Speckled beauty

Hotel solitude

An alien, I walked fast against the backdrop of high-definition advert animations. Everything in my head. Disorientating brightness. Across I went, over the arched bridge, dodging the proliferating bikes – motorised and pedal – to reach my favourite metro station, sequestered on the corner and accessible through a thin entrance next to McDonald’s.

Sudden, underground scents, smoky asphalt, that stench of oppression. My train, I knew, would sardine-squash me. It would tantalise through the proximity of the many commuters, flesh-packed. I’d be close enough to touch city-intensified acne careening down faces, as rock craters, as speckled beauty.

Body-filled moments before the hotel, where I would slip inwardly against the world. I was addicted here. Even for this little portion of time. Even though my limbs creaked and any touch, brush of body, sparked a disproportionate rage inside me and an instinct to lash out.

Onboard I grew more tense with every station. But, not many further clamours on this mode – my trip to the megacity was reaching its end point. Just four more nights. Then I’d return from the outpost, business completed. Did I really want to leave? I wasn’t sure.

From the position I’d been cramped into in the carriage, at a strange angle between two or more contorted travellers, I made out the network map, its multicoloured tendrils flowering free in all directions. In my reverie I saw the lines expanding, the depths of an already ginormous urban blob being extended. Dimensions growing. I wanted to lock into the fresh opportunities unearthed by the change. I’d outgrown the existing routes. I craved uncharted journeys, totally pristine impressions. Impossible tunnels of newness not yet and maybe never built.

Then, an alarming voice, Once, then twice. I snapped out of my cocoon. Scurried free just before the opposite flow of people could crunch me back in the carriage as the doors swept open. In no time I’d left the crowds and was, once more, following a self-drawn line to my lodgings, moving down a coil-shaped lane in balmy-cold air. Blaring techno from the outside-inside stalls, or rather snippets of it. Foreign words shouted, pleasantries made violent by unfamiliarity. Dogs’ bark-echoes. And again the wallpaper of light-freckled supertowers, with no visible ending. The depths of the city buzzing.

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