Knoxious

I am in a motel room in Knoxville, Tennessee, one of a cluster of motels surrounding an exit called "Strawberry Plains" (nothing of the sort in sight). They form a bleak bouquet of square streetlights and neon signs, interlocking driveways and chain link fences, set to the ever-present soundtrack of interstate US-40.

It poured rain all day, and if I shut my eyes I can still see puddly mack trucks out of my peripheral vision spraying my windshield. Somewhere in the mountains of Virginia I saw a pick-up truck, not too far in front of me, spin out onto the grassy highway median, losing various pieces along the way. I wasn't sure whether to try and slow down and help the guy, who I don't think would have gotten injured. I didn't though, I just kept driving. There was no way I could have safely slowed down in time, but I thought I should call someone, although I was unsure what there was to say. "Hello 911? I saw a man's near-death experience and didn't slow down. What's that? Where was it? Um... there was a mountain on my right..." If I had left my last gas stop thirty seconds sooner, he would have spun out into my car at 80 mph, but I didn't and he didn't so there was nothing to do but just pass him, his car beached lopsided in the grass, hunched over his seat, doubtless breathing heavily and incredulous, as I was, that he wasn't a mangled corpse.

You start to feel like the only person in the world, even though it's only a 24-hour period between homes, but there are just things - I haven't received an e-mail for three days, I got here and I was the only person paddling around in the motel's creepy swimming pool, falling asleep in a bed that's big enough to lie horizontally or vertically in... It makes me almost want to be some sort of business-type whose life is a series of first-class cabins and hotel lobbies because the solitude is such a particular type, one that makes you think the world doesn't exist. I was tempted to book a room at a "Christianed-themed lodge" just for the experience, but it was earlier than I wanted to stop and I had visions of falling asleep under the scrutinizing gaze of a bloody icon that scared me.

I watched this movie last night, The Happiness of the Kakaturis, the weirdest movie ever and maybe not so good. It's like a Japanese claymation/musical/horror flick about these people who own a hotel that everyone keeps dying in. It has now taken on sinister (rather than totally ridiculous) undertones.

I listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on tape today and part of the Metaphysical Club. I gave up on the latter early in the morning, both me in the car and the progressing Civil War in the book reaching Gettysburg, PA at the same moment, I decided it was time to succumb to Harry Potter. It's no Tolkein, or even C.S. Lewis, but it was nice.

There is a spider in the shower. But no Woody Allen to call.