It’s currently time for lunch and the space is empty. I believe it’s due to mid-semester break or something, but it’s still quote empty, and in a way it feels troubling that it is. It’s not, but it feels like.

I guess I’m just feeling a little lonely still. Alone. In this space usually filled with sounds and murmurs, but now just still. Machinery here and there, people shuffling about, but far fewer than usual. You can almost hear the silence. You can almost feel it. It’s odd. Or not, but I’m claiming it is as I can and am, so… yeah.

Just sitting here, writing. Trying to work out where to go next. Trying to work out how I carve a path from here to the end of the day. Trying to figure out a lot of things and figuring out nothing in the process. But that’s okay. It could be worse. Could be better, too, but could be worse.

So I’m sitting here and I think I can hear the sound of air conditioning. It’s so intensely a background noise that it could almost not be there. The sound could almost just be structural design. Another machine is humming, and it might be warming up. I don’t know; I’m not a machine person. At least with most things I am not.

Sitting here, thinking to myself. Does this place exist as a place if no one is here to experience it? Well, yes, but (sorry to repeat myself) a place is more than just its physical existence, I think. It’s also the people who participate in it. It’s the activity within a place that helps it exist as one, but this creates a secondary place. It’s still physical, of course, but it’s the structure of interaction and activity that creates a secondary version of the place, and I’m trying to think of the term I want to use that I feel best describes this, but I’ve got nothing right now. Such is life. It’s all good and it’s all groovy.

So I sit here I sit here in a place that is empty and a place that is still. And of course it’s not empty, but it feels empty, but I’m going with that. I’m sitting here, writing about it and writing about how it’s odd to me, but it’s all okay. It’s all fine. There are other, more important things to think about, like when the best time to go downstairs will be. After going down the stairs, I will of course have to go up the stairs later. I need to prepare myself for this. I need to make sure that I know what I’m doing and how I’m going about doing it.

And so everything continues on and I feel myself sitting here. I know that I am sitting here. I know that I am trying to take up space and words and weave them into something that creates imagery, and maybe I’ve just circled a little too much into a swirl that has gotten far too close to its final point, and so what is left? Other than the sound of a door?

And now I can hear voices, and it approaches as though a storm. It approaches as though heavy waters, and I cannot tell if it is coming from downstairs or somewhere else on this floor. It grows loud and almost joyous. It holds a certain passion, and it surges and heaves, and diminishes. It shrinks down back into a level, thick layering, and it continues on forever and ever, droning, cutting into the silence. Replacing the place with a new place. A new form, taking over, moving, moving, moving somewhere, spreading out and moving some more. It does not stop. It is unrelenting. It is not unpleasant, however. It strips back the sense of isolation. The sense of loneliness. That’s something I can get behind, but in a way it makes it more difficult for me to embrace some sadness and milk it for all it’s worth, and then some. Ah well.

The building fills with life and it remains as it always was, but the feeling of its colours and shades and tones changes. The structure no longer feels as cold and rigid as it did before. It no longer feels like an isolating place, uncaring about its visitors. And the building itself becomes more difficult to notice. Sure, it must still be navigated, but that’s something else entirely. That’s not something to be concerned with or worry about. It’s easy enough to do and it’s done on a regular enough basis, anyway. You learn the shape and where to walk, and everything starts coming easy, and then it’s all grand and nice and all that other stuff.

And now the sound is spreading further, having consumed downstairs entirely. It is now coming up here, spreading even further. Spreading thinner, almost. It is expanding, but it is stretching. It is not growing. It is reaching, and now there are holes audible from where most of it is coming from. It continues on, spreading further and further, stretching out, breaking apart. Fragmenting, no longer able to hold a shape. It keeps on fragmenting, it changes its form and the space changes with it.

There are holes of loneliness, of isolation, and they are avoided, but the change shape with the sounds. They are moving around each other and circling, spreading in and around and growing and shrinking, and it continuously changes shape. Everything keeps changing, and some of the sound now grows distant, moving away, dragging itself along, dragging and breaking apart, trying to survive and failing to do so. And it goes on and on, and then it goes on some more, and it slowly disappears.

More sound clusters here, growing loud, louder, and louder still. Loud in a mostly quiet space, when there is no need, and it feels unnecessary. It feels too much, and lacking thought. Minimally cacophonous.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:26:91

I had what I felt was some good thought going on when I was writing this. However, I don’t think it panned out as well as I thought it would.

Written at work.