The view from within the hotel was quite different. There were two possibilities, depending on which side your room faced. I don’t know which was more disturbing - the window facing a parking lot…
Or the abandoned insane asylum…
Prowling around the grounds of the asylum, I quickly and irrationally became concerned for my well being. In fact, I went so far as to imagine myself having to use rudimentary parkour to reach the top of the tool shed for safety, while a deranged assailant slashed at the air, just beyond reach of my Achilles tendon.
This thought was disturbing in two ways. The first is that the only thing I want near my Achilles tendon is the cozy heel of my new Merrells. The second is the fact that I thought more about my safety than that of those who had been locked inside the now crumbling walls.
Which ranked higher as a cause for concern – the unlikely possibility of an attacking madman, or the suffering of those who had been confined to the structure I now found so eerie? Just thinking about how much worse it was from the inside finally sent a real shiver up my spine.
That night we were greeted at the venue by a volunteer staff of undergraduates. We later learned that they were part of a gifted program, which explains why, when we asked where they were each from, one of them said “Narnia."
2 comments:
Oh, i wish I'd known you were in Staunton, not that you probably had much time to do anything. There's a restaurant on beverly called L'Italia - it's done up in fine 80s style, all black ash and mauves and greys. But it has the most fabulous ricotta gnocchi I've ever had, and huge wine pours. sean's taking me there for our first anniversary. Hooray!
That would have been much better than the dollar baskets of fries we ate for dinner at a bar after the show. Still kind of like gnocchi, though.
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