no rules

Wassily Kandinsky, Studie zu Improvisation 3, 1909

I was always critical. I learned to discern what I loved from what I couldn’t stand. I wanted to run away from suburbs and rain. I didn’t like how my mom cleaned the house but my dad never did. I hated how women suffered in literature. I never liked rules, which seemed like they were made to punish children and keep adults anxious. I wanted to live in the city, by myself, in an apartment with white walls, sleeping on a futon, books stacked on the floor, dog curled up beside me. That was my earliest dream.

It’s still what I want, I think: to live off my creativity without being impoverished, to have a room of my own for writing and reading, to be deeply in love without being abject, to balance solitude and togetherness. I never found a good map for that dream. But I looked for a while. I read all the self-help books. But few of the people writing self-help had the marriage I wanted, the life. I think that’s partially why I became obsessed with novels. I thought fiction writers were particularly observant, that I could figure out something out by reading. I don’t think I was wrong about that.