Solitary: 7

Observations and analysis, like those concerning humor, were not formed and polished on the first pass. Instead, Josh felt flickers of feeling and thought in incomplete sentences. These accrued over indeterminate spans and were ripe to be gleaned in the refrains of his day. The beds left by the days as they cut through him were rife with tiny nuggets he used to enrich his life. The banal was transfigured through the process of abstraction. His life could be connected to something grandiose and removed from the fourteenth floor like philosophy. He thought for the same reason a child made believe: to take him away. Abstraction was a means of pain management.

Focus was useful, too. A CT’s goal was speed and accuracy, not comprehension. It was best, from an output standpoint, to terminate curiosity or sympathy. Optimally, few specifics from these letters registered in the front of his mind while on the clock. This would affect the same end as abstraction: distance from awareness of the present moment and its concreteness. Josh oscillated between these two approaches.

Eventually, fatigue set in and neither could protect him. The concrete burst through. Data accumulated on a discomfiting scale, restricting the flow of energy with emotional sediment. After another hour and no less than three responses to facial tissue chaffing complaints, he could go no further. His hands went still and he stared through the screen. He dragged his index finger across the space between the function and number keys. He rolled the dust into a wad between his thumb and pointer. He flicked it in the general area of his trash can. He craned his neck backwards and closed his eyes. He let his chin rest on his chest. You can’t get to the end unless you go through the middle. What’s the middle? What is my middle? It is so arid and pointless. Not mindless. If only it were mindless, then I could use my imagination. It takes up just enough of my thoughts…The end, though, what’s the end? Not appreciation or respect. Not success worth talking about with others. No accolades. Not even an attaboy. Just a pittance automatically deposited biweekly. Just going home Monday through Friday to listen yourself chew your food and hear footsteps squeaking above you. The whir of an oscillating fan in the summer and the pings of a radiator in the winter. Over and over again, and that’s what I’m working for?

Thanks to Camus, Sisyphus has become a cliché mascot for the team of modern individuals. The repetition of the tasks, the lack of an identifiable purpose commensurate with the effort exerted, the impersonal cruelty of the medium and the surface (i.e., how easy for the rock to roll downhill and how hard for the rock to roll uphill) all summated into the absurdity of human life as most Joe Six-Packs and Jane Does lived it. But this story of a big stone and big muscles did not describe Josh’s life. His charge and his abilities were divested of any of the legend’s silver lining of significance. Sisyphus shoved boulders up a mountain. Josh flicked pebbles into a pond. Sisyphus was a clever king who had crossed the gods. Josh was a feckless plebian who would not dare take on middle management. He occupationally expended himself creating items that, in all likelihood, went straight into the trash can (real or electronic) upon receipt after a glance at the first few sentences. He was manning a station that could, would, and (from a stockholder’s perspective) likely should be automated. What use is there anymore for a typist? Am I really fighting for that anyhow? Labor, generally, was passé. Software was vogue. It was a tantalizing prospect from ownership’s perspective: more manhours a day, less men. At other firms, Josh’s ‘job’ was performed in large part without so much as a push of a button, where customized programs pulled from relevant fields and patched together vacuous, vague e-mail responses indistinguishable from his own. The only reason his position existed was it excused First’s shameless profiteering in a niche market. Customers F1rst charged its clients a handsome fee for its “human-centered” approach. Whereas similar corporations lowered overhead and raised productivity through heavily integrating technology, First prided itself on its “living, breathing compassion.” This approach was bankable, PR-wise, and attracted companies concerned with an image of personableness (a concern usually taking root after bad press). The people who worked to create the image of personableness did not feel like a valued commodity, though. The affects of employment in the CT position were (at least for Josh) a vertiginous cocktail of guilt (for being paid to do a job so obsolete), spite (for being paid to do a job so meaningless), and dependence (for the aforementioned pay).

Josh slumped forward and rested his elbows on his desk like a man under duress. He slowly pushed his hands over the sides of his head and ears. He linked his hands over his crown. He was not disappointed. Disappointment was a child learning clouds were not fluffy solids after all and, therefore, could not hold your weight should you somehow get yourself up there. He was inconsolable. He fumed uncontrollably like an overheated nuclear reactor. His life’s overarching dream was not dying. It was dead. It was now shriveled and rotting into a furry, ugly mound in his core. Like psychic arthritis, the semi-conscious memory of what he aspired to ached constantly. He had wanted to be great, but did not have a clear concept of what greatness was. The superlative functioned like an intangible, publicly verified quality. For many years, Josh ran on the fuel of favorable assessments (gold stars, report cards, trophies, etc.). Now, there was no feedback—at least not from anyone Josh thought qualified. There was only cold silence like something lunar.

What was so terrible about the Real World adults had referenced with so much foreboding was not the responsibilities (i.e., overwhelming demands or long hours). University involved its own taxing duties, all of which could be as cumbersome or as easily shirked as their Real counterparts depending on the student/adult. What was so terrible was how alien it was. The Real World, made up of a haphazard array of systems and conglomerated governing bodies, did not care. It was bereft of concern. College would be the last time people are paid to take an interest in another person and his development, doctors and therapists notwithstanding. The encouragement and support ceased. Adults were on their own and known to be readily replaceable. You had your chance, fair and square, and this is what you grew in to. Be it or go away.

Adding insult to injury, his undoing was not the consequence of his choices. He had no more chosen them than a sponge chooses the dishwater. He was immersed in them from youth. His was instructed in the principles behind discontent. “You are special.” He was a good boy and, when his father left randomly, he filled the vacuum in his mother’s heart. He had taken to saying “yes ma’am,” making meals of cereal for two, and always putting his tennis shoes in his closet every night by his own initiative. His specialness went unquestioned. It seemed like a given, his unique mode of being, an ontological attribute. “You can do anything.” In his room underneath fire truck emblazoned jersey sheets, the fading and pilling of which gave the tableau an impressionist aesthetic, he listened to the story of the light blue train fueled by the Power of Positive Thinking. “You get what you deserve.” “You are what you do.” At school behind diminutive desks, the underbellies of which overlaid with archaic mucous like brail to searching fingers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed children were spooned egalitarian, meritocratic, and carcinogenic principles.

All of this well-intentioned encouragement and idealistic teaching had an ugly shadow which was visible in silence. What’s that make me? If you don’t do something (something really special) then you aren’t anything. This was the quintessence of cruelty: he could not properly be blamed, and yet he was punished. It was not his fault. It was merely his.

Josh drummed his fingers. There is a line beyond which thought, the interior counselor, should not go. Knowing himself, or at least his tendency to overthink, Josh knew he ought to cut this line of thought. The last of the cold, bitter liquid sloshed in his mouth and down his throat. More coffee.

Dejection

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

Desperate to say something, Benjamin grabbed a flyer that had been left on the grey cafeteria table. In haste, he flipped the paper over and riffled through his pocket for a pen. Feeling the plastic, he closed his fingers around it and brought it into the artificial light with the rest of him. With thoughts of his lover on his mind, he scrawled the following message:

I wish I could tell you something beautiful, like that every person has a single truth in his heart that he needs to tell the world. But I can't. I can't lie to you. Nothing beautiful stays. Whatever is beautiful--if anything is--is always being renewed. As soon as I would tell you, you'd start to forget it. Then it would die into nothingness, never to be remembered. That's our destiny--to become as much of a non-entity after death as we were before birth. I'd hate to tell you something beautiful because it would only go to nothing in the end. Everything is always dying because consciousness is fickle. That's what I'm most afraid of--becoming nothing. I tried so hard in my youth to get the attention of others because it felt as though they kept me alive with their looks. I could never keep up though. I died too often, and now I'm too old and too tired to try. Writing you this letter is the only way I know how to keep myself around anymore. Since I have no intention of giving it to you, I've succumb to relying upon myself to keep my self alive. It's narcissistic, I know, but it's better than letting go of my grip on

Benjamin stopped writing. He grew frustrated and wanted to leave. He crumbled up the piece of paper, picked up his books, and left. On his way out into the setting sunlight, he dropped the note into a trashcan he passed by. He saw it land on top of a plastic cup full of ice before walking on. The wind was warmer than the surrounding air and felt to him like being breathed upon.

He passed some of his peers. He did not recognize their faces, but overheard familiar discussions about recent parties. His level of dejection increased and he lowered his gaze to watch the sidewalk. He intended on visiting a patch of nearby trees, although he had no intention of stopping there. Benjamin was unsure about where to settle. He hated how his emotions turned against him and how, in so doing, made light of themselves. Now he was in a frenzy; by this time tomorrow, he thought, he may be feeling fine and laughing with Aubrey. He was disgusted by the progression of time and its way of belittling the present. He felt himself small and hopeless.

A patch of grass at the intersection of the curb and sidewalk flicked in the breeze, its heavy crown of seeds bending the blades downward. Benjamin observed this and the sporadic piles of geese droppings along his way. He was approaching a man-made pond. The noise of crickets filled his right ear as his pace remained even. Sweat began bubbling on his forehead in response to the early summer evening.

Benjamin was disappointed in what life had become. He had no clarity regarding what exactly it should be, but knew well enough that something was amiss. There was not enough grandeur, not enough wish-fulfillment, not enough love. There were instead games to be played, forms to fill out, and intricate dances to perform with the gatekeepers. When he was younger, he did not think extensively about the actual experiences of his adulthood. He only imagined he would be important and well-liked. Somewhere in the midst of trying to become important, he realized he would not be. Ever after, living was difficult.

He left the pavement behind and heard the slosh of the field underfoot. Four elm trees grew on the north side of the pond. Benjamin watched the gentle jostling of their limbs. He thought of how foreign they looked against the expanse of flat land on the periphery of the campus. Someone planted them many years ago to make amends for the forest of previously felled trees.