Joanna Walsh - Hotel

That red sofa. He made the first mark, blood-colored. I carried blood with me all the time. From time to time I let it out, which was not practical with all that beige. My friend (female, older, visiting) said, “Why is there blood in the toilet?” I looked at the white porcelain, said, “Well, it must have been me.” She was — temporarily — mystified. The sheets in the hotels I visited were always white, no matter what color the covers. In one hotel, I bled on the white sheets, rinsed them under the showerhead and dried them with the hairdryer. I had a duty to the hotel, a duty not to be too human.

FREUD

The pride taken by women in the appearance of their genitals is quite a special feature of their vanity; and disorders of the genitals which they think calculated to inspire feelings of repugnance or even disgust have an incredible power of humiliating them. 1

In a hotel, which is ideal, I too am ideal.

You were always reluctant to go to hotels. Now I know why.

Still, I feel better lying here alone in my hotel, than I would talking to someone who doesn’t want to be talked to, across the white hotel stretches of sheet and table cloth.

FREUD

When Dora talked of Frau K she praised the “delightful whiteness of her body.”

At home I stripped the covers off the bed. It looked nude. It was no longer white. And there were our negatives imprinted in its dirty flesh. They were no longer ours. At home, our temporary shadows smudged themselves across the permanent furniture. They got shorter as the years got longer. You would have thought the opposite, that, as the proportion of our lives increased as a percentage of the lives of our books, our pans, our plates, the bricks and mortar of our home, we’d have made some mark upon it, but these objects showed no sign of diminishing, and our shadows, which seemed at first to grow longer, wore themselves out across them, and shrank as the sun moved across the day.

Move a chair, and the room looks temporary.

III

HEIDEGGER

We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers.

Bauen (German: to build), Heidegger tells us in his essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” also means “to dwell” but the English word “dwell” is not related to “to build.” Dwell, says Webster’s Dictionary (1913) means:

1To delay; to linger.

2To abide; to remain; to continue.

Synonyms. — To inhabit; live; abide; sojourn; reside; continue; stay; rest.

In English, dwell is an unheimlich word, a word that contains its opposite. The word comes from the Old English dwellan , “to lead astray, hinder, delay” (in Middle English “to tarry, remain in a place”). It is a word of Germanic origin, a word related to Middle Dutch dwellen “to stun, perplex” and Old Norse dvelja “delay, tarry, stay.”

Old English dwellan also means “to mislead, deceive,” originally “to make a fool of,” from Proto-Germanic dwelan (cognates: Old Norse dvöl “delay,” dvali “sleep”; Old High German twellen “to hinder, delay”; Danish dvale “trance, stupor,” dvaelbær “narcotic berry,” a source of Middle English dwale “nightshade”), from Proto Indo-European dhwel- , extended form of root dheu- “dust, cloud, vapor, smoke” (and related notions of “defective perception or wits”). Related to Old English gedweola “error, heresy, madness.” The sense shifted in Middle English through “hinder, delay,” to “linger” (c.1200, as still in phrase to dwell upon ), to “make a home” (mid-13c.). Related: Dwelled; dwelt; dwells . 2

It seems we dwell through force, or through deception. It seems (“to lead astray,” “to stun”) that dwell is something we do not do, but something that is done to us. We are dwelt on.

You don’t have to be mad to live here, but it helps.

IV

HEIDEGGER

This thinking of homelessness, rather than bemoaning the absence of a home, concerns itself with the presence within our homes of that which cannot be thought.

Home. How could I think of living anywhere else? Other places exist only to show you how good it is. These places might be technicolor, but technicolor isn’t — what? — sustainable? Home, like in the hometel magazines, is in black and white. There’s no place like home , and if you say it three times you’ll be there. But in order to say it you have to be not-there. You can only think about home from elsewhere.

From my hotel I think of my home, which asked so much of me that I could no longer think. I was not at home with thinking there, was always busy doing, though, whatever I did, it never felt like I was building anything. We lived there for a long time. All of our building went on there. Now I can’t think what color the door was.

There are parts of home I have already forgotten, the parts I thought of as yours. I don’t go into them anymore. Even to think of going into them would mean more work. You will not do the work. You will notice if I do it, but you won’t think twice.

It’s not the not-working, it’s then not-thinking. Sometimes you treat this place like a hotel!

I must think of the unthinkable: The hotel in home.

V

HEIDEGGER

Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for. They wait for intimations of their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not make their gods for themselves and do not worship idols. In the very depth of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.

Xenia was the ancient Greek practice of hospitality to strangers, of making your home into a hotel, but without expectation of payment. The word comes from the visiting god’s name — Zeus Xenios in his incarnation as the god of travelers — and from Xenos , which means stranger in every state, from guest to enemy. To be hospitable, to be hostile: both involve strangers. Odysseus, for example, returned to his own home, disguised, begging for shelter.

ODYSSEUS

For I too once dwelt in a house of my own among men, a rich man in a wealthy house, and full often I gave gifts to a wanderer, whosoever he was and with whatsoever need he came. 3

A god (a Greek god, at least) is a stranger in the house. Home is where god is not. It is private even from god, who must arrive in disguise to discover what goes on there. The god who visits, dwells with us in the Old English sense, that is, he makes a fool of us. The uncanny, said Freud, is the return of the familiar in a new guise. Zeus Xenios appears, disguised, tests his hosts for virtue, then throws off his cloak. How passive-aggressive! Yet I’d always hoped to be a host, perhaps to have a witness to the work I’d done. We’d have parties, I’d imagined, visitors. Our home would have been open, we’d have entertained angels. And, if we had, how many times might we have found god (or, how many times would he have gone unrecognized)?

To fear a guest as I would fear god, though? No. god is surely not a hotel inspector, and no houseguest would treat your home like a hotel. Xenia also involves guesthood. The guest must respect, must not bother the host. A home is somewhere you learn to pick up after yourself. or after others, like a Christian god, who is everywhere, and is more like the chambermaid or, perhaps, the hotel detective.

SOMEONE

(A friend? Mine? Yours? I can’t remember.)

You were neither of you home makers.

No, we were both guests.