summer
I'm all alone at the office. Nothing could be more beautiful. (Except perhaps the dewey parks along the rideau river, so early in the morning that even the canada geese sit unblinking by the path. The water moves slowly, multicoloured and shiny with the low-angled light.)
My job this week is like any other week, except today it appears I am governing an empty office. I've left the door half-closed and the lights dim. Left the flourescent lights completely off. It is a warm light, soft like summer evening, not the harsh full morning that it is. The quietest place you can be in the summer it seems is work. And right now that means it is the happiest.
I've chosen a slow summer. Or not so much chosen, but ended up with. Waiting. Spending as little as possible, letting the money trickle in. Slowly washing off what stings and hurts. It could have been more purposeful, more driven, were it not for my indecisive mind. How can you be decisive when there are no forces moving you? When you're just floating? I just bask in this freeness, this space, this emptiness.
The door just slowly moved closed on its own. As if the world is shutting me out. Everything silent except the breeze from the airconditioner, which is saying 'hushh'. It is as if I've come to work at midnight, or at 4 am, like the grocer in Amelie. Some sort of cruel joke the world is playing...and how would I know? Or as if I live in some reverse world, in the night, or a world without people altogether. Not my sort of thing to notice. At the end of day I bike through the market, watching the beerdrinking crowd, the shoppers peering at jewelery stores which glitter in the dark street. Diners on outdoor tables set on stone lanes, as if Ottawa is remaking Rome or Dublin or Paris, a-plentiful with iron statues and fountains, waiters in dignified black, ready to blend with the night. When I get home at last, it's swimming time in the dark blue water. It is best during the rain. Each droplet, collecting reflections, magnifies the light around it. So I float in the warm night, everyone else is sleeping. And then I really begin work while asleep, I work in my dreams. I can't remember what I've been doing then, afterwards--but I'm certain somehow, in the morning, that I do nothing more valuable any other time.
My job this week is like any other week, except today it appears I am governing an empty office. I've left the door half-closed and the lights dim. Left the flourescent lights completely off. It is a warm light, soft like summer evening, not the harsh full morning that it is. The quietest place you can be in the summer it seems is work. And right now that means it is the happiest.
I've chosen a slow summer. Or not so much chosen, but ended up with. Waiting. Spending as little as possible, letting the money trickle in. Slowly washing off what stings and hurts. It could have been more purposeful, more driven, were it not for my indecisive mind. How can you be decisive when there are no forces moving you? When you're just floating? I just bask in this freeness, this space, this emptiness.
The door just slowly moved closed on its own. As if the world is shutting me out. Everything silent except the breeze from the airconditioner, which is saying 'hushh'. It is as if I've come to work at midnight, or at 4 am, like the grocer in Amelie. Some sort of cruel joke the world is playing...and how would I know? Or as if I live in some reverse world, in the night, or a world without people altogether. Not my sort of thing to notice. At the end of day I bike through the market, watching the beerdrinking crowd, the shoppers peering at jewelery stores which glitter in the dark street. Diners on outdoor tables set on stone lanes, as if Ottawa is remaking Rome or Dublin or Paris, a-plentiful with iron statues and fountains, waiters in dignified black, ready to blend with the night. When I get home at last, it's swimming time in the dark blue water. It is best during the rain. Each droplet, collecting reflections, magnifies the light around it. So I float in the warm night, everyone else is sleeping. And then I really begin work while asleep, I work in my dreams. I can't remember what I've been doing then, afterwards--but I'm certain somehow, in the morning, that I do nothing more valuable any other time.