The placement of my computer on my desk forces me to look away from the window much of the day. Even if I switched things up, I wouldn’t be able to see much. The roof of a gas station. A high-rise a few blocks away. Old houses converted into apartment buildings.
What I do look at when I’m facing the “right way” at my desk is a plain, blank white wall. I can see my standing files out of the corner of my eye, and Sarah’s plants on top of a file cabinet in the corner. I can see the desk lamp that I never use. I can see the mess of papers just to my left. My stapler on top of a Rolodex full of business cards I never reference.
My other senses are just as deprived. I smell nothing – but then I’ve never been a big scent person. The noises I hear are city noises – the same as I hear at my apartment. Cars go by, the occasional bus. There are sirens – sometimes people shouting. If I open the window I can make out the voices of clients talking as they enter or exit the building, but I cannot decipher their words. From down the hall, I hear Lee answering the phones – occasionally there is a hint of frustration in his voice as he explains, yet again, that we won’t be taking rental or utility calls until NEXT Monday.
It’s a perpetual answer. Next Monday.
Now I struggle to even recall the other senses that should be stimulated. Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste – I certainly can’t taste anything, except the remnants of sour cream from my Taco Bell lunch – ah, that’s it. Touch.
I feel the keys under my fingers as I type. The pressure of the desktop against my forearms. The strain on my knees from crossing my legs, the chair against my back, the tension in my shoulders. The straps of my sandals against my feet as I wiggle my toes.
What is absent from all of this? What is this intangible that I am missing so much, that I am longing to encounter in my work. What am I not sensing that I want to be? What is causing this lack of passion.
It is a disembodied quality that makes me feel absent from my world. And maybe it is because there is not much in my world that is stimulating. Not much to arouse in me that sudden sense of oneness with the world and passion for it. That sense of deep, urgent need for peace and justice and freedom that can overcome you without warning. That is not something that is here. That is no longer a thing I feel or encounter.
Instead, I am here with my feet going to sleep from sitting still too long, the sound of buses driving by, and a blank white expanse of wall, stretching out in either direction – unmarked by the colors and confusion of people who need that I know is present eight feet below me.
I am so close.
And yet still so very far away.
