Fake concrete crosses and the worn black skeletons of barns hover above secondary looped highways. We weave and bob over the Mountain.
Old dirt roads share the same name as the mailboxes that still line them. The Walker Homestead: now a pile of trucks stacked on top of a doublewide toppled next to a house once built in classic southern architecture.
Stripped naked pines are whipped by cold mists.
I awoke during the credits. I lay with tongues. I fall to sleep in verses.
For $30, you can heal in an hour at Hot Springs.
“The Dali Lama has soaked in our tubs!” The woman told me on the phone. “Seven years ago, that is.”
“He’s not still in there, is he?”
The Lama’s not betting on Hot Springs North Carolina for total consciousness. Or maybe he is.
Maybe any *******, even Madison County, can bring you enlightenment when you’re basically a God on earth.
Google: Does the Dali Lama have a car like the Pope-Mobile when he travels? Is he carried on one of those Cleopatra looking things? Sedan chairs.
Ross plays a CD he listened to when he drove the flat empty asphalt of Montana and Colorado.
He was searching for stunning landscapes to shred. A kind of enlightenment I don’t think the Dali Lama could do.
Google: Has the Dali Lama ever snowboarded? Read the whole Dali Lama Wikipedia page.
It’s only the Killers though. We both sing the chorus, staring straight ahead.
I got soul but I’m not a soldier.
Ross says he never liked that song. It’s something I never knew.
Hot Springs has been one of Western North Carolina’s premiere locations for rest and relaxation since 1778.
Except in 1916, when it was an internment camp for German civilian prisoners who were on a cruise ship captured on the coast.
They were all very friendly and really bonded with the townspeople. Some of the Germans even returned with their families and are buried in Hot Springs.
Some prisoners are buried in the town graveyard.
The building to our left was the most lavish resort in the Mountains. It had sixteen marble lined pools filled with healing mineral waters that were surrounded by groomed lawns. The summering crowd played croquet.
It burned down in 1920.
We don’t get offered a lawn game when we arrive. Just visitor towels for $1 and an ashtray.
Cold mists whip among the mineral pools.
I awoke during the credits. I lay with tongues. I fall to sleep in verses.
Ross and I consider having *** in the hot springs. We try once or twice, but parts don’t fit they way they do usually.
I see tiny flecks in the water.
Are they essence of the healing mineral springs or elements of the soakers’ fat bodies before me?
Ross lights a cigar. It smells like burning hair. I light a cigarette in retaliation.
The chubby spa attendant knocks on the door.
“Your time is up,” he drawls.
What does that mean?
Are we going to be executed and laid next to the German civilian prisoners?
≈Did the Dali Lama receive such treatment?
The water drains, screeching as it is pulled away.
They don’t tell you where it ends up.
The mineral pools swirl with tiny flecks .
I awoke during the credits. I lay with tongues. I fall to sleep in verses.
