It's a short story written like the autobiography of a Roman soldier that becomes immortal accidentally on purpose. It's rich, surreal, has a lot to say about the nature of the infinite and mortality and human identity and this post isn't about any of those things. (but definitely read the story, it's good I promise)
While still mortal, the character goes looking for the City of the Immortals and the fabled river that gives its inhabitants immortality. It's an appropriately long and shitty journey (the story uses The Odyssey as a motif often), but he finally reaches the City, alone. The City is on top of a stone platform that he has no way to climb, but eventually he manages to find the entrance to a subterranean labyrinth.
He cannot recall how much time he spent down there, how many rooms and hallways the labyrinth has, because... well, it's a labyrinth and he was tired and scared. Finally, he finds an exit, he climbs up, sobbing in gratitude, and reaches the City of Immortals.
Which is empty. Worse, it makes no sense. Windows too high or too hidden to make sense, stairs that go nowhere. Giant, ornate doors that open to tiny jail cells, steps that are all different heights. You get the idea. Architectural chaos.
The narrator becomes more and more agitated by this, he ends up more terrified of the City than the labyrinth he had to navigate to get there. He is grateful to find the labyrinth again and crosses it almost in a haze, so grateful he is to be out of the horrible City.
The narrator then makes the observation that a labyrinth was built to be confusing and hostile. The City just... was.
A labyrinth's purpose is to get men lost. He didn't enjoy the experience of being there, but he understood it. The City, on the other hand, had no such purpose. It was confusing and hostile as an unintended effect. No man was ever meant to be walking through it. In a way, he was the labyrinth's opponent. Here he was just an intruder.
And the first time I read that story I was still living in Argentina and I remember thinking "wow how wild this city not built for humans to exist in, imagine how horrible and weird that would feel"
I reread it today and it just made me recall the last time I was in Omaha, Nebraska, walking back to a hotel from a wedding reception. This was downtown, which is at least semi-walkable. But it was late enough that we were alone. And we walked past a building with a huge ventilation shaft that vented... right at street level. It was taller than we were, spitting hot, stale air on us, and screaming all the industrial noises produced by whatever size HVAC system is needed to keep a massive office building at comfortable temperature.
And I remember feeling weirdly uncomfortable, walking by. Physically, yes. Hot air and loud noises do that. But also because I couldn't shake the feeling that I was an intruder. I was never meant to be walking there. The people that designed that building and its huge concrete ventilation shaft at street level, right on the sidewalk, didn't ever consider the discomfort of people walking by for the same reason they don't consider the discomfort of people crawling through the vents.
And I feel versions of that whenever I find myself in any suburb as well. Only instead of giant vents, it's the long blocks and dead ends, the sidewalks that disappear, the street lights that don't ever change to allow me to cross, the lack of shade or places to sit.
A lot of the US is built like that. Like existing outside of a car is something that only happens by mistake. It's hostile to humans but only on accident. Humans were never meant to intrude.
