On either side of the Infinity Corridor there is a strip of soil creating an alternate corridor of bare earth. I do not know whether this strip runs the whole length of the paved Infinity Corridor. From what I know, it starts a few blocks down my department and runs till the end of the Corridor. The strip is not a created thing. It be-came when the parking lots were paved till almost the edge of the Corridor leaving a narrow strip of earth untouched. It was an accident much like the hole in the doughnut. Unfortunately, my eyes—every human eye, I suppose—see this strip as a thing that demands recognition as a thing that must be noticed, and that is why I notice the strip. It is not entirely true. I notice it also because there are many tiny plants, some as tall as the length of a finger, others even shorter, which stud the strip. As an outcome of my ritual of observation, I try to notice these plants, partly because of the naive bias towards ’nature’ as a better candidate for observation than buildings, and partly because the buildings are planned and hence deterministic, while the plants, as I said, are accidental.

The problem is neither the nature-culture debate nor the insignificance of the strip in contrast to the heavy signification of the buildings. The problem is that I do not remember anything about the plants. My eyes glaze over the tiny bits of green one after the other, occassionally spotting a bit of gravel and the stray bit of plastic, like the scanning head of a machine which merely capture and relay information and forget than recording and processing it. The only outcome of my observation is that I come out of the Corridor with a slight ache in my neck. And also my agony over the uselessness of this project. And at what expense? Mesmerising curves that I might spy on the Corridor. Shoes that people wear. Hairstyles. Gestures of couples in love. Gaits.

All this observation turns inwards into self-pity and indulgence in one’s own insignificance at the face of life. Nish-phalatha. The absence of fruition. All this turns into the desire for inebriation. To nurse a glass while wallowing in the depths of affectations. The trembling of ones hands and the rubbery weakness of legs. The foreboding of doom. Acid reflux. Desires unfulfilled. Stretches of time spent thrusting which does not end in a burst of pleasure. The addictive pleasure which the promise of a new tomorrow embodies but fails to materialise. The butterflies in stomach losing their wings and falling to ground. Landscape with the fall of my Icarus.