This nomad-ish existence by Airbnb.\u00a0\u00a0Of occupying someone else\u2019s home which is an extension of their identity.\u00a0\u00a0At twilight, arriving in my third apartment in Marseille, I size it up with the usual curiosity — vintage couch and desk in the salon, tiled kitchen, vintage appliances, wall of canvases of lustrous green sardines, bag of flour which, when untucked, flutters out a moth.\u00a0\u00a0My fellow transient!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wash at her little sink, put my feet up on her enameled table. How subtle the shift \u2013 now I\u2019m an intimate in her space. Curiosity of other becomes curiosity of self in someone else\u2019s mirror, silvered, in six assymmetrical parts. Myself in the rooms of someone else\u2019s mind. Standing at the bivalved open windows in the night, the woman in an exact window across the narrow street watches intently \u2013 Who am I \u2026 Like a film strip where images gleam for an instant before they move on. Magic lantern. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who fashioned the skeleton key I used and misused to open the carved wooden door on the rickety street? What dreamers, or tricksters, made Marseille a city famous for its soap while being eternally encrusted in dirt? All these things shimmer in the single streetlight \u2013 as I pull the blistered shutters to dream. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This nomad-ish existence by Airbnb.\u00a0\u00a0Of occupying someone else\u2019s home which is an extension of their identity.\u00a0\u00a0At twilight, arriving in my third apartment in Marseille, I size it up with the usual curiosity — vintage couch and desk in the salon, … Continue reading