InterContinental

Departing from my normative café behavior, I made a B-line for the InterContinental Hotel (just a short schlep up Cannery Row from the Monterey Plaza Hotel), navigating a derelict sea of lollygagging tourists. It’s a warm, swanky postmodern affair, festooned with video art and engaging sculpture, and informally-trendily furnished. The lounge, where I have temporarily installed my personhood, is crisply divided into a three-dimensional grid of expansive beams, and wide columns faced in tasteful, subtle off-white wallpaper, and studded with minimalist rectangular-solid sconces. The lighting fixtures are composed of a translucent synthetic that marvelously impersonates linen, with another translucent box inside, illuminated by a single light. The ceiling is an open grid consisting of rows of oak strips, separated by spacers, snugged between the wide, white beams, and punctuated by large doughnut-shaped lamps that hang from thin wires. The lamps are translucent plastic on the inside, and crimped, corrugated aluminum with tiny holes on the outside. Small, high-intensity lights on two-foot rods jut down at regular intervals. Eighteen-inch off-white marble tiles define the floor, punctuated by ten-by-twelve sections of flush carpet, decorated with wavy brown & aqua lines against a bluish background, which articulate the seating areas. A wall of windows, clad in white aluminum, floor-to-ceiling, looks out onto a weathered wood patio populated by natural teak Smith & Hawken chairs and tables, two wire-caged fire pits, a fence of wood and wire grid, and the Monterey Bay. On the wall opposite the glass is a long, wavy relief sculpture of three-inch dark-stained, metal-impersonating wood strips protruding from the wall, resembling an abstract drawing of hills and sea. The squarish overstuffed chairs are clothed in earth tones, from ochre-olive to dark chocolate; some sport wood trim. The couches are peopled with square pillows, featuring designs of six-sided gray/green geometric forms against a darker moss background. Each seating area is composed of a couch and chairs around low wooden tables, finely polished. On one end of the rectangular room is a large fireplace, set into a wall relief that resembles square stones in dark umber. On the mantle is a sculpture made of horizontal, bare tree or driftwood branches. Higher wooden tables stand behind the couches, sporting squarish modern lamps and simple round, modern earth-toned vases, devoid of flowers. On one table, a large white vase with white branches looms; on another, an open bowl of stubby, dark branches cradles transparent glass balls. The gentle guitar and piano music soothes me, despite my aversion to such music. The light is diffuse, owing, in part, to the fog that blankets the Bay beyond. Before me is a clear glass goblet of iced tea, and a metal pitcher with condensation on its slightly bulging lower extremity. It is cold and good.

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