This is an advertisement for wandering.

For spending some time every week not-knowing where you're going.

I wrote the bones of this at the famous Hotel Chelsea, in room 1E, part of the old room 100, likely where Nancy Spungen was killed, the year before I was born.

Rhonda booked the room without knowing its history. Nor did she tell me she was staying there. I didn't know I was going there until I arrived.

We discovered this macabre fact about Nancy by accident, reading up on the rich history of the hotel, sitting on the couch drinking vodka.

We were surprised to learn that the murder happened here, then dug deeper to realize we're probably in the room where she died.

I wrote a report about her and Sid Vicious in High School. Like millions of other disaffected youth, the Sex Pistols mean a lot to me.

For the first time in New York I feel the real heat of history in a room. A clawing desire to stay here, knowing that I might never have access to this space again.

And it wasn't just Sid and Nancy. Hotel Chelsea opened its doors in 1884, hosting the dramas of luminaries and low-lifes alike across the building's many eras.

In its newest form, everything is beautiful and profoundly comfortable. D came by and we all got drunk and stood on the balcony overlooking 23rd Street, like thousands of others have done across the past 140 years.

Arthur Clarke wrote most of 2001 in this hotel. And my man Burroughs much of Naked Lunch here as well. To type anything in the rooms here is a thrill.

And I got here through wandering. On many different levels, I got here by not-knowing where I was going, but instead trusting my reason and intuition (and friends) to lead me in the right direction.

Once a week, go out your front door without knowing where you are going, even if for just a few hours. Interesting things happen when you leave your normal paths.

Dan

The link has been copied!