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     My mother arranged for me my very first job, just as her mother did for her.     “We work,” she said, “but then we leave.”
    She unfolded the family tree of the temporary lives recorded before ours. My aunt with her stack of resumes.

I’m at home, texting no one. I’m thinking about nothing. I’m playing the game where I delay by seeing how many double negatives I can’t help but not put in my sentence, you know, the more I think about it, the more I believe the paragon of realist art is the 1993 Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park.

     Holly’s address costs eleven dollars on a website where they look it up from when she last voted. I bike across town in the middle of the night to stand on her tree-lined street. She lives in a lumpen, gray building tacked to a row of brightly sparkling ones, like a bad tooth.

It’s OK to be mean.      Dad taught me so, as he stood at the kitchen counter, playing with his watch. I poured a glass of milk, gargled, and gulped.

Six months after Tye’s “Performance for Women & Performance,” about one thousand people Occupied Wall Street, which is to say, on September 17, 2011, protesters marched through the financial district and settled into Zuccotti Park. The encampment remained in place until shortly after midnight on November 15, when the NYPD gave notice that protesters would be removed due to ostensibly unsanitary conditions. A little while later, they cleared everybody out.

JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS a couple of years ago, I made plans with a person whom I deeply admire. I won’t say who but I’ll say this: she’s somewhere on the spectrum between Eileen Myles and Beyoncé. You probably admire her too—or you might hate her and think she’s fat.

This letter’s taken almost a year to write and therefore it’s become a story. Call it Route 126. On Thursday night I got off a plane from JFK to LAX.

4 Events You Miss Because of Fibromyalgia Pain

1. Brunch with Marissa’s Parents

Your alarm goes off at 9:30, then 9:45. Marissa’s parents are in town and brunch is at 11.

The wine. Find the wine. I found a glass.

I hate men. Anna says good men do exist. Nice, friendly men who cook and help clean up and who earn money.