Casa Robino

The lights bristle and mumble. Paris - headless and a headful of champagne dripping into my toenails. Heave it in, every last morsal, explode with air. It fills me again, the notion of acquintances, the no-man's land of isolation. I can't face them, I can't. Too long have I travelled, giving my all to heady meaningful conversations that only burn behind you. A façade, the whole puppet show, mouthes full of blood - give us new, give us new, give us something to chew! I have a challange for you : Speak to three strangers tonight and find out something special about their lives, she whispered, into my ear. I look out of the window, at Paris and all the buildings lit up and imagined all the people and all of their lives and each one becomes a number and the numbers gnash and leer at me. I couldn't imagine anything worse, right now, than to speak to a stranger. I know too many wonderful, incredible, intelligent, kind, strangers. I recount the days of old at parties; of paralysis and nerves. They infultrate my vesselsI can only dance, but the songs are mostly soup, filling my belly with warm dust. Bad soup. Dance - brings you out of your body and in it simultaneously. My legs are like tree stumps. I can't shake them off. I close my eyes. A northern african desert blues song comes on; whisks me off my feet..my feet adorned in old hiking shoes, torn apart.She says, look at them, look at how alive they are. My eyes sting, heavy in their sockets. Death, gargling in my ears, would let me see nothing. You look at girls in their twenties, so pretty, beautiful, empty. Look at these women? Aren't they fantastic? Can't you see they're exploding? A lot of wine will make you explode, I murmer, not caring to be heard. Look at this one woman, with her pretty dress, but so unconfident she has to wear knee tights with it. And this other one, jumping everywhere, needing to get something out. I see them but feel only my pulse in my forehead.The tables are ladden in food. Dark lights and the taste of meat wandering into my mouth would make me wretch. A part of cheese that looked like cake. Look, look, look at this wine! They're crazy! So many wonderful bottles. They must be really really rich. I squirm, but am excited to taste expensive wine. And it enters me and the earth that it's grown from buries me. I am disappointed to not have visions or become extatically joyful. Such is the motions I often find myself in, expecting warmth from the exterior. I bid goodnight and sit out on the balcony with the lights again, hearing only the bass and police sirens fading away in the distance. The rush of cars. The night is quiet and calm and nothing is tender to me. Lean out over the wall, surprised at how low it is, how good it would be to topple over, to release the weight, the despair, the solitude of constant search, wandering. Walnuts fill my head, the feeling of yesterday, finding them scattered over the ground cycling back from work (however minuscule this may be), before I destroyed the bike and the blues that came from it, jumping up and down with glee, treading gently on their shells and nibbling softly on their nuts. My beginning of autumn, nevermind the changing of leaves of fog filling the morning air. It doesn't soothe me, but makes me smile, as that of an incredible film, detached from it but aware that it something great had transpassed.Who would clean it up? A horrible job. A laugh escapes me, jumps out of me and seizes the hairs on my arms. I am flooded with it. Only now, picturing my demise, could I think of cleaning. I leave and ride the six floors down to the apartment, fumble with the lock. The cat rubs, very lightly as a feather against my foot, as I write and pur with death. Then it shits in the litter. Shits my blues away. Merci ma bête.