Tunnel

Somewhere in this city, people must be buying vegetables or cooking dinner or changing diapers or watering plants, but all around me, I see only people with nametags carrying styrofoam cups of coffee, hurrying across carpeted floors beneath flourescent lights. No one actually lives in a big conference hotel; staying here is sort of like being on spaceship, with no connection to the rhythms of everyday life. Without natural light, I lose all sense of time; I get lost in the tangle of hallways and escalators and partitioned-off ballrooms that have no windows.

After a satisfying but exhausting day of going to session after session inside this gigantic hotel, I felt claustophobic, eager to see a plant, a tree, a baby – something real. When a friend and I escaped from the hotel this afternoon, it was raining hard, and the buildings that loomed high above us seemed cold and impersonal. We ended up wandering through a maze of concrete and glass that seemed promising with its lights and curving shapes but that led us ultimately, to our disappointment, to a mall.