Hotelling

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Perhaps I’m just sleep-deprived, but staying in a hotel is a collective experience.  It’s a place where communal consciousness should run high.  You’re stacked (in many cases) on top of and/or beside strangers.  And strangers have different habits.  Back in my hometown of Franklin for my mother’s funeral, there aren’t many options for accommodation.  Her last years in this region were spent in the small “suburb” of Oil City called Seneca.  An ambitious Holiday Inn Express visionary put a not-exactly-cheap establishment in this economically depressed area.  It’s generally a pretty comfortable place to stay.  I am, however, an early riser.  (I know this can’t be easy on my family since I go to bed early and that means televisions have to be kept low after 8 p.m. I’m part of the problem.)  As I say, it’s a collective experience.  I’m constitutionally incapable of sleeping in, so late nights lead to sleep-deprived days.

Around 1:30 new upstairs neighbors checked in.  Walker, Texas stranger types.  Heavy-footed with a penchant for running.  Their arrival awoke me at a dangerous hour since any time after midnight my body says, “You’ve had a few hours’ sleep, and dawn’s not that far off.”  As I groggily tried to remember relaxation techniques, my mind kept getting sucked back to our New Jersey apartment.  We rented the first floor of a house and one set of upstairs neighbors had a son who would run back and forth the length of the apartment, shaking all the light fixtures, knocking down plaster, and breaking concentration.  And sleep.  One particularly memorable work night, said urchin was leaping off a bed and running at about the same time as our late visitor last night.  The husband had a police record but we had to call the landlord for an intervention (I had to get up at 3:00 to be ready for my early bus).

When staying in a hotel, we’re living a model of life in community.  I think of this as a parable.  Societies thrive only when everyone considers the effects of their actions on others.  Arriving at a hotel after a long drive, kids are full of energy (I was, believe it or not, once one myself).  Still, if children aren’t taught that strangers are sleeping below, as adults will they ever internalize the message?  Or maybe it’s simply the trauma of those disturbed and frustrating years of constantly pounding feet above my head that have come back to me at an inopportune 2 a.m.  I have a funeral later today, but perhaps I’m just sleep deprived.

Who might be staying upstairs?

Moving Movies

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I read something recently which began something like, “Do you remember when you first saw…?” (fill in the blank with a title of a movie).  This got me to thinking.  Movies used to be community events.  I’m not the first to notice this, but your community would wait (especially if it wasn’t especially urban) until a hyped up movie came to a local theater.  Everyone would see it and it was all that they’d talk about for days.  The internet makes all of that rather obsolete.  Even the part where you were the less popular sort who had to wait for the film to be shown on television to get in on the fun.  You can set up an account to see the movie at home while those who aren’t afraid of Covid go to the theater.  Or you may be like me—so busy that years pass before you get to it.  Hopelessly behind.

There is definitely a benefit to being able to catch a movie you missed at the theater when it’s convenient to do so.  You might be a bit late to the party, though.  And, depending on your tastes, you may be watching the movie alone.  I can’t recall having ever gone to a theater alone until recent years.  Once when my wife was away, pre-pandemic, I went to a local theater to catch the latest Annabelle movie.  Since I’m an early person the theater was pretty empty—at least one guy and his girlfriend, or a girl and her boyfriend, depending, were there with me.  Maybe a couple others I didn’t know.  Nobody to talk it over with.  Like bowling alone, I suppose.  The last movie I saw in a theater, The Conjuring 3, I was literally the only one there.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

I did recall the first time I’d seen the movie in the article.  I was watching with headphones on, sitting in my bedroom.  Sometimes it’s the living room.  I do recall my reaction, which is, after all, what the article is about.  Still, it was a movie that was watched without discussion, without seeing the reactions of others.  Watching it was, nevertheless, an enjoyable enough experience.  An intellectual one, even.  But as a former teacher I still have this haunting sense that if there’s no-one with whom to exchange information, remembering that first time becomes somewhat muted.  I suppose that’s why I keep this blog going.  I can interact with others on the internet and, collectively, recall seeing our movies together.  Attempt to be part of the discussion.

Banned Books

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I feel short-changed. Cheated, if you will. This is Banned Book Week, and a story in Publishers Weekly over the summer touted the benefits of the local independent bookstore. Owners of indies know that these stores are centers of community. Gathering places for those who love literature. I feel cheated because my local town has no independent bookstore. Neither did any of the towns where I grew up. For a year when money was almost as scarce as it is now, I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There were bookstores there. For a couple happy years before that I dwelt in Boston—a city in which books are never difficult to locate. Edinburgh is known as one of the literary capitals of Europe and my days in that magical city were inundated with books. Even Nashotah House, with its somewhat backward facing eyes, had a little bookstore. And there was another indie over in nearby Oconomowoc. I now live in the desert.

Oh, there are bookstores nearby. Independent ones, I mean. When’s the last time you saw a chummy conversation among locals at Barnes and Noble? Princeton has the Labyrinth. Bernardsville has the Bookworm. New Hope (while across the river in Pennsylvania) has Farley’s. There’s an indie in New Brunswick and I discovered Watchung Booksellers in Montclair just a couple of weekends ago. Clinton has a tiny little shop where my daughter once met a children’s author doing a book signing and I picked up some Ray Bradbury. These are my happy places. All of them require a drive of at least half-an-hour. I’m not a local. I don’t see anyone I know, except some of the clerks.

Analysts have been saying for decades now that we live in unhealthy isolation from our neighbors. I get up and jump on a bus before most houses show any lights in the morning. I stumble off and fall into bed after eating supper following the return trip. I’m not alone in my attempt to survive in this late capitalist purgatory. One thing that would help, I believe, is a local bookshop. There used to be a used bookstore in my town, called Chapter Two. I used to walk there of a Saturday morning, just to browse. Rent grew too high and it moved to the next town over and its name changed to chapter eleven. My local town is affluent. There are signs for Trump everywhere. What’s obviously missing is a local independent bookstore. I, for one, would be a regular patron.

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