I’m in Chicago. Since the event organiser didn’t have much money, she said I could stay with one of her friends. I’m in the home of a girl who’s away on a trip; I don’t know her, but I like her based on her apartment. If this apartment were an object, it would be a hand-knitted blanket. She seems like a sentimental girl. Sweet, kind-hearted. There’s a lot of colour here. She has family photos, plastic figurines in the plant pots, plants. And a Shakespeare quote on a fridge magnet: ‘A hundred thousand welcomes! I could weep, / And I could laugh; I am light and heavy. Welcome!’

If someone asked me for a full-length portrait of myself, I’d show them that Shakespeare quote. Why does a girl I don’t know, who’s let me stay in her apartment for a few days, have that quote on her fridge? Maybe if we went into strangers’ houses and snooped around in the drawers we’d be surprised by how much we have in common.

I’m in the kitchen. I can hear the hum of the fridge and the water dripping in the sink. They’re familiar sounds, a strange way of feeling at home even when you’re in the home of a total stranger. In this kitchen there are two Mexican lotería boards in frames, with the usual pictures instead of numbers. I see there’s no dwarf among the images, no sea or notebook, but there is a bird. The lady and the hand are next to each other. If I had to sum up the history of the world for an alien I’d use those two images from the Mexican lotería: the lady and the hand. A good synthesis, from Helen of Troy to the woman walking into a 7-Eleven; and the hand which destroyed and built everything, including that 7-Eleven.

I flick through a magazine in the bathroom. I half-read an article: ‘The carpet mafia in Pakistan’. There are no photos. I imagine the leader of the carpet mafia. If I could form a mafia, I’d form the useless things mafia. It would be a mafia with no power. We’d traffic in the best kaleidoscopes on the market.

Halloween is a good time of year in the States. Fancy dress, parties all over the place. I could seize my chance and dress up as a swallow. Or dress up as Proust in order to turn into a swallow halfway through a conversation. Let go of my beer, just like that, and start flapping my wings in the middle of the party. Fly out through the window.