an effort in amassing, an abundance of items transforming each space to an artificial jungle. she found herself overwhelmed by the number of objects for which she had no use but to be looked at. rather than emptiness or meaninglessness, suggesting a past unrelated to the manzanita in the canyons, the flesh mating on the white stone beach. a courteousness in the china, the beveled lamps, the hunting scenes, that is not in a stone.

glamour girls shimmied up the coast, dropping their panties in the drawing room, hesitating to go beyond the forest lawn. i don’t know if this is true. he asked her to go upstairs and change and she came back down wearing a monkey fur coat.

the altitude was too high, the funds dried out, leaving no gaps. her satellite sold at auction. nothing left but one rosebud, a seal stinking of fish yawning as a picture is taken, a postcard is wrought. the santa lucia mountains backlighting a crumbling mansion towering over the sea. i want it to be exactly as it had been. i am formed to look upwards, i am caught in an arrival that won’t stop, a highway that keeps the floors polished, the mosaics worn and bright. everything brought here reassembled, families spilling from their cars; the turgid, gelatinous bodies of seals wafting on sand, a balmy canopy of bad taste.

an embarrassing failure, he left the project unfinished after building for twenty-eight years. the main house and the small houses surrounding it: casa del mar, casa del monte and casa del sol clustered around casa grande, a nest of timber and granite feathered with mother of pearl. the moisture has caused fading and flaking, a grime surfacing on the kidskin screen. soon it will be lost. a bowling alley that was never finished, a vault in the basement full of marble, a wing undone, windows sealed shut with cement. still, the flowers can never be too many, or the bursts of light.