My new possible guest is nervous. He’s asked for pictures of the apartment inside and out, and my address so he can Google it and tour the neighborhood —and late last night he emailed that today he would like to have a conversation.
His angst brings back memories of a few travel adventures of my own:
…the Alice-in-Wonderland charm of the tea-shop waitress’s incredibly narrow one-room-with-loft on West 72nd –and the nearly tomb-like quiet, which it took time to love,
…the ship’s-berth efficiency of a hotel room in Tokyo, where figuring out how to turn on the water and flush the toilet was an adventure in itself,
…and the pillars right in the middle of a workshop room with 45 or 50 people arriving next morning–who would think to ask ahead of time if there were pillars?
Not least, I remember the deserted halls after the end of a retreat, when everyone else including the staff had left and I became a ghost in the monastery.
Oh that’s right! I wasn’t the only ghost that night—there was a hungry soul who hadn’t realized there wouldn’t be anyplace to get food. I shared one of my power bars.
