A point of conversation

Article and Art by Nathalie San Fratello

The kid in middle school who always wore a winter jacket inside everyday no matter what. He was scared of people looking at his body. I did that too but in other ways.

This is not about just me or just you. It's about how we touch every single thing we pass, together.

Sewing and touching peoples clothes:

I never know when someone will ask me for a repair, and it always feels personal, adorable and insider. Never will I turn down sewing up a hole. It just feels good. Usually I say no you don't have to pay me it will take five minutes but then people I don't know super well insist. I’ll take the money; it is my time and my cute pink string that's saving your life. Have a look into your most personal of personal lives, see how time and wear have distressed your beloved item. I always start sentences with the same words, and it feels weird. I start sewing with something familiar and it never feels weird. Makes my hands feel at home. Maybe I will forget to patch your pants or the part of your sweater that covers your armpit. I will probably forget because I have to get groceries and see a friend and do some homework. I will also probably forget because I like to return to something charming like repairing something for someone when I feel lost. Two weeks will pass and I will get to your awesome hole, admire the loss, praise the open space, the possibility, and cover it up real nice. This is an ad for my patching services. I will embellish your hole, address its emptiness with a loving blob of colors and a scrap from someone else's scrap.

Saltwater fish tanks:

I have always wanted to work at an aquarium store ever since I was young. It was my backup plan if I couldn’t be a marine biologist or a scuba diver. Those are not happening so I have to find my aquarium gig. Actually, I met a bus driver today that builds aquariums in the Springs. I will have to reach out to him. Since my earlier dreams of glowing water and colorful bodies, I have gone scuba diving, and I don’t think I liked the way it made my ears feel. Some of my earliest memories are teal and white, of me and my dad cleaning a 60 gallon fish tank together. He put a piece of painted chipboard, aquamarine, behind the supposed backside of the tank. Viewing. The tank itself was actually placed in front of a window in our house, on the other side of that window was our breakfast nook. Essentially, you could peek through the fishtank and see someone sitting with a bowl of cereal on the other side. It was a point of conversation. I often think about how people dream up points of conversation. It’s a strange thing to be thinking with space. A lot of time that means imagining the negative in beautiful ways. Conjuring glow with crystalline accents and flounders and metaphors.

The people who made the fish tank installation at my childhood Rainforest Cafe had some kind of weird demented power. They placed glass tubes everywhere and filled them with big brown fish, the kind of lake fish that's supposed to stand in for tropical rainforest type fish. I never really asked him why he liked fish so much but I think he knows how pretty they are. Only a few times in my life have I met people that also grew up with a fish tank in their house. It’s a different commitment than a fish bowl or a reptile terrarium. Every day you should check to see that the filters are clean. This can be done with your hands or by looking. It would feel too mushy and slimy if it was dirty and needed to be changed. Then you also have to scrub the glass with a little green stick that has a cotton sponge attached to the end. You can make this device yourself with a green stick, a cotton pad or sponge, and a rubber band. This is really satisfying because if you don't clean it for a while, a filmy layer of green begins to build up. Once a week you measure the amount of salt in the water in the tank. You probably pull the rocks out to be cleaned if you’re really a good fish tank keeper upper.

Holes and holding.

Fish tank I miss you.

Removed because my dad is getting older and so am I. The fish were still alive but we had to give them away.

Fish tank and taking care of fish. Cause maybe the fish take care of you by being pretty and reminding you to float.

Change the filter, scrub the glass, feed the fish. No, it's actually more complicated especially if you really need the fish to survive. There's a hole in the tank! How are you gonna fix it? If you had a fish tank and you were 8 years old would you disagree about eating fish as food? Would you instead eat the fish’s food? Did you ever want to eat one of those cubes of shrimp?

Helped Dad Clorox the front of the tank, scrub the salt off the base of the stand where it all accumulated in intervals of memory and escapes. The fish are a reminder to a young girl that things just float. Things including you and your parents and your kitchen and your sock in the washer.

Enjoying the feeling of being too bright:

The color orange takes care of me. I feel more visible when I cover exposed parts with muted neon oranges or something too bright. The kind where anyone who sees it has a headache. A me headache. You know I am there. I don't have to speak for you to hear what I have to say. I think color is magic like that. Touching becomes less literally tactile and more realistically ephemeral. It can do work for you, and tell stories that words can’t do. The use of color actually feels very intentional in a lot of things we interact with. Enjoying the feeling of being too bright. Something about me is attracted to knowing I don’t have to do the work of speaking, I can just move around as orange and eat yogurt and be myself. Lots of great things are orange!

Do you like traffic cones? Can you describe one to me? Do you own one? Have you ever stolen one and not known what to do with it?

List for the times you could get cold feet:

First dates

First dates with a new friend

A competition

Singing in front of people

Job interviews

Sitting outside without socks on

In the airport around all those strangers

Going to the grocery store alone

Going to a party

Important conversations