I loved roaming the alleys of Paris, meandering down the brick streets of the endless labyrinth of dark mystery and tragedy, folly and vice. I found it irresistible. I thought about Lou and how he, too, craved these things. Yes, you’re walking, and you could stumble in the dark on the turned bricks when you notice a small window way up high is suddenly lit. One out of rows of blackness, and the soft yellow light behind a beat-up shade seems comforting, then without warning, a scream is heard from somewhere nearby. You stumble on a garbage pail. You smell the dead, decaying garbage and the fishbone carcass a stray cat is eating. Poems, poems, poems, it’s all a poem first waiting to be born again by the hand of the poet. It’s alchemy, an old hotel with crossbar elevators, musty carpets, and dusty rugs. I can become obsessed with some of the foulest and sometimes some of the most wicked of things. Behaviors are fascinating and curious; that’s what Lou said. I asked him if we were too afraid to call these peculiarities insanity. In the back of my mind, he said, I thought they meant you, my dear. He was so funny. So true. In the back of my mind, it is me.