There is a motel in the heart of every man. Where the highway begins to
dominate the landscape, beyond the limits of a large and reduplicating city, near
a major point of arrival and departure: this is most likely where it stands.
Despite its great size, the motel seems temporary. This feeling may rise simply
from the knowledge that no one lives here for more than one or two days at a
time. Then, too, it may be explained by the motel’s location, that windy hint of
mystery encircling a long building fixed in what was once a swamp; a cold gale
blows from the lake or bay, sunlight cracks on the wingtips of distant planes,
ducks tack upwind, and nowhere is there a sign of a human on foot. But for all
its spiritual impoverishments, this isn’t the worst of places. It embodies a
repetition so insistent and irresistible that, if not freedom, then liberation is
possible, deliverance; possessed by chaos, you move into thinner realms,
achieve refinements, mathematical integrity, and become, if you choose, the
man on the bed in the next room. The forest lodge, the suite of mauve rooms,
the fleabag above the hockshop, the borrowed apartment – all too personal, the
unrecurring moment. Men hold this motel firmly in their hearts; here flows the
dream of the confluence of travel and sex.
Americana
dominate the landscape, beyond the limits of a large and reduplicating city, near
a major point of arrival and departure: this is most likely where it stands.
Despite its great size, the motel seems temporary. This feeling may rise simply
from the knowledge that no one lives here for more than one or two days at a
time. Then, too, it may be explained by the motel’s location, that windy hint of
mystery encircling a long building fixed in what was once a swamp; a cold gale
blows from the lake or bay, sunlight cracks on the wingtips of distant planes,
ducks tack upwind, and nowhere is there a sign of a human on foot. But for all
its spiritual impoverishments, this isn’t the worst of places. It embodies a
repetition so insistent and irresistible that, if not freedom, then liberation is
possible, deliverance; possessed by chaos, you move into thinner realms,
achieve refinements, mathematical integrity, and become, if you choose, the
man on the bed in the next room. The forest lodge, the suite of mauve rooms,
the fleabag above the hockshop, the borrowed apartment – all too personal, the
unrecurring moment. Men hold this motel firmly in their hearts; here flows the
dream of the confluence of travel and sex.
Americana