Pale nauseous sunlight moves below clouds that are stealing the noses of the three tallest buildings. I am, again, sitting in a phone booth waiting for a call to begin. One might allow oneself to be ruled by patterns or by facts. One might think that to be ruled by a pattern is to grant oneself recourse to dismiss the continual evidence of one’s lying eyes, and to take refuge in the eternally renewable forms. When in fact it is being ruled by facts that confines one to specificity, to crawl insect-like over the surface of things, bound to the particulars of one’s limited ambit. The call is running late.
Reflections amass and dissipate. Around various desks, analysts cluster. Catering carts rumble by. Inside a white hemisphere the size of a helmet, heaps of chopped kiwi and watermelon sweat. Senior leaders dial into calls and do not turn on their cameras. Every room on the floor is booked and none have the lights on; inside a few of them, individuals sit, laptop lights glowing from below.
A yellowness, a sepiatude, wafts over where a sunbeam might be falling. The manager behind me drops something and gropes for it on the floor. His gesture makes me think of the cat washing behind his ear. The manager has arranged a flat keyboard, ergonomic mouse, phone stand, and other slender and airily designed portable accouterments across his desk in facsimile of comfort. His denim is the same deep indigo as his jacket, and both are too small for him. I do not know him.
Gleams abound outdoors. I am typing messages to [redacted]. She is reviewing deliverables. She is going to [redacted] tomorrow. I ask if it will be her birthday while she is away. She says it will be, and thanks me for wishing her a happy birthday. She sends a smiley face emoji. She tells me my reviews are stellar, and to keep up the good work.
A glow never bursting forth into a lightning. The analysts chafe in business casual. A woman walks by in a white dress that shows the texture of her cellulite. The manager’s indigo denim creaks. Upstairs, an associate in a too-short dress drapes a blanket over her legs. An analyst brushes at another’s back, who says, “No, it’s just made that way.”
Outside it is bright without rays or beams in evidence. I am talking to my new analyst, who is sharp and kind and astute, and gentle in manner. I am both here and not, as anyone might be.
The light has gone somewhere else. [Redacted] is telling me about a theory of music she thinks is bad, that holds music spectrum, from music that works on the hips, by which the theorist means by beat or rhythm, to music that works on the head, by which the theorist means cerebral. [Redacted] thinks this theory is bullshit. I agree, I say, Cartesian dualism is bullshit, and anyway the head has two parts, the nape and the top; and the nape simply goes to the spine and down, and as we all know, something can quite easily take the top of your head right off.