There’s a strange dimness to the light in a City where it always rains. As this languid night spills out before from this top floor Seattle hostel I notice life begin to come into focus. No longer bleary eyed and staggering through routine I look around, and bite down.
I cannot begin to understand why I am spurred so into darker and darker tunnels. Alice, the white rabbit and I, spinning, spinning toward infinity, crashing casually into the darkness and laughing all the way down. At the bottom, through the tiny, giant door and from across the room she looks at me; the lesbian on the lower bunk. So I write her away. Words hit the page like bullets exploding fear into tangible, edible bits. Shrapnel, battleship battalions lay in a wake of creative ruin on empty white space.
Finally, I feel it.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I place the world upon the page and it is defined away; my poetic justice.
In this common room all the languages of the world commence and fall apart on my ears. It’s a hot bed of narcissists, refractories, languishers and hooligans. Wayward children lost in a mess of concrete, looking for the last frontier of affection, looking for someone to pass along the minutes in loudness - drowning. Choking in street side noise and going down in the spatial discombobulation experienced as the lost, in a generation of losers. The husk of a patrician cob thrashed off for the more valuable internal structure - kernels in perfect rows. Unstated fears sweep like marine tides in and out, in and out and playful around the thoughts and minds of a few kids trying to get home. Home. The allegory for my sadness. The end of a rainbow, always in my peripheral.
But we can't go home. Not really. Our homes are just old families with new lives. They do not hold us but in a photograph on comfort side furniture. Whether they left us, or we left them, there was point of no return. A point when the promise of something more mocked us into this gasoline fueled hiatus. That promise mocks me now; from the street, through the window and into the space stained sheets of this hostel bed. Sadness mocks me. Anger mocks me. And this city mocks me with its potential. And mine.
I grind the reality of this place like dirt between my teeth. Pumiced and chalky it pastes between my gums. It tastes and sounds like a place where things began in earnest, rather then in vain, like the marketed wonders of cleaner avenues. Cold open markets splay out in front of me as I watch the eyes, of people watching things. I watch their mouths, lazy gum worms form audibles that pass redundantly, repetitively through weather, children, decorating, banks, doctors; weather, children, decorating, banks, doctors; weather, children, decorating, banks, doctors. These days beat away like a loose snare and, as clichéd as it sounds, Grunge does makes sense here, even if it is 10 plus years gone.
These streets are a migraine. Macaroni and cheese. Chalk silhouettes of artistic trials on long sprawling outdoor shelves. Bacon, boxes, lilies, doorknobs, doorstoppers, door-hangers, odd sods, whole loaves, half buns, panini’s, crepes de banane, ripe oranges, perfect grapes, warm pies, dates, fruits, figs, wine, beer, truffle oil soup - mannequins in a street side masquerade. Layers and layers of things and rings and ideal idleness. This City sinks and is lifted, not by spirit, but by the noise of its own existence. It thinks. This City thinks. . .
