Been up since seven this morning staring at the orange gates outside my window. They popped up a few days ago and I felt like a suburbanite waking up to discover someone had planted plastic flamingos all over his lawn. Unfurled now, they flap flap flap in the breeze like some hipster’s hanging laundry circa 1999, when (if memory serves) orange was the new black. And I don’t buy the “saffron” propaganda—these things are most definitely construction-site orange, more Sunny Delight than Tropicana.

I don’t really have an opinion about these things as art. I don’t even think it would be possible for me to have an opinion: the gates are too in my face. Around here it’s all gates all the time. I’m just wondering whether I’m about to go mad. I’m a little envious of those people who come to the park to look at the gates and then go home, where they can look at something other than gates.

The gates mock me. I can hear them laffing, flippity-flap, in the breeze.