#2 An incomplete list of perfect things August 2022

1.     Snow falling on dirty pavement next to the BQE exit at Humboldt Street at near midnight.

2.     Any curled cat sleeping

3.     Leaves

4.     A baby learning to sit up and slipping sideways and smiling

5.     The sunlight on my floor in strict rectangles

6.     Belting out AiAi Olga in Level 4 (A2+-B1) Dutch class

7.     Realizing a migraine is gone

8.     The soft pale brown sand of the dunes behind Castricum

9.     The forgiveness and affirmation kiss at the corner of Broadway and West 4th, June 2019

10.  A quiet night

11.  Amtrak’s California Zephyr

12.  The grey velvet 1960’s seats in the regional trains of Haute France

13.  PG Tips tea brewed very strong

14.  Happy dogs

15.  Landskroner’s stroopwaffels

16.  Flying into JFK. At night when the lights spread out for miles. In the morning, when the sun is shining on Long Island Sound. When it’s snowing and you can’t see anything. In the evening when the pollution makes the clouds bright orange and rose.

17.  Linen sheets

18.  The Hudson River, anywhere, anytime

19.  Mt. Rainier

20.  The wind tunnels in the West 50’s between 6th Ave and Broadway

21.  The first time washing my hair after a couple of days swimming in saltwater

22.  Dress rehearsal for Palermo Palermo at BAM, 1999

23.  Cynthia Gregory and Ivan Nagy rehearsing for Pacific Northwest Ballet Nutcracker in 1976

24.  The floor at Eden’s Expressway

25.  The floor at Broome Corner Studio

26.  The windows at 65 West Broadway

27.  The sunset viewed around 4pm from the Brooklyn Promenade the day after the big snowstorm in 1998

28.  My room in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua where the voices of birds and monkeys and chickens and frogs and the wind kept me company all night and through the day

29.  The first morning waking upstate and knowing I would be back

30.  Every steamy dingy grimy slippery angle of the 10th Street Baths

31.  The last dance I saw by Tere O’Connor

32.  Ty performing

33.  Michael packing his picnic basket

34.  Biking next to the sheep meadow behind Het Timmerholt, Drenthe, the Netherlands

35.  Having waited till now to learn Dutch

36.  Italian

37.  The yellow walls of a building I can’t name in Iasi, Romania, autumn 1970

38.  My mother in a silk paisley dress she’d made herself, summer, 1971

39.  David Thomson’s smile

40.  My father waking up from a 2.5 week coma

41.  Every plie

42.  Polka music