orangeheart

in this picture i am eighteen years old & sitting on a couch in northern japan. i am wearing that brown flowered dress i practically lived in a few years later, the summer i lost twenty pounds & stopped getting my period. i am sitting next to colin, leaning into me & trying to look suave. i am leaning forward into my knees. in this picture a_____ has a vapid stare & d_____ is very earnestly wearing shorts that are too short for him. perched on the arm of the couch is the doll-maker who read all our fortunes that day. it is her house. the way she is perched, it looks as if she has just come through the door. she is still hovering in the door almost. on the white wall above all of us, in a gilt frame, is a print of that jan van eyck self-portrait, the one with the red turban, which i had to learn later for my comps. the wall, as i said, is white, & takes up most of the picture. on one side of the wall is the frame of the door. on the other side of the wall is the frame of the wide window. you can only see a small bit of it & through it you can see the rock garden & beyond it the mountains, the grey sky which seemed unspeakably vast & clean. that was the day that the doll-maker, whose house we are in, read all our fortunes. i have no idea what she pulled out of colin's hands, out of the others' hands. if you look closely you can see that i have a blue band-aid on my right index finger. we are each holding a copy of the same brochure. i am leaning forward into my knees. there is a glass of water on the coffee table in front of me. the water comes up halfway. i have long hair in this picture & look, unnervingly, like mischka's girlfriend. as i write this i have short crayola-red hair & i look nothing like her, i look nothing like the girl in japan, leaning into her knees. i still have my fortune & the kokeshi doll she gave me. the doll has a leaning-back head & a wide-open mouth, to bring in more joy all the time.