Member-only story
An Artist in His Studio
07/30/88
Dear Sophie,
I went uptown today and saw this card and thought of you. The red Chinese umbrella, the pot holding the artist's brushes, the wine bottles and blue patterned tea cup and saucer, the oriental rug on the bureau.
These things, so beautiful and different, reminded me of you.
I hope you enjoy it, my sweet, beautiful, sensitive, artistic bohemian.
Hold on to all your dreams.
I love you, Sophie.
Mama.
I would have been 17 when she gave me this card. Working in the bookshop cafe and a year out from having quit high school.
She could be magic in spurts, charm you in unexpected moments, and then be so distant, neglectful, and cruel.
How can we be like that to each other, so inconsistent, fleeting, unthinking, unforgiving, then magnificent, and then shit again?
Had no idea as to this artist until today with Google Lens.
This scrap will escape the Swedish Death Clenths of today, and I suspect it will be with me till I do, in fact, die.
