Daniel the Writer

Now this hotel feeling imparts a brief spell of inconspicuousness I have long forgotten, a knowing sense of adventure, and though it’s based on the hope of a bottle of whiskey and a poolside blonde and its possibility open and unknown, there is something of adolescent expectancy about it that falls just short of a naive pleasure of excitement.

There are Brazilians all around me, their soft plosives and dragged consonants hum in the background. It’s all rather nice, gets me excited to travel, so that after being exposed to a new language for x amount of time I’ll be able to learn it and produce it for myself. Hotels are like airports, everyone passing through, looking at each other, wondering where they are from, and this hotel in particular seeems quite international. I feel almost like a character in a piece of classic literature, a Hans Castorp at his worldly sanatorium, or as though I’m summering at an international club; all the youths eye each other curiously, looking for adventure; the older folks make eye contact with me and nod amicably, unsure as to the proprieties of our culture, of which, with my orange jacket, I am surely a part. And we’re all here together, as though on a cruise ship, working to experience and travel; except I am in a position of superiority, for I live here, in New York — I am a native.