How to pack for a trip to the cinema in Rio in the height of summer:

Take a jumper. Possibly a jacket. Wrap up warm because the air conditioning will be strong.

We do not usually have it on at my grandma’s house. We prepare carefully for this trip with

our extra clothes, ready for an environment outside our control – but unlike usual, the

forces behind it are human, not meteorological. Winter within summer and this British

climate in Rio is artificially created. Controlled uncontrol?

What material textures remind you most of the desired warmth? Corduroy. Moletom. It

means something made from sweatshirt material but I like it better in Portuguese because it

sounds like mole – soft, malleable, squishy – just like the clothes. Take a special, soft

jumper, fleecy inside; a favourite one you have not worn for weeks, not since you arrived.

The plushness and warmth of it feels other as you – awaitedly – become cold enough to put

it on, trying to be subtle and not disturb the other cinemagoers at the same time as wishing

to be a little conspicuous to an audience within an audience, wanting it to be noticed that

you too are cold enough to add a layer. You have acclimatised, or even better, you belong.

At the end of the film, you emerge blinking from the artificial chill and the fantasy world of

the story and back into the real world of damp heat, pressing in on you like a steam bath.

Back in the cinema, the feeling of your own cold skin. You wait to feel the cold, get

distracted by the film, and then realise it has arrived. You clasp a hand to your own arm. It

feels chilled. You can feel its surface. Upper arm senses clammy palm. Your own fleshliness

is revealed by the feeling of something refrigerated under your hand. Malleable. Squishy.

Not you, and then you realise that it is. Perturbance curbed by the curiosity of feeling your

own outward self like another would – perhaps. Of feeling like another.

I still like the feeling of air conditioning sometimes, although it seems counterintuitive to

prefer something synthetic. I like the feeling in ‘real’ life of physically stepping into

something fabricated. Other things I like: airports, blue electrolyte drinks, anonymous chain

coffee shops, supermarkets, McDonalds, shopping malls, protein bars, Ikea – an escape into

the manufactured and often purposefully palatable, complete with a sense of unreality.

Non-foods and non-spaces. Many of these are places with air conditioning.

Places you pass through, often without paying too much attention to your surroundings.

Unremarkable but not routine. But what if I stopped to rest here a while?

Controlling the temperature creates a suspension of reality so that as long as you are visiting

this place, you can gain distance from the everyday while still being in it. You notice things

you ordinarily might not, or look at them a different way. Or, a suspension of reality gives

permission for play. Daydreaming. A sense that we might imagine being someone we want

to try out being for a moment, in that moment. Not a place to live for good, but that can be

fun to visit for a while. And then you return to real life, step out and let the warmth of the

street wash over you. Like a steam bath.

Am I wrong to feel at home for a moment in the un-home? I know it is a privilege to feel this

way – that while no-one belongs here, some un-belong more than others. Back in summer

in Rio, a trip to the mall to escape the heat and the first thing that hits you along with the

cold of the aircon is the smell of Expensive. The customer is always the right temperature.

Air Conditioning >