Downstairs I hear voices in the TV room.  This is the noisiest this place has been; I hear laughter.  I don’t feel apart but do and am, up here at the top of the house, alone.  Earlier I heard someone fiddling with my door and I called out.  A young girl –about Emma’s age–was standing there –American, I think.  Is this a room, she asked?  This room is called “The Loft.”  All of the rooms have names: “The Lavender Lounge,” or “Thyme to Rest.”  I will wander the downstairs floors tomorrow to see what the others are called.  The girl thought that this room was another common area –a cool hangout place she was missing.  Outside of this room is a separate lounging area with a couch similar to my own at home, but no one uses it.  It feels like a private suite.  I am reminded of all the women in literature –the mad women in the attic, where you put them away and they aren’t seen.  “The Woman in the Yellow Wallpaper,” for example, or Jane Eyre, Rochester’s mad wife; go away go away go away.

In Cesky Krumlov it didn’t matter.  I felt like one of them.  Here, in this hostel, I would be uncomfortable among giggling and silly chatter.  I don’t feel like I can enter unless drunk or stoned.

In my old apartment on Byron the two girls upstairs once threw a party, opening the doors between their two apartments, noise reverberating, their voices like shattered glass.  My room below shook and when I heard someone yell: Party!! I called the police.  Through my open bedroom window I heard the young people complaining when the police arrived about America and being young and free.  Downstairs, here, they try to be.

I feel like I need to get finished, like I am forgetting something.