The Fire Escape, Three Times

I took the sketchbook outside today. That's the news. That's genuinely the whole update, and I am choosing to count it.

It's been sitting on the kitchen table since June, face-up when I'm alone, face-down when I hear the hallway, and I've done a few things in it, technically. The page of rectangles. A window frame. Half a plant that I gave up on because Gerald does not sit still enough, which I realize is an insane complaint about a pothos. But today I picked it up and carried it down to the stoop and sat there in the last of the August heat and drew the fire escape on the building across the street. Then drew it again. Then drew it a third time, which is embarrassing but also, I think, how this works? The third one had the proportions wrong in a completely different way than the first, which I'm choosing to interpret as growth.

closed the book. watched the street. called it productive.

There's something specific about doing a bad version of something outside, in public, where anyone could walk by. I kept the sketchbook angled toward my knees like I was covering a test paper. At one point a man walked his dog past and I flipped to a blank page without really deciding to. The dog didn't care. The man didn't look. I finished the third fire escape after they were gone and then I just sat there for a while with the book closed, watching the block go quiet the way it does at this specific hour in late August, when the light goes gold and the air smells faintly like asphalt and someone's dinner. I am not a person who draws. But I spent an afternoon with a pencil and something to look at, and that's close enough for a Monday.