Waiting room

By Marilú Acosta

When haste does not stalk your heels, we transit through the airport corridors like tunnels connecting distant points in space-time. The waiting room offers us the experience of a limbo where time does not exist, because the existence of time is only understood if there is speed and distance. Having a gate number and boarding time are data that are blurred within the unexpected adjustments of an airline. Then, waiting multiplies the room in multidimensional limbos. Here we find things that in everyday life have neither space nor time to happen. We read hard, we write creatively, we deconstruct ourselves with tranquility, because the exit coin swings in the air. Little is in our hands and we are not responsible for anything but waiting. In the waiting room we are free to exist. We can be without anything forcing us to do.

Next to us sit the meaning of life, our near future, uncertainty about the clothes we pack, the nutritional choices available, plus a list of activities we should have accomplished and others that stare at us not knowing if they will be completed or not. Depending on whether we go or return, we slip into a nostalgic past or a hopeful future. Sometimes our gaze is lost and we fall into the abyss of living five units of time, of which we do not know if they are seconds, minutes or hours. We listen to other people's conversations and come across moments of life that seem strange to us.