Nashville!

A LONG DRIVE IN THE COUNTRY

It’s a pretty drive from St. Louis to Nashville (routes 64/57/24) that takes around 5.5 hours and crosses three rivers (Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee) and passes by many gorgeous large lakes (Rend/Egypt/Barkley) where I wanted to just stop and camp. The routes down are so aesthetically constructed without billboards and with so much foliage embracing the roadway, that it feels like a highspeed Sunday afternoon drive in the country…which is what it was, with, amazingly, only one stop around Paducah, Kentucky.

My drive glimpsing the first cutting of new-mown hay (now rolled up in huge columns) and Angus cattle reminded me of our Sunday drives up to work on my grandfather’s farm outside Carrollton, Illinois when I was growing up. Marring the lyricism were the bodies of deer and smaller wildlife on the side of the road as they’d dashed out of the surrounding roadside woods.

Enhancing the lyricism of the drive, though, was the fullness of the moon that first announced itself in ghost curves, and then in forthright moon-ness after the long twilight ended at 8:20 p.m.

VIEW FROM HOTEL INDIGO, aka HOTEL HAIKU

The view from my ninth floor room at Hotel Indigo on the night sky of Nashville (which likes to call itself “music city”) is as glittery as a country music stage. (When I take the stairs, I find a dime, a cigarette butt, and a coffee spill on the levels going down. I love looking behind the scenes.)

Hotel Indigo bills itself as for the traveler who yearns for the uncommon experience. It’s high-design with all it’s communiques to guests written in Haiku structures consistent with the line and syllable count of the form.

I like the one on their note paper best:

A thought changed the world
It was on paper then grew
Doodles are thoughts too.

Ooooooooo-Kay! They call their customer communication project “A Haiku for You.” If you want to find a more interesting version of that phrase, click here….Haiku for you, a collaborative project.

WHAT I’M DOING IN NASHVILLE

I’m here to record an audiobook for “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” that will also be available to download from my site as a multimedia ebook, the newest, most versatile use of the web I’ve seen which can incorporate text, audio and visual files, as well as external links. It will take awhile, but eventually, you’ll be able to see and hear it on Riehlife.