Saturday 23 June 2007

A cheap hotel room at World's End



He lay on the bed in a cheap hotel room, somewhere in a country he didnt belong.
His hands lay across his chest, fingers interlocked, his feet crossed and he stared into the colour on the wall. It was a cheap dirty brown or maybe yellow. Everything was dull. The light was dull, the mood was dull, the fixtures and fittings were all dull.

He lay like that for some long time. The only motion in that room was the light movement of the shutters as the air-conditioning stirred them, and his eyelids, every now and then they blinked. He let his thoughts gently diminish and calm until they were nothing more than a soft flow in his mind. He felt life then. Felt the pulse of it happening. He thought about all the things in motion outside of that room. The people, the cars, the earth, the ants, the trees, the wind, the water, the rains, the comets, the planets, the thoughts in mens minds, everything was moving but that room seemed very still.
He wasnt happy but he wasnt sad, he wasnt bored, but he wasnt inspired to do anything.
He lay there aware that this was his most basic state, and one he found himself in often. He could picture himself as he had been 20 years ago in a room not unlike the one he was in, and he could imagine himself there in another 20 years, another room, another country, but just the same. He knew not long after that he would be gone, and this would be over.

He wondered what force it was that drove people to act, to make them strive to be busy, always headed somewhere, always doing something. Maybe it was the force of death that pushed them on. He figured maybe everyone was running away. He wondered why he preferred this instead. He was just waiting, not for death, but for something else.

He waited for some long time, then slowly, as if called from the far reaches of eternity, ghosts began to fill the room. He saw; Hunter S, Cobain, Hemingway, Stuart Adamson, M Hutchence, Vincent Crane, Monroe, Anne Sexton they all came, to re-visit the cheap hotel room at World's End. Then more he knew personally; Gregor MacPherson, Jason Champness, Sean Clemence, and there were others he recognised whose names he couldnt remember. He didnt move, he just lay there motionless, emotionless watching until they were gone, and still he lay there waiting.

He let the silence envelop him, the day turned to night, and to day, and to night and back again, and still he didnt move. He just lay there, his eyes blinking, and he just lay there, waiting.


'Underneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there's a fundamental groundlessness. It's there bubbling along all the time. We experience it as restlessness and edginess. we experience it as fear. It motivates passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride, but we never get down to the essence of it' - Pema Chodron

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