had been there a half an hour when I came out the elevator door. I checked the clock three times.

” I used sometimes to wish not to notice the difference between things and people as if that would constitute enlightenment.

I understand this…I’m trying to forget.

I read all the little scrawls in note books, all the letters. Remind me to burn my journals before I die. I don’t mind manuscripts under glass. It’s the things I draw on napkins that terrify me.

I am applying for a Guggenheim even though I have no degree or formal training. I do speak a little French but I don’t think they are going ask me that.

Top of the Guggenheim application: I am a single mother of two small daughters and I want time to create art.

How many times have I written that?

Because there is a photo in the exhibit where she is pregnant and looking into the mirror, b/c I have that same photo of myself at twenty four and because I know what it’s like to leave my husband, to use my art as a way out and because honestly I had forgotten how she died, when the suicide came under glass with the date, I made a sound inside myself that frighten the man next to me and I wanted to not understand so well.