I DON'T WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU

We live in a semi-sordid hotel. At least in the old world sense: five rooms, secret stairways, cleaning service once a week. It's been ten months, and not an idea of permanency; just two birds and a library. He brought me here from behind a bar, falling into cliché in increments over the course of a weekend, surely we won't survive. Or perhaps we shall-- going into space armed with Requise Affaires pour Spatiale:

a record player

the two birds

knives and tea towels

upside-down dollhouse

wine cave

orchids & herbs

the library (duh)

stamps

pinhole camera + chemicals

It makes a lot of sense, I promise. When you are brought out into the light from underground, you become slightly particular about what you load into the freightcar of your transcendence. I chose some of these objects, but not others; if I am to go further, I'd add a few things, leave some off. My Haper-Collins Concise French dictionary broke in half between "bulb" and "bureaucracy" so perhaps I'd at least find a slightly less-used version, as that might help with these horrible translations I perform; telling people of magic and distortions and of what we know of Babylon, hanging in gardens, still... it can become distressing unless you've mastered more languages than I.

However, I wonder what will happen to all the newspaper clippings I've taped to the walls once we migrate? If I leave them, half in French (which I ought know better) and half in English, will their juxtapositions make any kind of map? And what if we don't wish to be followed? Perhaps the best solution is to leave them there, but give the walls a fresh coat of paint, so they can linger, but we can remain anonymous. (Or at least undetected in flight.) I do harbor the fear that they will get us in the end....

I've digressed. Please expect that; I go down all the indiscreet paths, broken and distempered as I am. I'll tell stories of me, and stories of others, and try to find again that rooster which crossed my path my first morning in New Orleans. Just know we are all guilty inside a world which will be made whole again.

To return: I was overjoyed to find myself living in a glorified hotel; I've had much use of them in my past, perhaps even an addiction to such transience, seen some of the world's best squalor, killed a few demons this way. More likely: I was happy to find that the breeze of my migration guided me to such a life-- and that he lived as such too. It's uncommon these days, so it has made for a known/unknown friend. A very good kind, in my little opinion. But I like the comfort of only having three items of food at any given time, a larger stock of wine, a bicycle, and the new old world outside my door and windows and eyes. I can't reconcile myself to another way; I feel less strange when I am foreign, most at home in the places I've never been. That's why a good hotel is all one ever needs in the world-- and by good, I mean shared with a few roaches, dark curtains to get through the morning if need be, and lost newspapers masking-taped to one or more walls. Bring along some books, stationary, records of any variety (or not) and you have all you need to keep house. (By the way, I sorta adapt that concept from Marilynn Robinson's lovely novel Housekeeping. My first poetry mentor, without condoning plagiarism, advised me wisely: "steal from the rich" in a long paper letter he once wrote.) I'll try to cite this misadventure best that I can. But to instantly change one's life, its plotting-- literally to wake up in alternate circumstances one morning versus another, and grand plus! to find your bedmate (who knows the funny French colloquialism for that term?) occupying the same stained-sink hotel room? It is odd and familiar and the best and the worst and everything that everyday should be. C'est bizarre! --et merci beaucoup mon étranger!

Ah! and now a favorite sound: a train in the distance-- checking the time, it must be the same which brought me here, and if it were dark outside, and the moon were full, you could see an opera from the color of that noise. This is much in that same emotion: two birds, let out of a cage; nonvows; possibilities; lists for a long winter.