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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Moved to Virginia... I hate traffic!!
Gender: Male
Posts: 311
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The Truth in Standing Still
I looked forward to the day’s end as I trudged into the wind. My destination: the overpriced, rat-infested tower of boxes that the landlord referred to as “a vertical community of friendly faces; and you don’t even have to clean the toilet.” It wasn’t his pitch that sold me—had he been a salesman he would have starved—it was the proximity to my new job.
“You work in computers,” the landlord said smirking, “what are you doing moving into this shit-hole?” I grimaced at the more accurate depiction of the building under his charge.
“You know what they say,” my voice was laced with sarcasm, “location, location, location.”
“It won’t be much longer,” I had thought to myself, “I will get promoted and the money will start pouring in. Happiness is a six-figure salary, and I’m almost there.”
The first couple of weeks at my new job whizzed by; I kept myself busy meeting new people, learning new systems, and attending classes and meetings about company policy. I was certain that I shook hands with more than 10 billion germs before the month was over.
Before long, monotony ruled my daily routine: wake up at 6:00—shower, dress, and eat—out the door at 7:30. By 8:00, I was readying my retinas for another day of abuse. I spent my breaks envisioning the lavish lifestyle I had promised myself I would attain. Of course, the reality of my situation was reiterated every time a member of management imposed on my virtual plot. “Keep up the good work,” was the catch-phrase regurgitated by the balding hall-monitors—two of which were women. I amused myself at the thought that these people probably stood in front of the mirror reciting this line, perfecting its delivery.
The co-workers I inherited were dull: their conversations consisted of geek-jargon, intertwined with the ravings of the most recent first-person-shooter. To be considerate, I ignored them.
The end of the day always seemed unattainable, like the string of a helium filled balloon dangling out of reach. Sometimes I could hear the seconds ticking away on the digital clock; I encouraged them with a fervor that often compelled me to count along. The passing of seconds was silenced as my attention shifted to counting days, weeks, and eventually months.
Four months had passed and there was no mention of a promotion. I continued to dream of the day when I would be able to afford bread and lunch meat with the same paycheck. I masked my waning optimism with witty humor and a toothy smile.
After six months of the same routine, I was exasperated. Sleep came with startling difficulty; before too long it didn’t come at all. At work I would stare blankly at the screen, allowing the repercussions of repetition to guide me through the day.
Management took notice of the catatonic state that was represented by my signature visage. My skin had become pale and translucent, my eyes were red and dry, and I had lost 15 pounds from my already frail frame. I was referred to the Company Shrink for an “assessment of mental and physical health.”
“Only you know what is really bothering you. Your supervisors say that you have great plans for yourself, and that is good, goals are what drives success,” a man with a motley collection of certificates on his wall said of me. I told him that I lay in bed at night, corroding my mind with the sour screams of modern youth—sometimes referred to as music. I had even tried drinking myself into dreaming, but my endeavors only afforded me the opportunity to plaster my clammy face to the public porcelain at the end of the hall.
I relived the same nightmarish daydream every night: my body, exhausted and wore out, begged for sleep. I felt my mind reveling in the control that was imposed by the relentless bombardment of conscious activity. I reeled as ideas poured too fast to write, and too jumbled to make sense of.
The Shrink advised me to “avoid mental fatigue, exercise regularly, and eat healthier. Maybe you should talk to your parents; there seems to be some repressed feelings that they might be able to help you with. In time,” he said while looking down at his desk, “the sleep will come back to you.” His words seemed as useless as a fishing pole in a batting cage.
Shortly after my visit with the Freudian sympathizer, I accepted my reclamation of the night-time. I used the previous hours of eye-lid slide-shows to brainstorm new ideas. I drafted cost-saving proposals and completed projects weeks ahead of schedule. Management took notice again: “you have a bright future in this company, keep up the hard work.” My heart swelled when the recognition that I deserved was finally delivered.
“Six-figures, here I come.”
The new pace wasn’t easy, and soon I was popping caffeine pills to keep up. I began to buy the bottles three or four at a time, and then by the dozen. I had lost another ten pounds. The most prominent feature of my after-shower reflection had shifted from my sunken eyes to my protruding ribs.
I had become more aware of my surroundings than ever before. On a crisp morning in the fall, a thought occurred to me: “why had I not see all this before?” The thought crossed my mind as I set a steady pace towards my monotone cubicle. At work, frustration consumed me as I struggled to concentrate. My mind had become a cell without a key; my thoughts were banshees, wailing as they searched for a way out. My work suffered from the plague of internal questioning, and without reason, I grabbed my jacket and left as quietly as I had come.
I continued to mull over the questions that consumed me as I walked the familiar path home. I became numb to the world that surrounded me, as I averted my eyes from passers-by, choosing instead to watch my feet overtake one another. My abstinence from social interaction was temporarily subdued when I bumped into a seemingly inanimate object. I stepped back to look at the object that impeded my progress.
She stood, eyes fixed, softly humming hymns from her own gospel. Each time she exhaled a mist of vapor formed in the air before her, and then dissipated in anticipation of the next breath. The light from the neon Pagan icon affixed to the side of the muted red building allowed for only the slightest view of her face. Her body was hidden under a long, dark coat with a hood.
I walked past this woman twice daily: in the morning on my way to work, and in the evening when returning home. I surged by her—as did all who used the sidewalk—like water around a boulder in a raging river. She always whispered to the rhythm that played in her mind. Sometimes she swayed while she stood, other times she was motionless. In the past, I paid no attention to this obvious societal-dropout. However, the fleeting warmth that leeched through my garments when I bumped her, forced me into the realization that this woman was more than a sidewalk ornament. I found it impossible to do anything other than gawk at her dark figure.
“Is she religious, is she homeless, does she move from that spot, does she eat?” These questions ran through my mind, and my actions became conscious only to those around me. I was unsure how long I stood there before the blare of a horn drew me from my hypothesizing. I looked towards this lady once more, and then began the process of placing one foot in front of the other. The building that held all of my material possessions came in to view, it was a rusted-out Pinto in a parking lot of shining Mercedes. I wasn’t sure how it had survived the business boom and the urban renewal projects, but there it was in all its magnificent ugliness.
When I awoke the following morning, my actions were riding the subconscious roller-coaster, while the same thoughts coursed my mind. Without reason, I found myself standing directly in front of this lady, a granola bar and a bottle of juice in my hand. I offered them to her but she didn’t move, didn’t smile, she didn’t even acknowledge my existence.
I stood for only a moment more, and then upon feeling the full affects of her rejection, continued my trek to the cramped cubicle from which I earned my ascent into future riches. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t take my offerings; I decided to try again on my way home. This woman—who never moves—has to share the same wants and desires that I do. “After all,” I mumbled to no one in particular, “what is the point of living if it is not to command those whom we could not previously command, or attain that which was once unattainable?”
The work day passed uneventfully and I avoided eye-contact with the tormenting clock. At 5:00, a herd of employees coagulated at the door, waiting their turn to exit. I waited for the crowd to die down, and then ensuring the granola bar and bottle of juice were in my jacket pocket, set out to question the peculiar woman.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my offering as I approached the woman. I stopped at arm’s distance and presented my gift. This time, the woman’s eyes searched my face, and then looked me top to bottom.
“No thanks,” she said as she looked towards my hands. I felt a frown frame my mouth, as I slowly put the items back in my pocket.
“Why do you stand here?” The words came without conscious effort.
Her eyes continued to search me, as if looking for an answer to a question that was never asked. “Why do you care,” she replied.
Why did I care? It was really of no concern to me, I was doing great at work and the promotion was so close it might teeter into my lap at anytime. There was an intrinsic value assigned to my quest of finding the reason she stood there. I was sure that my life would still continue to function as always if I was not let into her circle of knowledge. Maybe I just wanted to help this lady. So that is what I told her, “I want to help you.”
A smile drew across her face, for the first time since I had noticed this woman, her sullen demeanor had disappeared. “You want to help me?” She restated mockingly, “you can’t help me, you can barely help yourself.” The smile broke to a straight-lipped smirk, “I’m grateful for your heroics, however, I am content with my spot on the pavement. No one else wants it, so I never have to fight for it, and wouldn’t you say that the view is a thing of beauty?” After she was done speaking she turned back to the glowing, neon icon, and said nothing more.
I noticed a tinge of sarcasm in her voice as she finished her statement. “Don’t you want more for yourself, a house, a car, a place to sit?” My rebuttal was ignored by the woman, and she began to sing loudly about a bee and a flower. I turned, disgusted by the woman’s remarks, and continued home.
I was relieved that the light of the moon did not reflect upon the surface of the “vertical community” that I lived in. The thought of seeing such an appalling sight at this moment pulled at my heart. I slowly traipsed up the stairs, and arrived at the second floor feeling slightly winded. The long hall was eerily dark, and the dull yellow glow from the light bulb barely penetrated the darkness.
I walked slowly toward the door that hid my life from the outside world. The words that the woman had said to me rang through my head. “What does she mean I can’t help myself?” I turned the key in the lock and heard the deadbolt clunk open. Pushing the door open, I thought again about what this lady had said.
“Who the hell does she think she is?” I grumbled to myself. Without conscious reasoning I slammed the door shut, and twisted the key until I heard the deadbolt slide closed. Turning around, I headed for the staircase; the soles of my shoes barely touched the stairs as I rushed down them. “What gives her the right to say that?”
When I arrived at the woman’s sacred spot she was still standing there, facing her object of obsession. “Who the hell do you think you are?” I asked above the noise of the traffic. She looked in my direction as if anticipating me saying more, “what gives you the right to call me helpless?”
She studied me for a moment, just as she had done earlier, and then she began to speak. “You’re right,” she stated “who am I to tell you?”
Her comments filled my mind with fog. “Why are you just repeating what I am saying?”
“You have all the answers,” she said smiting me, “you’re asking the wrong questions.”
“What are the right questions?”
“Helpless…” she said trailing off.
“Why do you keep saying I’m helpless, I’ll have you know that I am on the verge of a promotion that will have me earning four times what I make now.” I felt proud of my conjecture and waited for her to respond.
“You think money is going to make you feel better? I recant, you don’t know the right answers either…” she started to hum again. She broke off the humming and looked at me, seemingly surprised to see me still standing there. “I was once where you’re trying to go. I made a lot of money that I couldn’t spend, my family fell apart around me, I couldn’t sleep because of the rigorous pace required to maintain my social stature.”
I stood there quietly for a moment and then burst out “Ahhh.. The hell with you, you don’t know anything anyways, you poor ass bum, you wouldn’t know fortune if it smacked you in the forehead.” At that, I turned as I had earlier in the day, and proceeded toward home.
“You’re a fool,” her words were so coarse, I felt them scrape the back of my neck as the wind carried them by me. “Your faith in money will cause you to act like a dead star, first exploding, and then imploding. The people around you will fear you and then taunt you. You will soon realize your life was grand before it was full of riches, and then, like me, you will pine for it to return. You’ll see….”
I winced at the sincerity in her words, but chose to ignore them by singing the first song that came into my mind “Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner…” ugh, the subconscious is cruel. I scoped the vicinity to see if anyone was in earshot, and after realizing that it didn’t much matter, I hurried myself home.
On my way to work the following day, I avoided looking at the woman who I had begun to despise. However, I could not close my ears to her incessant preaching that the end was coming. “…he shall bask in the glory, and then, because of one irreconcilable word his whole world shall fall around him. It won’t be long, we shall see him here…”
Upon arriving at work, I found a plain white envelope with my name handwritten in simple cursive on it. I opened the envelope, unsure of its contents, but curious no less. The letter inside was on company letterhead, and glancing towards the bottom I saw signatures from management. “This is it,” I thought to myself, “this is the day I have been waiting for.”
I could hardly contain myself as I began to slowly read the letter aloud, quietly at first, and then much louder as the realization that I was going to be promoted set in. I felt myself jump in the air and then I began to run towards the part of the building that would house my new office; no more dull cubicle for me.
The wind howls past me and the cold air is apparent in the rasp of my voice as I strain to project it to all who listen. My words are meaningful, and I pray to the star on the wall that someone will listen, hoping they don’t make the same mistake I did. “You must first be happy with who you are, everything else will fall into place….”
The woman who once stood here in front of the “Five Points Mandarin Grill” tried to heed this warning to me years ago. I failed to listen, and now I occupy the very spot that she used as a pulpit. Now, I give my faith to this neon-star that has attempted to guide so many, but has only succeeded in guiding a few. Guided by its light I shall live the remainder of my days—content with this ground I don’t have to fight for, and this glorious view that will forever be etched into my mind.
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"It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre-existent state that excites our longing like the prospect of a posthumous existence." William Hazlitt
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