You Could Make This Place Beautiful: a Memoir by Maggie Smith

Author:Maggie Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
Published: 2023-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

IT WASN’T ALL BAD

Reader, I want you to know that trip to LA was beautiful in plenty of ways. It was more than sure you are. It was more than quartered pills on the bathroom counter, more than pacing the hotel room until I could’ve burned a path of black footprints into the carpet. There were no footprints.

What there was, that June in California, was friendship, community, a sense of purpose, and the Pacific.

I had breakfast with Victoria at the diner from The Big Lebowski, the one where the nihilists, including Flea and Aimee Mann, order lingonberry pancakes. Yes, I ordered pancakes, and we talked about everything that had gone wrong—and everything that was still going right. Just being there was something that was going right. Each morning I taught a poetry workshop, and I felt free—free to be myself and do my work without asking for permission or forgiveness.

The last weekend I was in Los Angeles, an old college friend picked me up at my hotel and took me to Venice Beach. I’d never seen the Pacific Ocean up close. Jeremy and I walked on the pier, then stopped at a little place for Mexican food and giant margaritas. I got beautifully drunk—not sick, not tired, just happy—and we walked to the water, took off our shoes, and waded in calf-deep. I felt quieted, calmed, like when you whisper to a spooked horse to settle it: whoa now, easy now. I was remembering how to be. Not a mother, not a teacher, not even a writer. Just me.

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