print extras of Capillaries? Would you be able to sell them? J and I could use the money. Diapers are fucking expensive. I can do reprints easy. It’s more the new stuff I’m having trouble with.
Also can you fast-track the payment from summer sales?
Talk soon,
M
10/19
Dear Miranda,
Poor thing. Glad you’re on the mend. Have asked assistant to send over sales stats and check, thanks for reminder.
About new work, remember: YOU ARE A SUPERSTAR! Take a deep breath. It’s all like the tide, in and out, in and out.
Extras from Capillaries would be great. Esp. #2, which has sold like hotcakes. Just don’t do too many or the value will depreciate and past buyers will start complaining.
Hal
October 21 1982
Hal,
Thank you for the advice to breathe. That had never occurred to me before. Now that I have inhaled and exhaled I feel able to confront the day! Please see enclosed new photograph.
M
10/28
Miranda,
New photograph needs work. The middle finger should be extended directly through the center line to create symmetrical composition.
The breathing exercise was recommended to me by a famous Siberian shaman who has become a good friend. So don’t knock it!! I want you to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. Just let yourself relax and the ideas will start to flow.
Hal
SERIES 2, Personal papers
BOX 9, Diary (1982–1993)
* * *
OCTOBER 30 1982
Hal thinks he knows everything there is to know about creating. He always thinks he can make the process more efficient. Faster. More profitable. He doesn’t understand that we’re not machines. He can hire a machine to make art if he wants, but it would be a different kind of art.
Before Theo, before Nangussett, I felt creativity almost as a physical presence inside me. I remember feeling like my veins were expanding to hold another creature, a powerful creature. Sometimes I felt like I was communicating with the universe.
But the meds are fucking with me. I’m numb. My veins are frozen in their same size. It’s been over four months since I left the hospital, one month since changing dose, and I haven’t developed a single roll of film. I don’t know where the days go. The hours.
When it comes down to it, I have two choices.
Create or medicate.
The sharp pain.
Or the dull lack.
8.
KATE
The diary soon shaped Kate’s days. She used every possible second of her secret sessions, running upstairs as soon as Theo had left, then huddling on the floor of his bedroom with the notebook open on her knees. Despite the diary’s intensity, it was slow reading. Miranda’s handwriting was even worse when she was writing just for herself, and Kate could only get through five or six pages before she had to dash back downstairs, where she read documents twice as fast to make up for the time she had lost. Between squinting at the diary and squinting at the materials she was actually supposed to be reading, a headache pinched her temples by the end of each day. She considered it an appropriate penance.
When she wasn’t at work, she was trying to track down Kid, the only person who claimed Miranda as a friend. He was never at the crystal store when she went back, but she did meet Esme, the store’s owner. Esme was a delight. She was in her late forties, short and round and beautiful, and always looked like she had just come from having multiple orgasms and a rejuvenating cleanse. She was as talkative as Louise but less critical. She was a hugger—had hugged Kate the very moment she met her, in fact, and welcomed her exuberantly to the shop. Every time Kate visited the store, she was overcome by a feeling of warmth and ended up spending large quantities of her newly earned money on the various remedies that Esme promised would turn her “sickly yellow” aura into a confident blue. A week later, Kate had a pile of candles, herbs, and crystals sitting on her nightstand, but she was no closer to finding Kid.
“Dude, go to his house,” Nikhil said on Friday night.
Kate slumped over the bar. She had become something of a regular at Pawpaw’s, mainly to avoid Frank and Louise’s helicoptering, but also because Nikhil was the only person in Callinas with whom she felt like she could have a normal conversation. He lived with his girlfriend and two roommates in a shared house over the hill, the local term for what was actually multiple hills separating the beach towns from the rest of Marin. Probably because of that distance, he took