What’s the hurry? We’re all going to die anyway. Look up. The sun’s out — oh, the beams are blocking the beams. Bump, shove; excuse me, where’s the nearest restroom? Sipping coffee, scrolling through emails, blink, check the schedule. Five minutes. Sit down, not next to him though, he just burped, blink — four minutes — tick tock, tick — forget the clock, forget the time, everything’s leaving, everything’s going. Something’s shaking the floor, yes, it’s your mind going crazy (join the rest of us), the people bustling through is a blur, it’s always been, it always will be. Look, don’t blink — BLINK — three minutes. Time’s running out, and you don’t care; now smile with me, even laugh, there’s no laughter here, it’s so empty with these people here. Two minutes. What’s the countdown even for anyway? Why don’t you go ask the gentleman sitting in the corner, he seems like he would know; but he’s gone — of course he’s gone (they always disappear) the air’s turning to mist now, oh the fog, the mist, say hi to Eliza for me. Blink, one minute. My throat’s dry, and I think yours is too, after all that talking and talking and everyone getting louder — BLARRRING HELLO HELLO ANYBODY HERE?? — no, no one’s here, say bye to Eliza for me, she’s a ghost now, wave at her, through her, yes, check the time, oh yes, it is time, it’s always time, a good time, no rush, no hurry, please, sit down, let’s enjoy ourselves. Zero. Blink.
The concourse is laid out in somewhat of a horseshoe shape, except fatter, like Mrs. Hamilton, and it takes anywhere between seven and twenty minutes to walk from one side to the other, depending on how crowded it is and how much of a rush you’re in. The floor’s white tiled, and the walls are white too — the whole place gleams, the skylights flooding the vast space with bright light, except when it’s cloudy or when it’s nighttime; but then, the industrial lights come on — some blink, but most solidly shine, flashing brightly, so there are barely any shadows except the people and the chairs and the massive signs and billboards — they’re all really shadows, of course.
The concourse links once place to the other; so most people only pass through without taking a real look at the steel beams overhead and the grand, cylindrical columns and the endless rows of windows. This is, not surprisingly, somewhat of a disappointment to Dr. Andros, the architect, who, like a father visiting a long lost child, comes by on occasion (he pretends it’s only a happy coincidence), to see how his concept has turned out. And though he does not say much, his eyes and his body are quite indicative, in my opinion. I once saw him standing in the middle of this great opening, at the center of the whole concourse, where the ceilings rise up to a marvelous apex into a dome-like pinnacle directly above. He was staring upward, looking lost and dazed, perhaps somber, if I could see his face more clearly now. I think this is very much a sign of his dissatisfaction: at the people there, and their unappreciation? or that his work’s realization did not match his imagination? I don’t know. But he does this often, or more often that anyone should, in that particular manner.
Janon works at one of the concourse shops which sells donuts, snacks, drinks, bad coffee, and newspapers. It’s a small shop, and takes up little space, and Janon rarely ever works with anyone else at the same time there. While he sits behind the counter, and watches men in suits walk by briskly, and children skipping, and old people stepping slowly to the annoyance of the men in suits who by now are answering their phones and talking loudly and aggressively, and young people standing to the side, rummaging through their backpacks for things they may have lost (or probably will lose), the panic, the
The intercom blares from time to time, making mundane announcements in that mundane but piercing tone, the exact wavelength and volume that cuts through the rumbling of footsteps and conversations and background music, but simply slides through, too, like water seeping through sand, and so the moisture is there, clogging everything up, sticky, but the water, the purity’s gone:
IFYOUHAVELOSTABLACKBACKPACK,PLEASECOMETOTHEINFORMATIONDESKBYGATEG53IMMEDIATELY—PLEASEREPORTANYSUSPICIOUSACTIVITYTOTHEPOLICEBYCALLING911ONANYPUBLICTELEPHONE—ASAREMINDER—FINALCALLFOR—
We met at the South Entrance; the revolving doors spun round and round, making a rhythmic thud as people filed in and took off their coats systematically. I stood there, about twenty feet from the entryway, waiting. I waited for perhaps ten or twelve minutes before you came in, pushing the heavy revolving door and stumbling inside, your eyes wandering across the large building for something to lock onto. You saw me after a few seconds, and I smiled; you smiled. You lunged at me and hugged me enthusiastically, squeezing me against you while you laughed a content laugh, and I think joined in too. We walked about the concourse, blending into the shades of the flock, moving indeterminably along with the current, side by side, most likely, but who could tell? Perhaps we talked, perhaps we listened, unthinking, shifting around in that stale air, breathing in and out.
When we got to our gate, we sat down on cold, steel chairs, and looked out and at each other. It was raining outside. Do you want to get a bite to eat, you asked? Maybe later, I said. So we chatted. We talked about our families and our work, nothing unusual, and I pointed out how it was raining outside, and that it rained quite often where I currently lived, and I didn’t like that. Rain depresses me, I said. You laughed, and nodded your head, but said that you didn’t mind the rain very much; rain makes home feel, I don’t know, cozier I guess, you said. Fair enough. More people crowded around the seating area, and we decided to get lunch (or was it dinner?). Music played, and it was hard to hear each other while we sipped on our beers and dipped our forks into overpriced food. I saw an attractive young lady in a orange dress sitting behind you, and our eyes met for a second before I turned away.
The concourse is a place for people to, while they hop from one transportative mode/vehicle to another, rest, eat, and not get rained on.
anxiety, Janon feels, perhaps by extension, all of that in himself. Maybe it’s simply the boredom, he thinks, when he can think, which isn’t often, or maybe it is the fact that they are (they being all that has passed down the wide passage of the concourse) indeed all contained within him, in some odd metaphysical way. We’re all connected, us human beings, someone would say in a meditative voice. Yes, and we’re all the same. Janon probably does feel this way, in some form or another, but he has not been able to put enough thought into the matter to express that sentiment in words. Business is slow, especially early in the morning, when Janon imagines how the rest of the world is still asleep while he's awake, sitting under a lonely isolated light, and he's still asleep too, zoning in, zoning out, zooming through dreams and illusions of what could be — what can't be.
Do you hear me? The train (or plane or bus or ) is arriving. It’s yours, I think. You should go now, it’d be a shame if you missed it, and then you’d be stuck here in this concourse for another few hours. You have more important and better places to be. Not this modernist, functional, soul-dead transit building used to measure the country’s arrogance and excess money. Sorry. Enough with the social commentary. But you should go. It was nice talking to you…what was your name again? _____. Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’m so bad with names. All these proper nouns, they just kind of slip out of my mind after a short while; it’s really bad, I know. [laughs] [you start backing away, shouldering your backpack] All right, all right, I guess you’re going then, good-bye, have a safe journey. [I wave]
Now I’m alone, despite the crowd here; I can’t talk to them. An announcement comes on — is it mine? It’s not, but I strain to listen, because there’s nothing else to listen to; I have to listen to something. There are little potted plants that are such a deep green color I almost think that they’re fake. They’re planted in a row, evenly spaced across the entire corridor, and when I realize they all look the same — the branches, the bends and curves, the shape of the leaves — I step up to one of them, take a stem into my hands and look closely. Are they fake? Are they real? I’m inspecting every detail of that stem and leaf, and I’m thinking, yes, of course — yes.
The concourse never sleeps, so that if it was a person, it would certainly be an insomniac. And like insomniacs, its days become blurred, losing lucidity and building up a milky filter through which the moments pass. If time is a river, then the concourse itself is a stale pond. Only its rusting steel bolts and dirtying bathrooms are signs of time passing; and then the people there, who are often the same, going through the same motions and routines, but older, more deliberate, more subconscious, dead. It stands there, looming, but in a weird way, I think it’s lonely, and I think it cries to itself each night, after all the busy people have gone, sapped up its functionality, and all it can do is stare into space, barely noticing maintenance coming through and cleaning it up for the following day’s same monotonous flow.
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