(Steller)

Away From Home

(Journal)
Published – 16.05.2018
(Writing)

I’m currently sitting in a motel room 63.9 kilometres from home (about seventy-five minutes away in good traffic) drinking orange juice from a litre bottle and trying desperately to think of the right words to note down here about the experience. I’m too unreasonably close to my house to call this entry a travel monologue, really; so close that if I stood on the street now and hitchhiked my way back, I’d be home just in time for dinner. There would be nothing waiting for me to cook, of course, because I’m mildly disorganised when it comes to vegetables and other food with nutritional value, but I digress: this story is about the motel room. Have you ever stayed in one? They’re funny places; cold and utilitarian, but most often with quirks too wild to invent. This one has a wall of mirrored tiles - a striking feature against the exposed brick that covers the rest of the room, and a terrifying one when you awake in the middle of the night to find not one but twenty versions of yourself staring back, all of them discombobulated and bleary-eyed. It’s very cold here too, so when you encounter those many mirrored selves blinking back at you, you do so shivering - not only from surprise but from catching a chill overnight. Perhaps I’m painting the motel room too negatively? I do not mean to. Motel rooms are the best place to think. You only bring essentials to a motel, so there’s not much you can get up to besides boiling the kettle, reading paperbacks and thinking. And this is where I’ve got to. Just sitting here, amongst my mirrors and my orange juice, considering what to write.

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