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Tuesday, December 15, 2020

For seven months I rarely set an alarm, instead waking to the sounds of nature.

Bird calls, the patter of squirrels, rustling leaves or a gentle rain on the tin roof.

Later in the summer, as black walnuts dropped on to the slanted roof -- resulting in four knocks similar to someone at the front door -- I answered the front door a couple dozen times.

I'm clearly not that sharp.

Today in my new hotel environs, I awoke to another sound of nature: a yak trying to cough up a hairball.

As my head cleared, I realized it was unlikely a yak despite the diversity of Bloomington.

It turned out to be one of my new neighbors doing his morning expectoration outside my hotel door. He was trying to get rid of whatever he'd taken into his lungs over the preceding years.

I now have a phlegm alarm clock.

Ah, people.

Now that I'm back in civilization, it will take some time to acclimate. I'm staying on a busy street, where early morning commuters have an inordinate amount of thrush exhaust pipes, meant only to be loud and obnoxious. 

Yet, I'm pretty cool. I'm warm and welcomed. I'm safe and still quite fat for a homeless person.

I'll be OK.

Peace and expectorations unto all of you my brothers and sisters.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not much of a traveler. I've only stayed in a motel/hotel room several times in my life. Can you have PTSD from doing so...? Probably not, but read about one place I stayed.
    My car broke down at Indiana border, so I stayed in a motel with random mirror squares on the wall (hopefully only one-way view ports to the Twilight Zone). The place had sheets and blankets with holes as wide as a bratwurst and cigarette burns that would put Bette Davis in the mood...for another smoke. In the middle of the night, I get up to use the commode and step on a roach as big as a Buick...well an older one... Only an entomologists could appreciate watching a half-squashed roach still running for cover. I had so little sleep in what Trump would call a Sh*th*le, I nearly fell through the indoor/outdoor carpet on the balcony outside my door. Somebody should have told the management, only the Three Stooges would lay carpeting as a way to repair a rotten hole in the floor.

    December 16, 2020 at 12:35 PM

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