Concrete Jungle

It took seconds to realise I was utterly and completely lost. I should have known my way home by then. I’d lived in that apartment for a year. I’d seen it in every season, from every angle, in all weathers. I thought I knew my way back there intuitively, like a blind person knows all the ridges their cane detects on familiar footpaths. I guess you can become wrong about something in a single second. I kept moving. Stopping and examining signs hadn’t served as a compass in any way. I didn’t know one restaurant, one bar, one shuttered shop that evening. I always thought disorientation occurred at odd moments, at times whenever the sky shut down and the atmosphere filled with fog, but there was a storybook sunset behind the heads of the buildings.

I had never been properly lost before – momentarily displaced, yes, but lost – no. I’d lived in major cities all my life, globe-trotting with my worldwide company. It had given me the freedom to explore and see myself in so many different scenarios. I’d always done everything solo, relying entirely on myself and a virtual map on the rare occasion I needed it. I’d left my phone at home that night – of course I had. It wasn’t something I made a regular practice of doing, but it was a new, intentional decision of mine. I’d told myself I didn’t need it. I didn’t like how tied I was to my email inbox. Even at weekends, I could never switch off. There was always someone whispering written words into my ear in the middle of the night, demanding a typed response. I’d decided it was time to create some distance between myself and my device. I’d left it sitting on the side table and I’d walked out, feeling freer than I had in years.

The city was my oyster that evening. It was a long, languorous summer evening and it felt like I could do or be anything I wanted to. I planned to wind my way through every street in a two-mile radius, spotting things I hadn’t ever noticed with my face glued to my phone. It was strange, noticing just how much I’d missed until that point. It was eye-opening, and strange how I felt myself constantly reaching into my pocket for the phone that wasn’t there. I did it without even choosing to do it. It had become as natural as yawning or sneezing or inhaling the heady scent of a summer rose. It felt like a body part of mine was missing and I couldn’t operate as effectively without it. That was how conjoined we were. I was stepping out into the city, not just for myself, but for the zombified nation of phone over-users we’d become.

I could have allowed myself to become panic-stricken, grasping for something I knew to hold on to, but I didn’t let the unknown faze me. It was an opportunity to be whatever I wanted to be. I liked the fact I knew nothing and that no one knew me. I’d been living in London for a year, and I hadn’t even scratched the surface of what there was to discover. I stepped into a bar with a streetside terrace. It was a beautiful place to sit in the summer sun. I sat there almost empty-handed: no phone to scroll through, no emails to be dealt with, no notes to be read over. I only held a fluted glass of prosecco and let the bubbles bounce towards my nose. It was enlivening, not knowing where I was, drinking a drink I ordinarily wouldn’t choose. I’d always been a vodka and coke girl: predictable and safe in my drinking habits. Maybe that was how I ventured so far afield and did so many things; the drink remained a constant in my life, just like my morning coffee did, just like my capsule wardrobe did, just like my email address and my internal compass never changed.

I was approached by a man that asked to share the table with me. There were plenty of others available , so I told him “no.” It took bravery on my part to do that. I couldn’t have predicted his reaction and there was no sign of a bouncer or any security staff nearby. He took my “no” seriously and backed away respectively. I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t in the mood to make conversation with a stranger. There was something “off” about this night and I needed to assess it alone, to figure out what was going on, alone.

I sat for a long time, enjoying the balmy evening heat. I removed my shoes and let them rest on the support of my seat. It was freeing. Whenever my legs started to cramp up, I resumed walking, still having no idea where I was going but hoping that eventually, I’d end up somewhere I recognised and find my way back home. I could have asked someone, but what was the point in ruining the adventure? I had no idea what was to come.

As I proceeded deeper into the city, or out of it, depending on whatever way I was going, I felt the air heating up. I noticed the lack of greenery. It was depressing whenever I did. There were concrete blocks everywhere, each one a copy of the last. They were a modern solution to housing shortage, but there was something about them that lacked character. They were nothing like the traditional British buildings I knew so well. Nothing could be told apart. I wondered how people even inserted their keys into the correct doors – they were like 3D photocopies of each other.

The air grew thick with humidity. Each breath felt like it took more effort. I removed my jacket and cardigan. It was tropical in temperature. That was the only way to describe it. Then, out of nowhere, a tiger pounced into my path. It was vibrant orange with definite black stripes. It moved in its characteristic prowl, and I didn’t know where to place my body. Surely, I must have been dreaming? Maybe I’d walked for so long my mind had started to sleep before my body took rest.

I saw trees sprouting up around me – not just new, baby trees – established ones with trunks that could have contained hundreds of rings. They weren’t the typical trees you’d see in London. They looked like they belonged to a rainforest. I saw a toucan landing on the leaf of one, cawing and flying off. I must have been hallucinating. I wondered if someone in the bar had slipped something into my coffee. Maybe I looked too uptight, and they thought I had to loosen up. Maybe I looked disoriented, in a bad way. I looked down at the ground and it had become a forest floor. There were multicoloured leaves, fungi and logs everywhere, tree frogs, spiders the span of dinner plates, monkeys swinging from tree to tree. If it was a hallucination, I was amazed by how realistic it was. It looked real enough to harm me, by bite, poison or sting. I couldn’t identify any of the vegetation. The closest I had to come to it had been a few years ago whenever I watched a documentary about the Amazonian rainforest. Nothing was making any sense. Maybe it was brought on by anxiety, by not being able to find a single thing I recognised. But I couldn’t stop my eyes opening to bursting and taking in all the sights around me. They were miraculous – something I’d never seen in real life before. They weren’t beginning to dissolve away to nothing the way that I expected a vision to. The sounds and smells were growing in strength. I jumped sideways as a snake targeted me. It wound itself around my body and I felt my skin ripple with fear. It compressed me until I was wrapped so tightly, I had no chance of ever escaping. I submitted to its power. It was a creature that I’d never encountered before and this might be my last encounter with any living thing, I realised. I tried to whisper to it, to encourage it to release me, but it had no impact. The snake had decided I was dinner and there was no way to talk myself out of that. Phone or no phone, I was completely immobile. It’s funny how a single second can transform the look of everything. Soon, I had no view. I could just absorb the last jungle elements with my other senses. As I resigned myself to my fate, the snake suddenly sprung open, releasing my limbs and slithering away into obscurity. The trees slid back down to the ground like they were growing in reverse, the wildlife became less wild – toucan became pigeon, monkey became nimble cat. I was just there, lying in the middle of nowhere, in a jungle of concrete, wondering how my adventure had become so adventurous, so dangerous, so bizarre. I started walking again, back in the direction I came. That was enough adventure for one day. I was starting to miss my phone.