luggage

books I haven’t written yet

@lieffaxelrachelbank

Bispebjerg Bibliotek

• yes yes YES • this • if only books hadn’t been the first ballast tossed overboard when my ever-loving roommate, back in brooklyn, wrestled me yesterday from two suitcases down to one • it’s okay • i’ll milk white noise as long as i can • then something else will happen such that i may read again • also full disclosure it was actually the second ballast • the first was extra journals • you’re carrying around empty pages, rachel, he said • i didn’t correct him that those are books, too, books i haven’t written yet • he’s right, of course, though • i’m pretty sure one can buy paper in denmark •

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I have the back row to myself

I said,

Some of this, I am RAPIDLY realizing, is about enslavement to material things 

I took along so little of what I have

And still it is far far far too much 

I have the back row of the upper deck of this seven-hour bus to Berlin to myself, which feel auspicious 

Not even auspicious 

Itʼs just plain good, in real time 

There is WiFi, evidently, and outlets, and I packed multiple sandwiches of Ingaʼs refrigerator dregs and thought to buy extra water, and Iʼm hopeful 

Iʼll make lists, and maybe friends with the sweet boy who, with me, was last to board and is now settled in ahead of me and to the left 

Maybe I will offer him some of my seats, as he only has two while I have five 

It looks like he let his guitar be put with the luggage, though, so I will not ask if he knows any Decemberists 

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breakfast in pieces

My official hotel breakfast is in pieces and keeps coming and coming. A salad with what looks like pressed ham, huge olives, the local cheese, that heady goat schmear, plus a second cheese of unobvious provenance… A boiled egg… Yogurt topped with fruit… Some kind of fritter that appears to have been drizzled with honey and dusted with cinnamon… The coffee is abysmal — my cup’s content is basically hot coffee-tinted milk-water — and the juice I poured myself a generous glass of is super-gross, a sugared blend I can’t quite parse beyond orange and pineapple. But I bet the food is good, even though I don’t prefer an egg boiled hard.

Just as I was sitting down the French couple appeared to have their morning meal, too, and quick-quick-quick I pulled my things from the sprawling central table and went to a little one in the corner, saying, Pardon — je préfère être seule dans le matin parce que je fait l’écriture. I did it! I did it.

This fritter thing is turning out to be a banana pancake. I want butter for my toast, which is now cold, but the communal butter pot sits still on the communal table where the French people are now presiding, and I cannot reengage. And actually maybe I don’t want butter, or toast at all. Really all I want is good coffee, and to be doing this outside. Well. No place is perfect.

There are books everywhere here, which is great. I asked about a trade and Christos said, Trade? No. But you can read while you are here. Maybe a goal for today can be finishing White Noise so I can leave it with him when I go, to everyone’s betterment, enriching his library and lightening my load. The wall art is large printouts of color photographs and lithographs of ancient Greek art stapled to cardboard, and all of the tabletops are slabs of white marble. And I have gone ahead and opened the window by my table and now I can hear the waves again.

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