Murky Mirrors (Chicago Motel)

“I am cleansed in dilapidation”
-- Velocity


The ash trailed across the bureau top leading to the spot where the cigarette had spent the last of its kinetic energies and burned its death mark into the cheap veneer.

How she ended up in this motel was the mere whims of transit and economy. Why she stayed… That was more difficult to explain.

The Red Line south provided the outskirts of a muted bass line to her thoughts, comforting in its regularity. Life had been constant movement lately, a state of opportunistic flux, from shoot to shoot, from dream to dream, from paycheck to paycheck. It whirred like a pinball machine as she paddled for a higher and higher score.

And then she found herself in this static room with its dim lights and murky mirrors, with its silence, it absence. Not sure why she was staying. It was difficult to explain.

Perhaps it was the sound of purposeful round-the-clock traffic contrasting to the intentional ennui of her lying on the sofa.

Perhaps it was the calculated appearances of morning business traffic that she slept through after a night of dull buzzing insomnia.

When she awoke to the early afternoon light bullying its way past the weakly resistant curtains it was with a certain sense of sadness, as if she had missed those few useless vacant moments when the dust floated through the rays of coffee break sunlight.

She stared into the mirror at her smeared make-up and savored its absolute anarchy. As if she could afford to give away personal beauty due to its abundance.

What in this context held her beyond the uncomplicated air?

What in this context held her beyond the thought she had fallen below the radar?

What in this context held her beyond the ability to transcend the limits imposed by its implications?

She was cleansed by the dilapidation, freed from any consistency, freed from phone calls home, freed to define words with whatever personal meaning she invested.