Thursday, April 16, 2009

Thinking and watching

Random thoughts for this week:

1- If there are two drunk people in the living room, four in the kitchen, and eight in the basement, how many bottles and cans with I be cleaning up in the morning?
2- I think my eyelashes are falling out at an exponential rate.
3- There's no such thing as happily ever after.
4-I hate the phrase "Enduring to the end." Makes me feel like life always needs to be a struggle.
5- What's the use of bugs that bite, anyway?



I was sitting in the computer lab trying to observe people so I had something interesting and witty to write, but instead I ended up person watching. Of all the interesting characters to choose from, it was the hunched little old man in the gray cap and thin sweater that caught my eye. What's he doing here? I thought. He stood in the middle of the room looking slightly lost for a minute or two while more spry students whizzed around him. He finally selected a computer that was worthy, sat down, and suddenly realized his seat was wrong. He stood up, walked around to the back of the chair with a scrutinizing eye, put on his eyeglasses, and continued to stair at the underworkings of the chair that no doubt millions of dollars went in to designing, manufacturing, and exporting a hundred chairs just like it to our campus. After a few more minutes of the old man eying and prodding and turning the chair he finally sat down again. With his eyeglasses precariously balanced on his nose, head tilted back, and pursed lips, he pulled the computer screen closer to the edge of the table, almost pushing the keyboard into his lap. He then began typing, slowly, each key carefully pressed by an index finger. He continued to type for the two hours I was editing photos, the half hour I was checking email, the ten minutes it took me to run downstairs and get a coffee, and another fifteen while I was reading the class blog. I have no idea what he was writing. I imagine that he was sending a letter to an old friend, possibly his best mate on the lacrosse team he was the captain of in high school. Or his newest grandson, with advice on how to tie a fly to a line and the best way to cast for the very biggest trout, to be opened promptly on his eleventh birthday. Or perhaps he was writing to his love, a rhetorical message of tenderness and affection, never to be returned or read by anyone in particular, unless the technologies of this library manage to loose his words and they get tossed out into the stars for all the little princes to enjoy.

2 comments:

  1. really cool, Anna! wonderful imagery in his physical characteristics, his interaction with objects, and the fantastic possibilities of his letter.

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  2. great random thoughts...amazing what comes to the mind, huh?

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