cygnoir.net

If you look, you will find patterns in anything.  My patrons remind me of this regularly, doggedly researching worn pretzels of thought.  One places a tattered index card on the desk in front of me and begs me to find the words, the right order, the combination that will unlock the door with no handle.

And the patterns are there, although not always the same ones to which we ascribe meaning.  They are there.  As an amateur archivist, I pay them special heed as signposts of metadata; as an amateur human, I pay them special heed as touchstones of belief.

For over five years now, I have lived a small life largely out of satchels trudged to guest spots on weekends.  My possessions make brief, disorderly formations in others’ homes.  I learn what in the space of 48 hours I will absolutely need and what I will do without.  My own living spaces become staging areas for the brief moments in between work and weekend, and resemble nothing so much as overgrown gardens, the air thick with absence, small trails hacked through stacks of books and clothes.

Often I thought about what it would be like to have an actual home, some place I was situated long enough to furnish and fuss over, because for as much as I have adapted to the semi-nomadic life, I never wanted it. Sure, I spent some time avoiding the concept because of failed relationships, embracing the idea of finding myself through finding my own physical space.  Now solidly in my mid-thirties, I want a home, a home with someone I love, for seven days a week.

Since FunkyPlaid and I were ready to do this months ago — perhaps years ago — it seems almost anti-climactic to announce it now, but I couldn’t resist the significance of the number of days remaining.  Patterns, you know.  So then, formally, and with every certainty: in 45 days, with my cat and my books and my patterns in tow, I will move across the City to live with the one I love.

In 45 days, I will move home.

Pennies. That was it. He smells like pennies.

After working with this regular patron for weeks, I finally figured it out today, with that strange exultation of now knowing the recently-unfamiliar. Though I do not know exactly how pennies smell like pennies.

People smell like pennies and erasers and campfires, ask for the same photo over and over again, or lose a train of thought in the middle of a sentence and stand like a suddenly-reformatted robot before me. People call me stately honorifics or ask me to play poker with them or wonder earnestly if they can come over to my house on my day off “to make love”. Sometimes people ask for actual library materials. Sometimes, like last Friday in the first-floor men’s restroom, people die.

I know less than I ever have, and I am more certain of brevity, of kindness, and of the pricelessness of hope.