I must think of the unthinkable: The hotel in home.
V
HEIDEGGER
Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for. They wait for intimations of their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not make their gods for themselves and do not worship idols. In the very depth of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.
Xenia was the ancient Greek practice of hospitality to strangers, of making your home into a hotel, but without expectation of payment. The word comes from the visiting god’s name — Zeus Xenios in his incarnation as the god of travelers — and from Xenos, which means stranger in every state, from guest to enemy. To be hospitable, to be hostile: both involve strangers. Odysseus, for example, returned to his own home, disguised, begging for shelter.
ODYSSEUS
For I too once dwelt in a house of my own among men, a rich man in a wealthy house, and full often I gave gifts to a wanderer, whosoever he was and with whatsoever need he came.3
A god (a Greek god, at least) is a stranger in the house. Home is where god is not. It is private even from god, who must arrive in disguise to discover what goes on there. The god who visits, dwells with us in the Old English sense, that is, he makes a fool of us. The uncanny, said Freud, is the return of the familiar in a new guise. Zeus Xenios appears, disguised, tests his hosts for virtue, then throws off his cloak. How passive-aggressive! Yet I’d always hoped to be a host, perhaps to have a witness to the work I’d done. We’d have parties, I’d imagined, visitors. Our home would have been open, we’d have entertained angels. And, if we had, how many times might we have found god (or, how many times would he have gone unrecognized)?
To fear a guest as I would fear god, though? No. god is surely not a hotel inspector, and no houseguest would treat your home like a hotel. Xenia also involves guesthood. The guest must respect, must not bother the host. A home is somewhere you learn to pick up after yourself. or after others, like a Christian god, who is everywhere, and is more like the chambermaid or, perhaps, the hotel detective.
SOMEONE
(A friend? Mine? Yours? I can’t remember.)
You were neither of you home makers.
No, we were both guests.
They should have laid it out, the gods, for home too: the tariff, some kind of prenup. As it was, we made each other welcome, leaving no messages on the pillows, nothing complimentary but an exchange.
Xenia was an exchange, though Greek hosts paid it forward, their reward held in abeyance, to be claimed at another time, in another place, and possibly by others who were nevertheless their avatars. The Greek gods never stayed in hotels. Having Xenia, hotels were not needed. But a Christian god is now in service. In Christian charity he asks us to give with no expectation of exchange, so someone has to take up the slack.
Hotels take me out of Xenia, out of charity. How relaxing. In a hotel, I can forget the rules, bathe in champagne, throw my TV out the window. No one cares how I behave, so long as I can pay.
When we’d paid it off, I’d go, that’s what I thought. Paid for our home, I mean, the mortgage, then we’d owe each other nothing. But we paid it off, and I didn’t go, not immediately. Then, several months after, I did.
VI
HEIDEGGER
Bridges and hangars, stadiums and power stations are buildings but not dwellings. These buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them.
A building does not have to be for dwelling. A hotel is not for dwelling in the German sense, though it might be in the English, in the sense of a word that contains its inverse. A hotel is for staying in, but it is a kind of staying that includes its opposite: leaving. We may dwell in a hotel in the English sense, in the sense that while we stay there we might also be stunned, led astray, drugged, or made fools of. We know our stay there is temporary, so we do not think to build our futures there. A home which I inhabit as a building but in which I see no future, so in which I do not dwell, and yet, unlike a hotel, which I cannot easily leave, is no situation I could build on.
It was not easy to leave, and when I left, I looked for other homes, anything so long as they didn’t look like homes. I looked at a houseboat (all I could afford, I thought, or wanted to) but the owner’s cigarette smoke was sunk deep in its timbers. I looked at homes in warehouses, garages, stables; I looked at tiny houses built in corridors between semis, one room on each floor, the bedroom in the loft. In every marital bedroom, in every home I visited, by each marital bed without exception, a shelf of self-help books: sex, relationships, family, money sometimes. By the bed! In some homes, no books elsewhere, except, occasionally, food books in the kitchen. These are the books even people who don’t read books will pay for.
Well, we all need a little self-help. I shouldn’t dwell on it.
VII
In the Library Hotel and Wellness resort in Cypress, which I have not visited, there is a room called the Martin Heidegger room.
Wellness?
FREUD
One need only turn each individual reproach back on the person of the speaker.
The Library Hotel encourages its guests to help themselves.
THE LIBRARY HOTEL
House guests can elevate their spirit while experiencing wellbeing of body and soul at the Wellness Baths designed for total self care.
Most visitors like the Library Hotel. Of those who don’t, some complain that the amenities are poor, but that the service is good. Others like the hotel but blame the staff.
TRIPADVISOR:
(A POST)
Wrote a complaint, no response, these people are amateurs and completely clueless.
VIII
Heidegger did not travel much. But neither did he stay at home. He had a hut on a hill, which looked, to be honest, quite luxurious — more like a chalet, the kind you go to on holiday, with several rooms, and probably some source of heating and somewhere to cook. He worked there and, I think, slept and ate there too. He did not call this home, though. He called it his hut.
TRIPADVISOR: A POST:
I am travelling to Europe this sept and want to make a special effort to go to todtnauberg just to take a look at heidegger’s hut. I know its private property but I would be happy to look at the outside.
Is it better to look at something private from the outside, or the inside? I can’t think in a hotel. There’s nothing there to think about. At home, there are too many things to think about. In order to think properly, it is necessary to be neither here nor there. I don’t have a hut but, if I stayed in the Heidegger room at the Library Hotel, might I be able to dwell there a while and, from there, be able to build on it?
HEIDEGGER
To give thought to homelessness is to take up residence within it.
To dwell is to intend to build, which means I can never quite dwell in the place where I live, at the same time I am living there.
Dwell has at least the intention of building concealed somewhere within it.
So does marriage.
I am trying to wind back time to find a moment we had a home we could dwell in but — dwell, sojourn — these are old-fashioned words. Who uses them anymore? I google Xenia but get photos of bikini’d models. Even on Stanford.edu, she’s a pretty student, not a concept. Perhaps I expected too much of home. Perhaps I have no capacity to do any more than stay.
5 HOTEL DIARY