Hanging Out at the… uh… Holiday Inn… Yeah.

:D

After work, Justin and I decided to do a little study session. Turns out, it was more a read and relax session. We hiked over to the Holiday Inn across the street, and hung out in the lobby. Keep in mind here, the actual hotel is pretty high up in the building, with the lobby starting at the 15th floor.

The inside was pretty nice, not too loud at all. There was a small fountain in the middle of the room and high ceilings made of glass. The beer, while overpriced, was still cheaper than the bar downstairs.

The big plus for both me and Justin, was that we were both completely away from computers. Even when I’m home, trying to write… I do so in front of a computer. There’s always someone to talk to, music to shuffle through, e-mail that pops up. A gazillion other things vie for my attention when I’m staring into the screen. So – shutting ourselves away in the distant-but-no-really-so-distant Holiday Inn lobby was a good move.

And yeah, I had two beers. First time since Saturday.

This was loads of fun, to be honest. Relaxing and a good time. I spent most of my time gazing around, spacing out and scribbling about three pages worth of notes for a poem.

It was a really striking intersection, time-wise. All around us there were fake plants and trees. There were all these things that would never change, even deep in winter. Constants. And all around us, sharing that space, were all these lodgers and travelers. They were all people who were here for business, staying a few days, and then leaving again. I thought of us and how, once our business was done, we’d leave. I thought of how everyone in that hotel was merely temporary, and in a larger scale, everyone… everyone everywjere is temporary.

Sitting in that hotel lobby, the idea of graffiti, of vandalism made sense to me. And to some extent, I guess it those things always made sense to me, no matter how stupid or poorly done. Everyone wants a sense of permanance, everyone wants to leave their mark somehow so that, after they’re gone, people will know they were there.

When I was younger, I did the vandalism thing a great deal. And even though I was a stupid teenager out after midnight, fucking shit up for kicks… a part of me also wanted to make myself known to the world, to announce myself in some ways. But I was also a rather somber kid who wanted to be a poet and thought about death all the time (sex too, but uhm… teenage boy? Given.).

Even now, I think about what I’ll leave behind, what I’ll have to show for my time here. If I wasn’t interested in leaving my mark somehow, in getting my name and works remembered… hell, I may as well quit writing poems right here and now.