After the ecstasy the Premier Class Motel…
we drove through the Spanish and French Pyrenees and then the massif central….there's something about mountains, the way they rise up, the way they spend life times reaching for the light…the way they draw the heart and mind upward. There's something about travelling across big land masses that makes me feel free.
Somewhere in the middle of France, when the mountains had given up and slunk back to the sea, and the land lay down flat... it began to rain…my soul sighed…clouds, the colour of school uniforms gathered…. I thought of Ready Brek, Northern towns and swirls of frost on window panes. Growing dark...time to stop. We'd left it too late and it was hard to make out where we were...for some reason (and one should never trust it over intuition) we stayed in Vierzon. DONT EVER DO THAT.
This was not one of my better ideas. The Campanile was full…Premier Class next door (but honestly, what do the French know about class?!)…we rented something which they describe as a room…but I would disagree strongly…a plastic container on the edge of a busy road…grubby…tiny…unnecessarily ugly...interesting how my mood dropped…becoming quiet I could feel the flames of anger licking the inside of the top of my torso…my awareness shrank….what if I died in a place like this??!!! I'd have liked someone convenient to blame? But its just a room….a space to sleep at night….I lay down on the bed cautiously...personally I'd have rather slept under the car with the cats…
A crack of orange light is spilling in the windows from the street light outside…its falling across Reubens pillow and face…he shifts and moves closer to his mum…his little body covered by a white sheet...I can hear their breathing…soft and regular… 6am in this shabby motel room i wonder about the point of life…this living and moving around… acting in the world…holidays, careers, politics, economics, the history of motel building…their breathing…the light beginning to brighten the window….and shit as it is, someone built this container…fitted the heater to the wall in case of cold, made sure the taps and shower work, put a curtain on the window…someone did those things…and it all begins to fall away…the scaffolding of what life is supposed to mean (holidays, careers, politics, economics, the history of motel building) and what's left? What is real?
There's just love isn't there…
of mountains,
of moving through space
of people sheltering in aesthetically displeasing environments
of each other
Colette Power September 19 2015
