Ruthless Meetings

It didn’t transpire as I had hoped it would. I wanted a day without meetings at work so that I could devote my precious day to at least get on the halfway mark of doing that script. But meetings happened, not that they were totally unexpected. Meetings have a soporific effect on my personality. Merely ten minutes after I have sat down in the clinical, clutterless meeting room of beige walls and glass, ubiquitous IP phones, and Zorro-black PC hooked up to the network. No plants, no sign of life, except for the interspersing inhales and exhales from the equally bored stiff attendees. «What time is it? Is it nearly lunch? What are we talking about?» All eyes looked weary and mine weepy despite the forced grins and smiles and sporadic snickerings: weariness piercing the soul with voodoo pins, emasculating the senses, viciously blurring the vision. «Do you hear what I’m saying?» Somehow for a brief moment, some prized seconds encapsulating some words that went unheeded, a question posed, begged a reply. My brain hastily scanned back the words or impressions of words and applied fuzzy logic, urging me to blurt out «Yes, of course.» My eyes hurriedly put on a semblance of alertness, my calloused fingers drumming pensively on the table. «Where are the drinks? And the snackies?» My mind was slipping into a distant reverie, flying dreamily to the hazy horizon. Ghastly seconds. Grim moments that could veritably spell death on the road while managing to drive, for such lack of attention would prove fatal, without a doubt.

But it was only a meeting: one of countless and endless meetings, like a TV series where all the characters have become blandly predictable and the plot irretrievably lost, never to resurge, but rather remain in the dark abyss allocated to the minions of Beelzebub. The minutes have a way of treading on. They are mindless and have absolutely no consideration to matter, animal, much less to humans, who have become time’s slaves, with nary a chance of liberation. The minutes tread on arrogantly, assuming control, commandeering resources, with each minute passing being foisted as a gift or favour handed out to those in attendance, with foreheads furrowed with the streaks of ennui and perchance disgust buttered with disdain, sugared with the niggling desire to be elsewhere in the wicked, motley universe, replete with uncertainties and opportunities clamouring to be missed.

The arrogant minutes decided the end of the meeting, us being led back to the grill-less jail of the office desk, bravely but safely placing our butts on seats that have been reshaped by the contours of our blessed behind. Click, click, clack. Click, click, clack. The hungry keyboard whispered gleefully to the beats of rsi-prone, stiffened fingers, resonating with a cacophonous rhythm, stabbing the ears gently, while the others around pursued cryptic conversations, all sounds converging and mingling into a gargantuan white noise that the deadened ears get accustomed to. The white noise lingered, becoming a deafening silence, reverberating in the soul, reminding it that everything is the Matrix, with its plots and grids dissembling reality. But it’s all so real! The pen I hold now, the notebook I write on with its orange no-frills cover, this seat on the Richmond train, so solid it hurts down here, producing discomfort. The casual stares of people looking in wonderment: «What is that guy writing on the train about?» Most couldn’t care less: some sleepily reading Mills and Boon, or Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, or the freebie MX evening newspaper distributed by foreign students or possibly tourists wanting a bit of money to finance their stay. The other week I heard two young MX-distributing French men, of course conversing in perfect français. I wish I could speak French like that. French has been sadly forgotten like a bad dream. Can I ever truly use it again, retrieve des mots qui j’ai dejà oublié? On ne sait pas. I don’t know. I have to put in a lot of effort with that and my efforts at the moment target scribbling words and phrases, transcribing my fleeting thoughts and sensations. This has become my veritable occupation because my mind and heart are in accord with this activity, to chase the noble aim that is writing.

Fast sliding pictures of trees and fields and houses rolled by from the carriage window. Hectic seconds ticked away, fancy colours in the backdrop changed, worn-out people stood up preparing to get off the destined train station, with its white marine structural theme, where the train lines forked like a snake’s tongue into two different destinations. Two fat ladies struggled with their pace, alighting from the train. I walked quietly to the lift, leaving lazily the throng to climb up the stairs. In front of the lift, the fat ladies were there too, with their cumbersome weight seeking solace in the comfort of the lift, which bided its time in descending from the top floor. Eventually, the reluctant lift door opened up revealing a small space, empty as my brain on waking up in the morning. On the top, it opened up a tad more enthusiastically. I stepped out destined for the forecourt. An old man with short grey hair and black sweater, unusual for the warm weather, toddled cautiously with a take-away cappuccino in his left hand. Two middle-eastern guards in blue vests chatted idly in the forecourt, a CB radio blaring with a female voice being ignored perfunctorily in the excitement of conversation. At bus stand 16, the rubbish bin stood shamefully overflowing with litter, the discards of the day, the unaccommodated trash strewn on the mangy floor. Momentarily, bus 740 came. An African man went up ahead of me, having trouble with his destination, asking for something about his destination. The bus driver summarily ignored his query with a gruff, assertive «One dollar eighty. Three dollars sixty if you want to pay in full. What’ll be?» The African’s question was left ignored, unanswered as the sun proceeded setting, also unheedful of the African’s question, and all the other questions stored in my exhausted head. Morgen ist noch ein Tag.

14 December 2005