(19 may 2011)

this likely matters to no one but me and caroline kennedy. but, i swear, people, it’s important. i wouldn’t be a writer if it weren’t for this.

on two separate occasions last friday, i was confronted with the question: so what’s happening with jackie?

on my lunch break, my mother asked it over the phone, as i slipped my bare feet into the frigid waters of the small stream that runs through the little garden that’s sprung up by the art institute.

i counted the change accumulated at the bottom and wondered how big a wish one gets for 16 cents.

and then there it was again, when k.lo leaned over the table at katie i’s peruvian birthday dinner and asked the exact same thing. i was halfway through a virgin daiquiri, which- it was increasingly clear- was, in fact, not a virgin.

what is happening with jackie?

it’s a question for which i have no answer, but i’ve got ideas. huge, incredibly expensive, wildly implausible, recklessly bold, impossible to execute ideas.

but if the jackie i love- the jackie of the 70s, the jackie whom history has erased and who went braless and saw sex movies and married a greek- has taught me anything, it is that life is an adventure. that we must always be present. that anything is possible. and anything can be.