Feast on This
Today’s curious times demand creative feasting and lengthy flights of fancy. It is in this spirit that the Half Century Mark Hotel announces the opening of Booked, an imaginary restaurant located in the Hotel’s expansive lobby, somewhere on the left, straight on ’til morning.
Booked will feature an ever-changing menu featuring fresh, hand-picked stories, lush language and cage-free pictures and poems chosen to delight and sustain today’s most discerning travelers. Booked is owned and operated by HCMH. Its menu, designed by Your Concierge with the assistance of a cadre of creative mentors, will change with the season and whim of the management.
This November we suggest you begin with Charles Simic’s poetic apéritif on the artist Joseph Cornell. Follow with a delectable layered pâté on travel by philosopher Alain de Botton. Next allow poet Maggie Nelson provide a palate cleanser to knock your socks off. Your newly awakened mind will delight in a fantastical dish featuring Marco Polo and Kublai Khan by Italo Calvino. Muriel Barbery will preside as your main entree. (All things Hedgehog are stimulant and inspiration here at the HCMH.) For dessert, treat yourself to an imaginative concoction by photographer Jason Fulford whose phantom Hotel appeared, however briefly, in real places around the world.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s menu. Leave us recommendations for future feasting. And always remember to attend to and feed your imagination. We promise it will help get you through the day, maybe even the next four years.
The Half Century Mark Hotel 
So happy to hear that you will help us manage these trying times. Can’t wait to get started on this snowy morn . ❤️❄️
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And there’s always Sally Mann. Looking forward to delving into Hold Still! Thanks for checking into the HCMH. Hope you enjoyed your stay.
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Oh, I loved Hold Still and this looks like a healthy stack for a snowy day. Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is at the top of my current yet ever-evolving stack. Bluets will likely follow.
p.s. I love your work as well! Thanks for stopping by my site and yes to project(s)!
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Would love to spend some time with Maggie Nelson and The Argonauts. She’s brilliant, sometimes beyond me but i love how she plays with language and makes me stretch. Here’s a quote from Bluets. Think I’ll inscribe it somewhere in my Hotel!
13. At a job interview at a university, three men sitting across from me at a table. On my CV it says that I am currently working on a book about the color blue. I have been saying this for years without writing a word. It is, perhaps, my way of making my life feel “in progress” rather than an ash of sleeve falling off a lit cigarette. One of the men asks Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose. from Bluets, by Maggie Nelson
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