Some descents invite. Down here, here below, come. To drop into a place of strange welcome, eyes…

Some descents invite. Down here, here below, come. To drop into a place of strange welcome, eyes adjusting to the dim, foreign syllables whispered in the hush, smell of black tea, warm candle wax, dust, a sense that the plants are listening in, unmistakable charge of potential, and water out the windows. A bookstore on a boat parked in a canal in Paris, L'Eau et Les Rêves it’s called, Water and Dreams, the title of a book by Gaston Bachelard. “The stream doesn’t have to be ours,” he writes, “the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets.”