One Step Over the Guardrail

The area in Tampa in which I'm staying may not be the ugliest place in the world. I believe that this area was probably used as a first draft for ugly places and then discarded.

I haven't seen the rest of Tampa yet. All I've seen is the area between the Days Inn at 275 and Fletcher and USF Tampa. Driving down the flat roads with not a hint of life or style. Nothing but cables and wires and signs for fast food joints mingle together in a receding horizon of despair. Gray concrete and expansive parking lots. Flat roofs and miles of soulless American trash. My God. Even I would turn to drugs if I lived near here. I think I need heroin tracks up my arm to fit in.

We're staying at one of a hundred inns and motels that line the highway. It's clean and comfortable enough. In my brief look at the university I saw wide streets and traffic lights, vast parking lots, and enormous buildings, each of which could fit a football stadium. Some of which are football stadiums: Go Bulldogs, or whatever. And not just the football stadium, but the rec center near it, the library, and other buildings beyond my vision horizon lean like mammoth droppings from some dud alien bombing run.

I was looking forward to going to the kosher restaurant; I found four potential kosher restaurants in Tampa area. One turned out to be the same as the second. The other two no longer exist. I found out this afternoon that the one that is two lost its kashrut license recently. So instead, I found food to eat in a local supermarket. There is still a lot of kosher food in American supermarkets.

There's trash on the TV; you may think that that's a given, but I'm actually used to finding one or two good shows here or there. It's like they excised anything with intelligence from the TV stations here. There's trash on the radio: redneck country, weak pop music, a Jesus station, and NPR.

There's a pool at the motel; it's small, shallow, cold, and grungy, and situated in the middle of the parking lot. There's coffee in the room; it's bland. The promised free wireless keeps crashing.

Taste, sense, consciousness, and sanity have fallen over the guardrail. There's nothing to see here, people. Keep moving.

Yehuda