012 ☼ Motel Chronicles

on O'odham Jewed land

Our room at The Downtown Clifton is a mid-century style cube with a window for a wall. We watched the sunset lazily from bed. Have you ever watched a jet streak across the sky without having to move? It's true about meditation, it feels good to let your brain do one single thing at a time. Pink and this pea green. The moon too. We got high and critiqued the thrift store art hanging above the bed. N brought a very formal analysis with an architectural foundation regarding line and shape. I tried my best to explain why I find geometric abstraction both soothing and obnoxious because of the era’s sociopolitical failings. Earlier in the trip N had suggested that the hotel art was getting worse as we traveled. What if the hotel art wasn't even real? What if none of this was real? N made me stare at my body in the mirror so I could see how beautiful I was and I immediately shut my eyes. We tried hanging the painting upside down, didn't feel right. We surveyed in socks on the bed. We moved it again: even uglier. We ate breakfast on the floor, I bought a smiley face cookie at a market. N proposed that we streak for the guests who were listening to live music without their masks! Or at least entertain the idea for fun. Like turning from the mirror, I absorbed back into myself like a sea urchin, too shy for wild times in the pandemic. I read and finished Diane DiPrima's Memoirs of a Beatnik at the Clifton; I loved the way she treated her lovers and decided from that hour on, I would treat mine the same. ☼

I recommend:

☼ Listening to artist Ian James’s archive of his show Healing Light Comfort Zone via KCHUNG Radio

☼ Graeme Revell did the soundtrack to a ton of Wim Wenders' films and some sort of internet rabbit hole led me to this album he did in collaboration with Sufi poets named Vision II: Spirit of Rumi (by Graeme Revell).

☼ Take an online quiz to discover which of the Seven Rays you are (I’m Ray 2, you?).

☼ Donate to the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders organization out of Tucson, which works to protects the rights and promote the health of indigenous members who live near or around Tucson.