152/398
♫ Falling to the Sky ♫
152/398
I enter the corridor, completely unsuspecting, when suddenly I’m struck by a blinding flash of a vision: Simultaneously with me, thousands, even tens of thousands of people around the world enter a corridor. For some reason, I suddenly sense them, feel their emotions, think their thoughts. I am, at the same time, old and young, sad and happy, relaxed and stressed, man and woman—it’s all there, all at once, in countless corridors.
An indigenous child runs down a hallway with a toy airplane, making loud vrooming noises. A janitor prepares to get the boot outside the executive’s office at the property management company. A plumber searches for the correct nameplate; a requested massage therapist looks for the right room number in a motel. Inside the mind of a young Chinese violinist on her way to her lesson, a Mozart sonata soars, and an English literature professor with a thrown-out back on his way to his lecture hall silently recites a Shakespearean sonnet. A sense of reverential wonder creeps over a Buddhist pilgrim in a gold-adorned temple, a Russian cosmonaut floats through the station with a screwdriver in hand, and a midwife in Hawaii, almost running late, hears the screams of pain from a woman in labor…
Colleagues help me up. “Are you feeling okay?” “Should I call an ambulance?” “You look so pale!” I shake my head to wave them off. My knees are still completely wobbly, and I can barely stand on my own. “You passed out briefly. What happened?”
“We entered the corridor,” I mutter tonelessly, without any of the bystanders hearing me. Although all of this only lasted for a split second, it has become indelibly etched into my mind. I retreat to the restroom down the hall, where I splash cold water on my face until I feel like myself again, and only myself.