Hotel Oregon

My pickling books in hand, I appear to be reading like I always do when I sit alone in public. I melt into the booth like a familiar smear of mustard across an old menu. You've seen me so many times I am the wallpaper in your mind, not a flinch, not a flicker expended in memory where it is already engraved. I read words while the mellow insistent hum of voices washes over me and reassures me that everything moves forward while staying blessedly the same. Voices all saying nothing of monumental importance and yet every word uttered is an expression of the spirits communing in this square footage, this real estate, this little piece of town we call the pub, and therefore it is all the most important exchange on earth. The exchange of the present, the murmur of love and wishes and nourishment on steaming plates of food you'd never make at home. A celebration of being. Here. In this thrumming noise.

It is quiet in my head. There is me and there is everyone else outside. It's how all humans exist but I know few other humans understand this relationship of proximity and isolation. You have to have the quietest spirit, the most still desires, the reflective surface of a mirror for skin. There is no time I love the masses more than when I am seated quietly amongst them, invisible, admiring, listening, filtering, and smiling at our shared vulnerabilities. I finish your conversations and I know what's in your heart but if I told you you wouldn't recognize it as your own. I keep quiet, turning pages, simultaneously inhaling printed words as concrete as stone walls circling nations and drifting through the loud hum, the mix of voices rising in the air like humid dreams taking shape in contrast to a chilly autumn atmosphere.

Body warmth and camaraderie floats like a heavy happy elixir here tonight. The waiters drift from table to table and I feel their sweat, their work, the evening dragging forward with its chains of demands and desires, drinks and food, mess and linger. They are the pillars that support this outpost. I watch them just as much as I watch everyone else while reading my pickle books. Sometimes I can feel another watcher nearby. Sometimes I feel those same quiet grave eyes turned to me, with someone else's mind observing my own observations, and the circle is complete. I always hail the eyes though I can never be sure of being heard. We are an invisible lot, moving from table to table like ghosts of pints long past.