Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Melt into it

Just off the highway, in a hotel. It must have eighty or even a hundred rooms. Large restaurant, spacious lobby, bar and nineteen conference rooms in different sizes. There is a business centre, whatever that is, with a lonely computer sitting on a desk in a corner. Corridors running every which way. Surrounded by a huge parking lot.
I am one of five guests. In the restaurant the others have already finished. And left. Service is there for me. In the bar the barkeeper, a twenty year old woman named Joyce, is there for me. The woman at the reception desk is there for me. There are three cars in the parking lot and one of them is mine. I can't decide whether it is recession coming home or just seasonal quiet. The result is the same: lots of space. It is not attractive or pretty or stylish. None of that. It is upholstered utilitarian. Mostly ugly. But there is so much of it that I just melt into it.
Red and green carpet.
Orange walls.
Deep red window panes.
What's to like?
Nothing.
But it is this feeling of being able to expand that draws me ever further.