Cocktail hour. Waiter saunters by with a tray of topiary broccoli trees. You accept their invitation for a taste, grab a toothpick, poke your desired floret, and start chewing. The waiter extends his hand, offering the white glove that covers it as a disposal site for your wooden tool. You wag the toothpick in front of your mouth, indicating that you will need a moment, as you still need to use it for its secondary purpose picking food from your teeth.
Transient Visitors Book 1, Month 1, was written in a pre-pandemic world, a world that predisposed us to thinking that the waiter was coming back. Thus, the decision to decline his offer to rid you of your toothpick was inconsequential. If he didn't take it now, he would simply take it when he came around with the next tray of topiary broccoli trees.
Transient Visitors Book 2, Month 2, written during the COVID years, lost the luxury of such commonplace expectations. As a result, while these stories explore similar themes as Book 1, Month 1, meaning they remain disconnected vignettes of every situation under the Sun (our Sun and others), they underwent a style shift. Month 2 stories are more raw, more risky. Less studio version. More live music.
Put differently, to assure the reader gets another vegetable, Book 2, Month 2, doesn't pick broccoli out of its teeth. Sure, they come with a smile. But they also come with the occasional green around the incisors. Accepting and appreciating that fact...amongst all its curses, that is the gift COVID gave these stories.
