The Room
by Ags Connolly
London, 2008.
There was something he felt about airports. Not concerning the cold hangars themselves with the thronging travellers and impossible rafters, nor even the very aircraft that men had pioneered then taken for granted in a split second of all creation. It was something about the microsystems that existed inside their limits.
As he drove pale-eyed through this huge example of such a place in the dawning gloom, dim security lights shone on otherwise dark corners of small, non-descript buildings that had stood undescribed for a long time. Things happened in these buildings – mundane things – but that didn’t make their existence any less…haunting (maybe that was the word) when viewed from a removed point. Later, when the plane he had boarded began its ascent, he would see them in greater numbers; external lights extinguished in the daylight but still appearing like detailed models from above.
Then on descent into the Texas city of his destination there would be more: different somehow but no less intriguing. He was aware this preoccupation of his was a symptom of something else.
Very much like the sparse streetlights that were also visible. The streetlamps in America were notably more fluorescent than back home, and somehow that made them lonelier to him. There was beauty in it from above, but he had no doubt that standing solitary among them was a choking experience. He had done it before, after all.
Why did he find them lonely? He supposed the avenues here were generally broader and the distance between the lamps greater than in a British street…and so the pockets of darkness were afforded more space to breathe. The streets were longer too, the towns possibly more sprawling and further apart from each other, with less in between. Home was further away. Maybe it was that simple.
He remembered moving his toes inside his shoes when he was a kid, fascinated by the idea he could do things in this world that no other human being could see. Now in this far-off city, he walked miles to bars that most would drive to, to sit and hear music or just conversation. Yes, he could be seen, but no one knew him. Few if any would remember he was there.
These places held great magic for him. They were quite different from anything he saw in his usual (real?) life. His heroes and other people he wanted to be had been here. This was the world he had dreamed of – how fortunate it was to be amongst it all. His feet touched the ground. His hands held the bottles. Yet somewhere inside he knew this was a slideshow on the walls of a windowless room, built for sorrow.
Why had he always been in there? When did it start? Surely he could open his full heart and mind to this place all around him, find a path to a life he never imagined. But the room held him still. So, he gazed at airport buildings and streetlamps as if they held great mystery. The room’s door was locked. It was too distant now to remember whether from the outside or the inside.
This bar had rats running through the kitchen, a couple with a dog playing pool while under the influence of some type of drug. Goodfellas on the TV. A pretty and somewhat crazed bartender who had just picked up on his accent three beers in. She had apparently never seen anyone sip a can of Pearl before: it was a ‘shot’ beer, she said.
In a week or so he would be in a pub he knew on his own shores, drinking hometown beer. The parameters of the windowless room were clearer there, the slideshow less vivid. Perhaps because he was too close to it. He knew he would be drawn back eventually to those distant cities and bars again. The room allowed you to move anywhere in the universe you chose, and in any direction. You just couldn’t leave it.
by Ags Connolly
London, 2008.
There was something he felt about airports. Not concerning the cold hangars themselves with the thronging travellers and impossible rafters, nor even the very aircraft that men had pioneered then taken for granted in a split second of all creation. It was something about the microsystems that existed inside their limits.
As he drove pale-eyed through this huge example of such a place in the dawning gloom, dim security lights shone on otherwise dark corners of small, non-descript buildings that had stood undescribed for a long time. Things happened in these buildings – mundane things – but that didn’t make their existence any less…haunting (maybe that was the word) when viewed from a removed point. Later, when the plane he had boarded began its ascent, he would see them in greater numbers; external lights extinguished in the daylight but still appearing like detailed models from above.
Then on descent into the Texas city of his destination there would be more: different somehow but no less intriguing. He was aware this preoccupation of his was a symptom of something else.
Very much like the sparse streetlights that were also visible. The streetlamps in America were notably more fluorescent than back home, and somehow that made them lonelier to him. There was beauty in it from above, but he had no doubt that standing solitary among them was a choking experience. He had done it before, after all.
Why did he find them lonely? He supposed the avenues here were generally broader and the distance between the lamps greater than in a British street…and so the pockets of darkness were afforded more space to breathe. The streets were longer too, the towns possibly more sprawling and further apart from each other, with less in between. Home was further away. Maybe it was that simple.
He remembered moving his toes inside his shoes when he was a kid, fascinated by the idea he could do things in this world that no other human being could see. Now in this far-off city, he walked miles to bars that most would drive to, to sit and hear music or just conversation. Yes, he could be seen, but no one knew him. Few if any would remember he was there.
These places held great magic for him. They were quite different from anything he saw in his usual (real?) life. His heroes and other people he wanted to be had been here. This was the world he had dreamed of – how fortunate it was to be amongst it all. His feet touched the ground. His hands held the bottles. Yet somewhere inside he knew this was a slideshow on the walls of a windowless room, built for sorrow.
Why had he always been in there? When did it start? Surely he could open his full heart and mind to this place all around him, find a path to a life he never imagined. But the room held him still. So, he gazed at airport buildings and streetlamps as if they held great mystery. The room’s door was locked. It was too distant now to remember whether from the outside or the inside.
This bar had rats running through the kitchen, a couple with a dog playing pool while under the influence of some type of drug. Goodfellas on the TV. A pretty and somewhat crazed bartender who had just picked up on his accent three beers in. She had apparently never seen anyone sip a can of Pearl before: it was a ‘shot’ beer, she said.
In a week or so he would be in a pub he knew on his own shores, drinking hometown beer. The parameters of the windowless room were clearer there, the slideshow less vivid. Perhaps because he was too close to it. He knew he would be drawn back eventually to those distant cities and bars again. The room allowed you to move anywhere in the universe you chose, and in any direction. You just couldn’t leave it.