An Exercise in Counting
by Eva Recinos
Lynne Harlow, Horizon 10, glazed ceramic and chiffon, 20 x 4 x 1 inches, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.
An Exercise in Counting
Eva Recinos/ MAY 2021 / ISSUE 8
Eight (8) different homes in (2) two cities.
One (1) undergraduate degree and one (1) graduate degree, the latter completed at a small art school in San Francisco.
Two (2) lost laptops. One, forgotten in my backpack at Safeway in San Francisco, when I put down my bag to consider what booze I wanted to buy for our going away party. My keys for the new apartment in Los Angeles were there, too. The other laptop was on top of my car, two or so years before that, lost when I forgot about it on top of my car and drove onto the 405.
(??) times I forgot how I got home because I had too much to drink.
One (1) long distance (or medium distance? LA to SF is only six hours) relationship.
One (1) good cry on the water reservoir of Eugene, and a photo taken there too, right after I sobbed out my insecurities—that I wasn’t good enough for S, that his parents wouldn’t like me as his partner, that I wouldn’t measure up. In the photo, I wear round sunglasses which hide my red eyes; I lean against the fence with one hand through my hair and other against my body; I’ve got one leg crossed over the other, trying to look casual. It’s as if I’m holding myself close, guarding myself against the anxiety previously coursing through my body.
One (1) Lexapro prescription, my first one ever.
One (1) wedding in Jacksonville where I woke up hungover and S put on my PJs and socks. He knows I don’t like sleeping without socks.
Two (2) Las Vegas trips. One with college friends. I shaved half of my hair short, but left some strands to hide what I did when I got back home. We drank a lot and I tried to hide my hangover, too. The second one was on our anniversary, when we drove in the rain and I napped to hide my anxiety while S cruised calmly along because he loves rainy weather. We ate crab legs and lobster and shrimp and ribs and then drank a lot but couldn't get drunk, and we fell asleep early.
One (1) breakdown where I sobbed in LAX, unsure of whether I wanted to go to Mexico City as planned. I was stressed and couldn’t stop crying, not even when I was in public, amidst the chaos of the airport. My hormones were off and I was off Lexapro, something I wanted to try to see if I might be okay without it. But it’s not something you do cold turkey. There is no way to describe how terrified I was at that moment. I felt like something bad was going to happen, inevitably, and that I wouldn’t have anything or anyone there to save me. Like the weightlessness when you realize the airplane is in the air and you have no control over that. You are suspended and can’t land yourself. I made it to the security gate and then onto the plane somehow.
One (1) Megabus ride (of many) from SF to LA where the dude next to me ignored personal boundaries and took part of my blanket after quickly asking “May I? It’s kind of cold” to cover himself, so we shared the same blanket even though we just met. I couldn’t sleep with this stranger next to me. The bus was dark and everyone was asleep and the seats were thin and I felt more vulnerable than ever. When we stopped at 3 a.m. for a break, I asked another lady if I could sit next to her. She said, “I thought he was your boyfriend.”
One (1) student loan paid and one (1) to go and the feeling that maybe I made the wrong choice, but this choice gave me two (2) years in SF and I wouldn’t trade that. Not really. Maybe, when I look at the interest.
Three (3) hair color changes, probably more. One of them was fire engine red. Every time I sweat, even a little, for weeks, there was red on my pillowcase. I was a crayon that kept leaving a mark.
(??) late night tacos.
One (1) bartender friend who talked with me about TV and who I bought shots for from time to time. This marked the beginning of a new time, when I was more likely than not to remember how I got home because I had S and our own apartment and school is over. My feet were on the ground. Mostly. I still broke a glass at that bar, the shards scattering under my feet as we danced. I felt guilty but someone cleaned it up and I told myself I was forgiven.
(??) questions about what the fuck I was doing. I was always hard on myself. I asked myself why I didn’t accomplish more or travel country more or find more ways to turn into someone who was beautiful and smart and rich and and and
One (1) Zoloft prescription, because Lexapro was giving me physical symptoms I didn’t like. When I made the shift, I learned what it was like to speak up about what my body was experiencing, to take another step in the same direction even when I was scared, to keep looking for ways to take care of myself.
One (1) new cat, who I was able to keep thanks to a letter from my therapist, because pets weren’t allowed in our building. At first, the cat only let me pet her in the bathroom, where she hid near the toilet. Then, she slowly ventured out to the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, until she owned the whole damn place. I thought maybe she’d lick my tears away, my magical little therapy cat, but she didn’t seem to understand my anxiety attacks. She taught me, instead, to take things more slowly. To nap more often, not out of sadness but for real rest. She taught me you don’t have to earn that.
(??) car rides with S, many of which resulted in so much laughter that cried. I started, slowly, to learn how to stop poking holes in my own happiness. In that car, S let me cry and scream and sing at the top of my lungs and headbang without caring what the cars next to us thought. He kept Diet Cokes in the shared fridge of his apartment because he knew I needed a little caffeine boost whenever we went out. And when I stuck my hand out the window and put my feet on the dash and railed about some person who made me angry or some work thing that stressed me out, I never felt like too much. I was just enough.
Almost one (1) decade. The full list is too long and how many things can I enumerate this way? I try to weigh and transcribe and make meaning of every item. It’s why I write. When you learn about loss at a young age, sometimes you hold on harder to things, no matter how small. I am a transcriber. Maybe another decade from now this list will hide different meanings.
Eva Recinos is an arts and culture journalist and non-fiction writer based in Los Angeles. Her reviews, features, and profiles have been featured in Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Art21, Artsy, Jezebel and more. Her essays have appeared in Catapult, PANK, Electric Literature, Blood Orange Review and more. She is currently working on a memoir in essays.
Lynne Harlow is a reductive artist who has exhibited her work internationally for the past 20 years. Gallery exhibitions include shows at MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NY and Liliana Bloch Gallery, Dallas, TX. Museum exhibitions include the 2013 deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, as well as shows at MoMA PS1 (NY, NY); Brattleboro Museum (Brattleboro, VT); and Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (Oaxaca, Mexico). Her work has been reviewed by Artforum and The New York Times, among others. She is a 2020 grantee of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In 2011 she was awarded the McColl Johnson Fellowship of the Rhode Island Foundation, and in 2002 she was a visiting artist in residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. Harlow’s work is included in public collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and The RISD Museum of Art.