Free Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty by Diane Keaton Page A

young casual. It’s great to be the mind behind J. Crew and Ralph Lauren, and Quiksilver, and H&M. It’s fantastic to have an imagination stimulated by diversity. It’s a world of style influenced by Coco Chanel and Miuccia Prada and Paul Harnden, too. It’s Rihanna and Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj. It was thrift-store Barbra Streisand in the 1970s and Madonna’s street-smart layered look of the ’80s. It was Romeo Gigli in the ’90s. Now it’s Paul Smith’s classic schoolgirl look and Thom Browne’s
Mad Men
suits. It’s Anna Wintour’s hatred of Black teamed up with Grace Coddington’s love of Orange. It’s the Row, by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. It’s Louis Vuitton designed by Marc Jacobs. For me? It’s Cary Grant and Dexter Keaton. It’s women in men’s clothes made for women. It’s Bill Cunningham on his bicycle shooting the fashion trends of men and women on the streets of New York City. It’s Victoria’s Secret and Ellen’s Crossing. It’s potential for change, and it’s change itself. It’s turtlenecks and ties, and bikinis and bras.

This morning the ocean was beautiful. But what does that even mean? Cloudy with pockets of blue? Hazy gray, hardly a blue kind of blue? Blue peppered with pale pink? Suddenly those hazy gray clouds parted and from the bluff I could see two ships spotlit by the sun. Was that beauty?
    That’s what I was thinking when it dawned on me my sister Robin still hadn’t called me back. She’d been crying about her dog Dash’s penchant for attacking her next-doorneighbor’s awful Chihuahua, Joanie, when Dylan, her four-year-old grandson, started screaming. She said she’d call me right back and hung up. But she hadn’t. So, was the ocean beautiful this morning? Or was it background music for my agitation? Mom had loved describing flawless beauty, especially in her journals. She never dirtied it up with doubts. But beauty isn’t perfect. And neither is Robin, who still hasn’t called me back. What the hell is beauty?
    I was a stubborn girl. I remember cutting a deal with Mom, saying I’d learn to read but only if the books were illustrated with pictures. Wasn’t it Alice in Wonderland who peeked into the pictureless book her sister was reading and said to herself, “What is the use of a book without pictures?” In the Dick and Jane series, co-authors William S. Gray and, Zerna Sharp wrote, “Oh, see. Oh, see Jane. Funny, funny Jane.” I saw Jane because she was illustrated. Years later, I saw Keith Carter’s portrait of a black dog because Keith Carter took the photograph. Reading is seeing, too. But it requires more thought. Is thought beautiful? Some thoughts are. So what is beauty? For me, it’s a collection of images, and objects, and thoughts, and feelings I’ve gathered over the course of my life. Dad would have numbered beauty. Mom wrote it down. Dexter listens to it. Duke wants to own it, all of it, in every shape and form. Sometimes beauty, like today, is a closed book I can’t open. Sometimes it’s hanging in my closet. Like mydad’s old sweater. Sometimes it’s a message saved on my voice mail.… But one thing for sure: all of it is personal.
LOST DOG
BY KEITH CARTER
    Several years ago my old dog Josie had lost her appetite. At the vet’s, Dr. Kalin drew blood, took X-rays, and listened to her heartbeat. A week later, the call came. Josie’s liver count was high. Cushing’s disease was mentioned. Even though Jaws—that’s what I called her after she bit the mailman—was a nasty shepherd mix, I loved her. Fifteen years after she passed, I saw her essence in Keith Carter’s portrait called
Lost Dog
. His dog is black, and maybe not so old, but in that face, with its predominant nose much too close to the camera lens; in his blurry, soulful gaze; in his loyalty, his sweet trust, I saw Josie. I saw our twelve years together. I saw my dread of losing her. I saw that her loss has been a sadness I will carry with me all the days of my