Quanders On and On

The Moon Ecliptic Jejune…

S. understands nothing still. 

No progress, just suspicion — an achievement of sorts — another impinged misalignment.

The hotel carpet is a pattern of smatters, a garment of tatters and spatters designed by no one for no one — a tessellation of suppressed anxiety in burgundy and teal. S. studies it. It does not yield, but his socks are clean, and somewhere a bag cannot suppress its will.

Checkout is at eleven. It is eleven fifty-nine.

He reassembles his left shoe, then reassembles himself, then his right shoe, that smells of coal and desperation. 

He carries his bag into the hallway where the man — the hogmanay man — is gone, but left a distinct smell of black pudding and resignation. The housekeeping cart lists to one side, towels piled in a monument to the provisional. 

S. nods at it. 

The towels do not nod back, but he feels something has passed between them.

He descends. The elevator opens on a lobby of atonal breakfasts — the waffle iron’s red light blinking its one-note scripture: repent… repent… repent… A child is crying tender misericordias to the orange juice machine. The orange juice machine winces its particulate brays.

Outside: the city in its chanteuse shoes and Piaf neighs. S. walks. His shoes a parenthetical syntax  on the wobble cobbles. He is a flash contingency of the street — an aside no one inserted, in a clause claustrophobic, dangling in the new year’s raw and unfiltered air.

A sign reads: Needs Not Met Here — Inquire Without Inquiry. The Unexamined Life is Go Go Go Go!

S. does not inquire.

He quanders on.

What I’m Listening To:

I’m gonna write what I know
Things I ain’t known for a long time
I met the real John Cale
He had no words, but I don’t mind
I packed the stage while he ate rice

— Aldous Harding / “One Stop”