Sugar cane tastes much sweeter than I can recall, so I suppose it’s alright that my right cheek has been aching all day. The lady who sold me the purple stems sliced them with such finesse that, for a brief instant, I doubted that she was just another street vendor. In one corner, wrinkly, almost obese frogs try to climb on top of one another in vain. The next stall over, a dozen chickens are stuffed into the same metal cage—repurposed claustrophobia.
But there is a distinction between the recurrent patterns of tight spaces: squeezing into a subway car during rush hour is very different from squeezing into a cable car to see the Tian Tan Buddha. The enclosed space is physically smaller, yet we do not have the same sense of impatience or urgency. Perhaps it has to do with the surrounding 360 degrees of purple and red sky. Or maybe it has to do with our proximities. An enclosure that is a different kind of sweet.