After that, I remembered I had lunch with you. I grappled if I should tell you, especially at Delifrance, your favourite café. But you knew something was up the moment you saw me. I could never hide anything from you. Worry was already burrowing in your eyes, your brows tensing into a knot. You set the menu you were holding on the table, and I heard you take a big breath. Your shoulders rose in slow motion.
That’s when I told you.
Eden
︎
So this is eden, my name fully realised in steel and glass. Everything inside it feels too precious to touch. It’s a museum, and even the trees feels like they are behind some glass wall. Even though the area surrounding the vortex is free-of-charge, it still feels like you have to pay to be anywhere near it. This is half true: you’d have to pay to get into the gardens and mazes on the top floor. There’s even a suspended walkway made of nets. All of that perhaps makes more sense to a family of three rowdy children than to me. But, to me, a child way past the prime of youth, paying for a good meal’s worth of cash to walk about in the glorified version of a funhouse never made sense. Maybe Moshe Safdie, the architect of this borderline cyberpunk venture would have disagreed to have those attractions. Maybe the developer wanted to soften Jewel’s image, to not make this mall a glorious homage to capitalism but instead a wonderland for all.
