I never expect winter to play this nicely, even when it is waning on us and giving way to another spring. Kat and Elise were stalking around the Penn Museum courtyard, one posing and the other one snapping away with her 35mm. I was lying splayed out on the grass, half in sun and half in shadow.


“Do you need me to move?”

“No, you’re fine. Are you bored?”

“No, i’m fine.”

I am usually not the most visual person, but i was lying there pressed as close to the earth as i possibly could and i almost asked Elise for her camera so i could capture the air in a single frame. People tell me they want to read about my life, and at that moment my life was blades of grass too close to my face to be in focus, and slanty red brick sidewalks, and green algae in the water.

I was pressing closer and closer to the ground, thinking that maybe if i could get close enough i would understand something about it — something about my relative significance as a speck on a tiny square of grass.


And, no, i wasn’t bored at all.