I feel utter­ly intox­i­cat­ed.

With a ham­mer and a lad­der, we hung my pic­tures tonight, care­ful­ly decid­ing where to place each one to bal­ance the colours, the ori­en­ta­tions, the shapes, and the con­cepts.

Amongst the wine and the wood, the kids and the colours, we stopped to admire the art in the house. Adrienne dropped by to share her lat­est graph­ic poems with us, along with her alco­holic find­ings. “From The Desk Of” Penelope was writ­ten that day, dense and deep, full of details tak­en for grant­ed. The words must write them­selves, I thought.

Misun and I seem to share a kin­ship through our appre­ci­a­tion of expres­sion, some­thing I’ve nev­er had with my friends. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with them, but I’ve always felt like they can’t relate to me when it comes to emo­tions or cre­ativ­i­ty. As I seem to be the cre­ative broth­er she’s always want­ed, and she seems to be the sup­port­ive sis­ter I’ve always need­ed, we agreed to be adopt­ed sib­lings.

In a recent inter­view, Frédéric said, in his ebul­lient Parisian accent, that one of the rea­sons he want­ed to open the Salon is to pro­mote dia­logue and inter­ac­tion. Perhaps it’s this hunger for dia­logue that con­nects us. He also men­tioned to me he was stressed out about being inter­viewed; being put on the spot made him freeze up. I told him I had the same prob­lem with pret­ty girls. “You’re affect­ed by beau­ty”, he said, some­thing I knew, but not some­thing that every­one under­stands.

I left, feel­ing like I was a part of some­thing won­der­ful, some­thing greater than myself.