It was murdering him. The slight pulsation from the fluorescent lights above. The overriding ambience of anxiety percolating through the office. The offensive irrelevance of the emailed question he was trying to answer. They cut at him like thieves. Bleeding his very will, and stealing it away.
Within the headphones he wasn't even technically allowed to be wearing at work, silence fell. Williams' favourite Zwan song ended. The maddening hum of his computer, and coughs from his coworkers filled the dead space. Not only did Williams mind ache, but his heart, his soul. If the consequences weren't as devastating, Williams would have banged his head through his monitor and put an end to this monotony without any hesitation.
The cursor blinked at the edge of a half finished word on his last line of script. It took everything within not delete it. All of it, every sentence, each word, was pure, uninspired drivel. Beyond his name not an ounce of substance, nor a sliver of truth graced the reply. To be fair, neither did the email he was responding to. More hoops from HR, songs, dances, eye-rolling, skin peeling posterizing. Where had he gone wrong?
Williams' forefinger scrolled upwards, and he examined the four sentences he'd scribed. There was artistry there. A ballet of bullshit. Scored by exasperated groans. There was no space for self congratulations. No liberation with irrelevant back-patting.
He leaned backwards into the marginal give the stingy office chairs would allow. His fingers coursed through the silky grease of his thinning hair. Around his neck age hung a drowning weight. From the grave his inevitable mortality whispered, it teased. It pointed an arthritic boney finger at Williams, and the cubicle where he allowed the best hours of the day to extinguish. This. The words. The task. Unbearable. A far cry from the promises poised from post secondary.
Those crisp, inspired, autumnal days on campus echoed from an eternity away. The crunch of past footsteps marched from lecture to library, to one social event or other, drummed over Williams's psyche. Providence and poetry, his school days were teeming. Pungent aromatic clove cigarettes, vomiting falafel after evenings chasing cheap wine with philosophical debates into the witching hours, dense black and white foreign art films, reciting his own rhythms and rhymes at cafe readings and open mics. Tired similes and simple stanzas, his pen good enough for new friends, short lived romances, and a robust, overbearing ego. Joyful years wrapped with a degree that guaranteed fortune.
How had it ended up this way? When did those wondrous, defining hours disintegrate? How could he, a man of poetry, a man of substance, end up in an existence like this? On an irrelevant treadmill, with no horizons, no heights in sight. Lateral. Existing. A lifetime went in, a marginally respectable wage came out. Williams could weep.
His eyes roamed from his workstation to a glimmer of light reflecting off a brass thumbtack holding a dangling framed photo of his daughters against his cubicle wall. Thinking of them only accumulated more weight, more ache. Thoughts latched themselves to the heavy chains of his job. Once linked, the sudden incinerating reality ignited, bathing his neurons in flames, the horror etching itself across his face.
A cold sweat broke over Williams’s forehead. Panic clenched his lower spin like a vice grip. His stomach swayed, and he looked to his wastebasket for safety. The absurdity of the memo's words grew like a fog, churning his gut. Answering had the broken man swimming against a currant of cascading red waves.
The dizzying dread of his reality mounted higher, suffocating Williams, crushing his lungs. He looked again to his children and felt worse. Their photo sent him spiralling. What had he become? Where was the young optimistic dreamer who crusaded for truth. Who pushed himself to change the word. His gut lurched and he folded into fetal position, his limbs dangling above the weathered burgundy carpet.
Social paranoia sent him back upwards and he glanced around checking whether any coworkers had seen him. This couldn't be it, this couldn't be his life. What happened to the poetry? Artist residencies in Europe, French cobblestones and cigarettes, Italian coffee and wine. There was no inevitable spell of paintings, no gallery invitations. No romantic weekends in Mediterranean islands. Williams hadn't even left the state he'd grown up in.
A single look dared through his fingers. The email blinked back. Unwaivered. Unfinished. With a groan he rose, his head collapsing onto his palm for support as he hunched over, and again scrolled over his response. From the small homemade picture frame, the only decoration in his space, the eyes of his daughters bore within. Guilt roared. But before his despair got the better of him, fortune guised in epiphany opened his mind.
Whether it was grand or not, there was artistry in his responses and tactics in the work. Inspired? Beautiful? No, not nearly. But crafted, and tuned. A clever mastery that was hard to argue with. Far from a lyrical stretch, his diplomacy, and inoffensive line walking gave the impression of a bootlicker, and kept him far from the heel, hidden and sailing through the ups and downs of his work life unbothered.
Inspiration struck and Williams grabbed a pen and fresh page from the printer. Cheap, and more frustrating than useful, he ran the ballpoint across his scratch pad with more aggression than was necessary, impatient to pour the cascading realizations. The equation was simple. Williams had always dreamt of making artistic works that would change the world. While time, and some somewhat cowardice decisions had steered him far from that course, that didn't mean he was completely out of the running. From the spilt blue ink he looked back up to the photo, this time with a smile. While he may not shake the globe, there was still time for his art to change the lives of his two sweet daughters.
Most wouldn't find the giggles and awe of two children under the age of five much of an accolade. But Williams could. He leaned from the page back to the small comfortable give of his chair and crafted their life. He thought of classes they could take together, painting, photography, soaking clay caking their little arms in pottery courses. Williams beamed.
He daydreamed further. Reading the girls Shakespearian plays and sonnets, performing Summer productions in the garden together under the dramatic dusks of late sunsets for his wife and in-laws. When he returned to the pen, Williams made a list. As he started to draft all the things he thought might be available to the children he stopped, thought better of it, turned the page and began again.
This time Williams categorized every craft he couldn't wait to relive again, or dare to learn for the first time. Inspired by the prospect of sharing these passions with his children his eradicate heartbeats steadied. Beside each pursuit, the poetry, the music, the choirs, performance troupes, and so on, he wrote a number. An age that might be the most appropriate. He connected the points into a constellation. Above the imagined timeline, in the top right corner he scribbled "There's no point in forcing things, only in playing."
Wind in his sail Williams spun back to his keyboard. Between the lines he turned a phrase, answered what was asked of him, and spread some subtle compliments. Polite pleasantries, at one time his hallmark, had fallen lost to mundane and unchallenging office ambience. But he was back, if only for his own benefit. Motivated to return home in the right headspace to show his daughter worlds unknown. While his life may not be adorned with infamous golden statues or prizes, Williams and his girls could still live one filled with poetry.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out the previous 12 part collection of Zoditraxx, and consider the other side of subtle dualities.
-Mr. Write
PS: Be sure to check out Exaggerated Shadow’s new release for Falling to Pisces on all your favourite streaming platforms!