What Is Different?

Here, the fire hydrants are shaped like iron q-tips. People have license plates on the front and back of their automobiles. And package stores are called what they really are - liquor stores. There’s a vibrant LGBTQ scene here, and a co-op that’s out of this world. Apparently, too, there’s a bar (The Foxhead), where the Writer’s Workshop fiction writers have been congregating every Tuesday night for over thirty years. The jukebox is said to be heavily weighted with Dylan tunes. (The poets have their own bar, across town.)

When we moved in under cover of night last Friday, a weird, warm fella with big funny eyes who lives across the hall welcomed us (“Hi there!”) and gave us important flood updates and information (“The creek may flood. Pay attention to it. Since you don’t have a t.v., I’ll keep you posted.”). The next morning, as tornado sirens moaned across the city, he brought us a pre-cooked chicken, which I devoured almost instantly. The weather radio crackled all afternoon. Sunny yesterday, Janelle took him some cookies as a way to say “thanks,” and they chatted awhile.

This apartment is old, historic. It used to be a doctor’s office, so there are funny doors and cabinets all over the place. Cubbies for tinctures and braces, compounds and shunts. In each room, a strange chandelier hangs, like a jeweled breast, like something out of Sunset Boulevard. The square footage is perfect, as if Fortuna took our measurements before we set out on any portion of this journey. Only thing is that now Stella The Canine has nowhere to outrun the advances of Little Eleanor, who only wants to climb up on her and giddyap into the moonlight, screeching like a pixie. We'll be in this sub-let for five more weeks, before moving (once again) on down the line.

Last night I had a dream. I can’t remember it, exactly. Only vague hints and impressions, emotive associations. I find this to be one of the strangest things about dreams: You can remember them in clumps. Well…I suppose that’s life, too, though. I open up my window, lean out, and crow, “The moment art becomes political art, it’s no longer art, it’s indecent exposure!” I hear someone reply something back, but I can’t hear them over the sounds of mirth in this little heaven.