Corridors
I like the word corridor. I like what it means and what it implies. A passage. The single, only way to get somewhere. I started looking at images of corridors and hallways on Google. This will show up in my browsing history forever. Google now knows in early 2023, I sought out the longest hallway in the world. It turns out to be the RAF Mount Pleasant Corridor in the Falkland Islands. It’s over 2000 feet long. It has a nickname: the “Death Star Corridor”. But I can’t find a good picture of it, probably because it’s on a military base.
The Falkland Islands seems like the right place for such a long corridor. I wish I was the kind of person who might resolve to visit the RAF Mount Pleasant Corridor. But then it would really suck to fly there and get a hotel room, only to find out the corridor was off-limits to civilians. Then I’d be stuck in the Falkland Islands, and I’d wander around on the beach, kicking pebbles and shivering.
The longest corridor in America is actually called a “hallway” which makes it far less compelling, and indeed from the pictures I’ve seen, it is absolutely not flying across the country to traverse. This hallway belongs to the Boca Raton Innovation campus. It’s 907 feet long. It’s got very ugly carpet and looks totally mundane.
I discovered as I Googled “corridors,” that I was looking to feel an anxiety that is often evoked by liminal spaces. These are spaces which were meant for the traffic of people but are now deserted. These include long empty passageways lit by failing fluorescent lights, vacant office complexes with carpets discolored by the footprints of former furniture, and abandoned malls with dried fountains and shuttered storefronts.
Seeing liminal spaces evokes a feeling I had long ago, when I first experienced myself between two mirrors that are very slightly out of alignment. I glimpsed my reflection replicating into infinity. It was a paradox, and it reminded me of old horror movies on Channel 11. Peering into the infinite corridor created by those receding reflections amplified my solitude. Each frame was a world in which I was the only occupant. I would never encounter Peter Cushing holding a candelabra, but if I traveled deep enough I would I would meet myself as a old man. And it’s true, really, that I am within a corridor, a passageway, framed by the yesterdays and tomorrows before and behind my present self.