There are places engineered for looking: actual squares of grass, the trees trimmed into rectangles so that the sun when it falls forms clean subframes of shadow. Chairs line the edge of the grass pointing inward inviting you to sit and also reinforcing the distance necessary for looking: that if we were sitting on the grass ourselves, we would be too equivalent.
The illusion of iron as flesh: the eye moves to her waist so that you are stuck between her breasts and her ass and the parting of her legs. I hate it yet also am drawn as if through biology, sex, perception. What is she meant to be? A body, and if you touched her it would be hard, and if you threw a penny, it would make a metallic sound.
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I am staying on Avenue Simon Bolivar by Parc de Buttes Chaumont.
My great grandfather founded the Bolivarian Society of the U.S.
On behalf of the Venezuelan government, he gave a statue of Simon Bolivar to Central Park.
He wrote Simón Bolivar. New York: Bolivarian Society of the U.S., 1965.
I have a picture of him, old, well-dressed and cologned, with a pure white mustache, sunk deep in a floral chintz chair in my parents' living room.
In 6 days I move to Le Marais. The furniture in the apartment must be left vacant and treated with care; the closet-doors reach the ceiling; the bathroom walls are tadelakt.