Woman, Bird, Crowbar

This is the view from my desk. There is a naked woman and a red bird. If you look closely, you'll also see a gash in the wall just above the naked woman. It's from the time the yoga studio next door called me and Cody to tell us that we were missing an entire row of bricks. Come on over, they said, and we went. Here, the guy said and handed Cody a crowbar. I bet if you stick this crowbar through that drywall, it'll end up in your apartment. He was right, of course, but it does seem to have been a bad bet on our part.

There are other holes in our walls too. If you take down almost any painting in our home you will see that Cody has sawed a rectangle in the drywall. What are you doing? I kept asking. Looking for bricks, he said.

I sometimes worry that out of some sort of desperation, I've surrendered entirely to metaphor and made all of this up. The walls were only figurative! the therapist would yell. It is in these moments that I go to the paintings, tip them up from the bottom and find great solace that there are indeed holes, that, if necessary, and with nothing but a big ole knife and a platform shoe, I could, in a matter of an hour or so, be doing downward dog.