The Hotel of Life

Thoughts During a Pandemic

I have two recurring dreams these days, or at least two sites for dreams.  One is on a hilly street, maybe cobblestone, where there is an alley with various open-air bars.  I tend to choose one of those bars in particular, though I’ve entered others.  The other site is a huge luxury hotel.  I think of it as the Plaza, but in the dream I seem to be in San Francisco.  It’s sure as hell not New York.  In my dream I’m staying either at the Plaza or at another hotel way across town.  Sometimes I don’t remember which one, and I travel from one to the other, trying to find out where I’m supposed to be.  In other dreams I’m in the Plaza, trying to find my room, but the elevators are confusing and I keep trying one after another, not getting to the right floor.  I never seem to find my room.  I’m actually never sure I’m in the right hotel.  I’m always looking.

The interesting thing is that these dreams are invariably happy.  I may not know where my room is but I’m delighted to be in the hotel.  The little bar in the alley near the cobblestone street is the same way.  As soon as I’m there I’m happy.

I don’t know where the bar is.  That city also seems like San Francisco, because it’s quite hilly—I’ve only been to San Francisco three times, twice as an adult—but it also could be Rio, which we visited once.  We did go to a bar at the top of a towering hillside.  One thing about Rio—which is true of Latin America in general —is that it had an air of informality, and I always felt comfortable.  I can’t imagine why else my dreams would take me to Rio.

I’ve been inside the Plaza twice.  One time my first editor and I were meeting a friend who was staying there, and who had just taken a job as lead book editor of a large newspaper, hence his residence at the Plaza.  I asked my editor—who was out of work at the time—if she had ever stayed at the Plaza, and she said, “I’ve never stayed here, but I have made love here.”  That struck me as an odd remark.  The other time I was there with the same book editor, and we had breakfast with the photographer Jill Krementz, who was a friend of his.  She of course was married to a writer that I greatly admired.  My editor friend was taking me along because he thought I would enjoy meeting her, and his newspaper was paying.  The chairs in the dining room were plush, like easy chairs, and there were cloth tablecloths and napkins, and nice silver.  I felt rather out of my element, but when my friend introduced me to Jill she actually kissed me, which made me feel welcome.  She had bacon and toast for breakfast.  When we left I did not say, “Oh by the way, say hello to what’s his name for me.”[1]  I was tempted.

I’m puzzled that the Plaza is the hotel of my dreams.  I’ve never stayed there, never even made love there, and it’s not my kind of place.  I prefer a much funkier, basic kind of place (when I go to New York now I stay in Brooklyn, where my son lives, and stay at the Nu Hotel, a far cry from the Plaza.  They serve cornflakes and bagels in the lobby at breakfast time.  You just sit on the goofy little lobby seats.  It’s perfect for me).  But somehow the Plaza is the hotel of my dreams.

I think it represents Life.  Life is a Five-Star Hotel!  It has everything you could possibly want.  But though I’m wildly happy to be there, I can never find my room, or my place.  I’m not even terribly good at navigating the elevators.  The bar in the cobblestone alley, on the other hand, is my place.  I’ve found it.  I could stay there forever.

These dreams remind me of my spiritual life.  (I’m not saying they’re “about” my spiritual life.  I’m just writing here, folks.)  It takes place in the glorious hotel of life.  I’ve spent my whole life searching for my place, and the truth is that nothing has completely satisfied me.  Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, I’ve taken something from all of them, and continue to do that.  They all seem quite rich.  They also all seem wrong about certain things.

But when it comes to practicing, I like the funky down home aspect of Soto Zen, with its modest aims and demands.  All we’re doing is sitting.  There’s no ambition.  We just occupy our corner of the world.

But it has the feeling of home.

[1] In some movie or other, I think it might be What’s New Pussycat, a number of famous actors make token appearances, and one surprising appearance was by Richard Burton.  I can’t remember who else was in the movie, but as some guy was parting from Burton, he said, “Say hello to what’s her name for me.”  It’s one of my family’s favorite jokes.