2002-06-18 || 10:52 a.m.

|| all these motel room thoughts ||

a famous person died in a plane crash and we were watching the coverage on the television in a motel room. the reception was bad and the screen mimicked the fleeting patterns of the polyester bedspread: pixellated vomit stains, cigarette burns, discarded marriage proposals, every once in a while dissolving to push forward a face or still shot of the type of plane involved in the crash. there were misinformed confirmations and dead air, frenetic edits and shots of the ocean, the sound of a lavalier microphone crushed briefly against the fibers of a suit lapel.

we had been in this motel room for days, although not all at once, not for consecutive nights. one night we drove away but decided to come back. because it was cheap and in portland and there was something about it. stray cats in the parking lot and the electromagnetic hum of the failing soda machine. getting the same room was what made us attribute meaning and magic. the splits in the wood of the front door covered with duct tape. the hole in the ceiling of the bathroom. the immaculate square of particleboard within the bedside stand missing its gideon's bible.

on a week day, in that room, the sound of the close and shut and tidying of other rooms rapping all around us, we sat on the edge of the bed and watched the patterns the television made, listened to the blunders of the news reporters invoking their patented hushed soulful death voices, and our reflections in the mirror over the dresser blinked at us again and again, expectantly.

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