Like Tasting Stars

I moved into a motel room today, an easy move in which no friends were called upon to borrow trucks or asked for manual labor in exchange for a box of cheap beer, but still a difficult one for a moment. I’ve been told to learn where your disciplines lie as early as you can or as early as you realize you’re immediately required to have them. Once you’ve found them, congratulate yourself with a healthy pat on the back. Where you have come up short on discovery, remove everything that is tempting to thwart what you hope to improve on. That is if you can find the discipline to do so.
What I dread most about this move are those new temptations…long hot showers, the satellite tv that looms in lonely late night sleeplessness, the 4ft mirror hanging on the wall which will mysteriously pass hours as a ego-fluffing conversation companion. However in sitting in this new place I am awarded the renewal of a new space, a new nest. Hang a picture, stack your books, sit on the bed.

There is something about living in a motel room that solidifies the writer lifestyle, perhaps simply because its not quite proper. I thought of Royal Tenenbaum at 100 N. 30th Avenue. Not a writer perhaps, but a fine manipulator of language and emotion.

I read more Ben Hart marketing master today as a step in a more disciplined reaction to my conversation yesterday with Mark. He came into the office at the house, full of energy, a change from the day before when he spent the majority of the afternoon sleeping and watching Cops, a true testimony to his fatigue. He offered a trip to the hot springs, an uplifting postscript to him telling me to move out of my beloved RV. The area surrounding the springs was beautiful – about an hour south of Salida on 285 and grazing the backdoor view of the Sangres with the Sand Dunes National Park some 8.5 thousand elevated feet of naturally degraded mountain rock in the desolate distance. Last March I had ran vigorously up their relentless peaks, sand giving way underneath my feet, challenging even the slightest dare to a summit. I remember telling travel mates that I had friends in Colorado as we made our trek, but never knowing exactly where they were. I had never imagined that they were just over the mountains. I had never imagined that I would be looking at them again with such a different perspective.

As we sat in what Mark referred to as “The Lobster Pot”, 108 degrees of mineral water salty with the soak of locals and tourists, we talked about business. I kept an eye on fellow bathers who assumedly came to the springs to escape exactly the conversation Mark kept to a hint above a whisper. I had no intentions to tell him kindly to can it. Looking out was more in habit of an often uncomfortable conscientiousness. But I didn’t mind so much as I have in the past with other personalities that have been “vaccinated with a phonograph needle.” It is because the man has a passion that can’t be sealed off. And in truth, I was rather enjoying the conversation. Mostly because he offered me a job and even more so because he was not opposed to letting me do this job as freelance back in Carbondale.

It’s like watching a mind circus, listening to Mark talk. Or similar to observing gymnasts or acrobats, or break-dancers, or something that doesn’t seem humanly possible but performs before your eyes nonetheless. It’s fascinating. Trying to absorb it on a content basis is not as fascinating, but still.

We went to Amica’s and sat at the bar to avoid the inevitable wait, a testimony which was greater realized when Mark calculated the weekly profit of the place on what he calls a “bar napkin business plan.” He shot low, about nine grand off at 50,000 bucks. We were sure because the numbers were verified by the General Manager, an overgrown boy with a big beard and flip flops, sitting two seats down from us at the bar, waiting to take home a sixer of Amica’s own amber brew.

Mark and I talked about Wasps and their seemingly self-absorption because they find the act of inquiring about another individual to be nosy. Mark explains that this was his father and the most likely place where he inherited it. As long as you’re self aware, I don’t really give a shit what your personality entails. To a degree.

The man with incredibly sweet sad eyes sitting next to us at the bar had just lost his job, so to boost his spirit, his wife sent him out to look for a second home instead of job searching all day. While Mark waited for his lost pizza to be remade, he and the man talked about business. I sat in between them, eating a panini, trying to not let large bites of spicy sausage fall out of my mouth.