Hotel Carpets

What amazes me about swanky hotels is their miraculous power to turn tack into pomp. Consider the carpets: where but in the Village People's summer home or the Hilton could you hope to see such a cancerous fusion of color and geometry? But for some mysterious reason, what in a private residence would seem an assault on the senses comes across as lush and exotic in the setting of a hotel. Is this because in a hotel, our senses are already so bludgeoned by the scale of our surroundings that only something truly shocking can touch them? So numbed by the chandeliers and the brass and the flagstone and the uncanny civility of the guy at the door that any less-than-vomitous floor covering would come across as drab and weak? There are numerous ways to ‘explain’ these carpets: as the unfortunate artifacts of design-by-committee, as the aesthetic overhead of killer bulk-discounts. But like other things that occur with suspicious regularity (certain headaches, disappearing witnesses, small transfers) these carpets have begun to assume a significance disproportionate to their strangeness. I begin to suspect that they harbor some secret, some clue to the nature of the world: that they bear witness to a profound truth about biological visual systems, or reflect the dark workings of a nefarious cabal.

Mathematics conferences are good for paranoid, speculative thinking. I am at the Joint Meetings at the moment, the biggest mathematical hoe-down of the year. It is a wild affair, non-stop lectures, continual social events, and a Job Fair eerily reminiscent of a livestock auction: fast talk, a ticking clock, finger motions that carry the weight of contract. In principle, I am here with the sole object of finding a young firebrand to fill the shoes of a recent retiree, though in fact I volunteered for the assignment because it represented an opportunity to get sent to a conference at departmental expense. I admit frankly that my presence on the hiring committee is a little twisted: not only am I a short-timer in the department, but I seem to lack the basic respect for the Career Path on which this whole academic process is predicated. Add to this an absurdist streak and a tendency towards polemic, and it seems clear that the department had no idea what they were doing when they chose me for this mission.

Not surprisingly, my stint as a headhunting 007 got off to a horrible start. The conference is in the Marriot, but having registered at the eleventh hour (of course), I ended up with a room in the Hilton, another ‘official conference hotel.’ Since I assumed that ‘official hotel’ meant ‘a hotel that is within easy walking distance’, I left my room for the first interview with about 15 minutes to spare and headed to the place marked ‘Marriot’ on my city pocket guide. Nary a mathematician in sight, naturally. Another look at the map revealed that Washington D.C. is lousy with Marriots, at least one every other block. How that detailed escaped me the first time will never be known, but the concierge at the Marriot-Washington apprised me that I was not the first person to come in this morning looking lost, and that the previous chap had been directed to The Rennaisance across the street and hadn’t returned: would I care to do likewise?

In The Rennaisance, both the bellhop and the concierge looked at me like I was mad. No mathematicians here, they said in the same tone in which they might have responded had I stumbled in reeking of gin and demanding to know where the weebies be hidin’. They sent me to a Marriot three blocks up. At this point, I was desperate: three calls to my co-worker had gone unanswered, and a frantic search through the phone-book on Catalina’s cell revealed no names that might know the right address. Meanwhile, the time slot for the first inteview was quickly evaporating. It eventually occurred to me that my very own ‘official conference hotel’ might, perhaps, know something about the conference. Sure enough, they knew the name of the hotel: Marriot Wardman. And though they couldn’t give me its address (let’s not expect too much) I figured that any cabbie ought to be able to work his mojo with the name alone. Armed with more hope than cash, I hailed a cab, issued the name, and breathed deep as we sped toward that nest of learned astronomers. En route, I tried to break the ice with the cabbie, laughing as I explained what a jackass I was for not checking the address first. The cabbie, jaded on tourists and perhaps not so confident with his English, seemed disinclined to banter, just nodded tersely and kept his eyes on the road. It was only as we were pulling into the valet parking spot and I said “ah, at last, the telltale mismatched socks” that he cracked a smile. God, what a relief: even the D.C cabbies know about mathematicians! I tip lavishly and hit the interview center at a gallop.

The interviews are a blur. They’ve been going for two days, and continue tomorrow, one every half hour, starting early and running late. How is one to keep this stuff straight? Over 500 people applied for one position. Most of the applicants look pretty good on paper, but all have their quirks: Wingfin Zhu from China published 17 papers in three years, but has a thick accent and a visa that would be cumbersome to work with. Priscilla Pentergeist ‘feels drawn to remedial courses’, but can’t say anything meaningful about her research. Slava Kreuschelheim is promising, but plays his cards close to the vest: does he really want a postdoc, or his secret ambition just a nice stable position in a third rank college? We hem and haw, ask questions, raise eyebrows, feign smiles, take notes. Our dossier grows. Everyone is ranked. One will be chosen.

I find it very odd to be in a position that everyone but myself considers to be one of power. Many of these candidates will not get jobs. They will panic, mope, consider their professional career undone, finally find something temporary, slog on. People kill years this way, carefully grooming themselves at each step, always conscious of the tyranny of the CV, keeping meticulous track of what counts and what doesn't. It can take the better part of a lifetime, and exhaust the better part of one's spirit, to realize that there were other things one could have done. I keep meaning to ask these people, 'hey, have you considered a career in a carpet design?'