indoors · corridor · beaufort 1
the passage wind
the passage wind is what happens when two doors in the same building are
opened, briefly and at the right moment, at opposite ends of the building.
it is not the outside coming in. it is the inside moving from one room to
another, very quickly, as if it had been waiting.
it carries the smell of whichever room it left — the polish of the
library, the cold soap of the
corridor, the late onions of last night's
kitchen. it shakes the curtain on door three without touching the
curtain on door four. it is brief: ten seconds, perhaps twenty. by the
time you have wondered what it was, it is over.
indoors it sounds like a single low syllable, drawn out — the building
has said your name through the keyhole. it is the wind under which the
corridor is most clearly the corridor, and
not, as it sometimes seems, a place from which to leave.
field note · viii · we tried, once, to open the doors deliberately to produce the passage wind. it would not come. it is a wind that requires accident.