Another Anthill

I ponder what went wrong with motels 1 through 5.

This specific Motel 6 really isn't too bad. Clean. Ascetic. About the best you could ask for with American Airlines footing the bill, but call me a cynic, I'm not sure that this shoddy, sun bleached gray square perched between the banks of two frontage roads in Irving, Texas screams “I am the pinnacle of hospitality; no further iteration needed.”

Maybe it was nicer ten years ago? Twenty? It's hard to even age the place, a testament to the timelessness of nondescript, near-aiport accommodations. Best Western, Comfort Suites, Super 8, Fairfield by Marriott, Hampton Inn, Hilton Inn. Each surrounded by an asphalt moat dotted with truck shaped rocks. Decaying fortresses strewn across the outskirts of civilization, their vacancy signs dimly illuminating the edge of a seemingly endless expanse of frontier. The bubbling lull of the nearby highways punctuated by the constant and tremendous roar of mighty mechanical dragons overhead.

It's all so impersonal.

Yet I find the cold logic of it strangely comforting: where there is an airport there will flights, and if there are flights, there are some that will be missed. Those who miss flights must wait for more flights, and those who must wait, must wait somewhere.

Really just a silly way to say that ants need anthills.

And as this ant ponders the makings of his current anthill, he wonders what the ants in the cells next door are thinking about. He wonders about his ant mom and his ant dad. His ant friends and his ant lovers. He wonders if they wonder about him sometimes.

He asks himself what his little ant life even means. If we're all working towards something or just marching along behind the ant in front of us. If we're together alone or alone together.

Most importantly, he wonders what will happen to this place once the other ants finish building Motel 7.