A Place to Stay

(Prose! Who thought i’d sully this with that. It’s almost a journal entry ffs!)

They keep moving. Always moving. All these places to stay. And I, with them.

Nicci and Nicky think I’m a wanderer, and had a song, and some vino, and a bed that we all shared– though not all at the same time. It wasn’t like that. Nicole thinks something else entirely.

They’re wanderers, all three of these three Νίκης. They are. Maybe in the Tolkienesque way, that ‘not all who wander are lost’. They’re searching for something.

I’m not.

I’m different. I don’t wander. Or wonder. I wait. I’ve been known to drift. Waiting for the wind to come. I know where I’m going. I have my compass and the stars. It’s just a matter of time, and who will be on the boat with me, and what clothes or whose uniform I’ll be wearing when I get there…. After all these uncountable and unaccountable roadblocks. Or the wind.

Roadblocks. It’s always the bitches that get in the way. And bastards too. And it’s always good men and good women that shift them on. It’s just the waiting. The marshalling of forces within and without. And the biding of time. For me. And the wind.

Maybe that’s why i’m on the road so much– people just need me in different places. I’m waiting for the road to clear, or clearing it. And helping other people that are stranded in the same place for whatever reason… And I like that.

I’m getting there is the point.

For the moment, even though the last Place to Stay didn’t quite pan out as hoped or planned (on anyone’s part) I have by accident or design or fate or divine bloody will, found myself a place that I am. actually. really. happy. to stay… It’s been a long time.

Paradise Island

It sounds good doesn’t it? It is. I have a pool and a spa and a canal and an ocean. And a Cafe. And a Club. And a Pizza Shop. And god willing a candidate for a jaunt. Failing that, a project. Or three. And. The option for work if I want the money. Six languages spoken in my house. Fuck yeah. No love. Sadly. None that is actually reaching out, or sticking around long enough to see my merits. Nothing new there.

But I do have this place.

And that, dear friends, has become precious to me. A place to stay.

I live on top of a house, looking over a spa that looks over a pool that looks over a canal towards an ocean that you can hear, just 850 steps from my bed and  therein dangle of your feet. Or paddle. Or dive in. And swim.

I’m in the shadow of Q1. The largest residential tower in the world. It used to be the biggest building in Queensland too, I think, or at least I like to think. It’s still pretty close. In terms of bigness. And I like to be close to big buildings. The shadow of a building. The poetry of that. for me.

I love this place. The poetry of it. The transience of the whole bleary body-glitter and hangover town. I love it. Being in but not of it. Having it there, just across the canal whenever you like it, night or day.

And my little island paradise.

For now at least. Until April, or the next roadblock.

It is my place to stay.

And I am content.