A Distorted Reality.

A botched installation of a light fitting sheds its red-filtered light over this entry: my entry always to be accompanied by the elegant paroxysm of irises contracting and relaxing relentlessly to find their new area of comfort in this weakest of electric lighting. Polyvinyl chloride trays reflect varying hues and saturations of reds back at me, to gradually shift into focus when my eyes eventually adapt to these new surroundings. Everything in this room is unnatural, forged by the hand of man: perfect in its inorganic nature; perfectly synoptic of this room’s purpose.

6 o’clock comes, and my head is back in the office: 15 minutes of work lost to the wondrous siren song of the careless fancy desired such that it approached trance. The return to the reality of my still being and hour and a half from my dimly lit refuge hits me with a force which could only be surmised as ‘crushing’. I leave; I had to leave: the journey is all that now matters. Home is all that matters, and it’s close to a crippling hunger at this moment. Never mind: right turns and traffic lights will distract me from longing for the comforts of home.

Time: that inalienable but oh-so human of constructs. Arbitrary measures of quantities which are not real; quantities which just measure that passage of events in the grand scheme of things: a second is nothing real; a second is an idea. Time just makes things seem further away: there are six traffic lights on the way home, each of which could hold me up for a maximum of thirty seconds: that’s three minutes, bringing my total journey time up to ninety-three minutes, assuming the best of conditions otherwise. One hundred and eighty seconds, essentially wasted. Pointless. To be quickly forgotten. Why can’t people move faster? Why can’t people have the common sense to look before crossing? Why can’t people take a little risk?

If I didn’t measure time, things would just take as long as they took. Things would be simple. Things would be more relaxed: the distinction between haste and speed would be an empty one.

To my delight, everything goes well; and I’m outside home in what is probably a personal best time: it’s seven twenty-five in the evening. Tanya, The Russian Neighbour, is waiting in our shared hallway: my mind races as to work out what it is that she wants, in spite of my all-consuming desire to be inside my apartment, viewing the end result of my work. She pulls me to one side in that typical way in which she always does: the sidewards head-tilt causing her fringe to fall from her eyes, an action performed in unison with a purr always hinting of a faux-desperation. She is a manipulator if nothing else; but her calibre with regard to this is something that is truly incapable of being criticised.

“Hey.”

It wasn’t just the purr which sounded desperate anymore: she looked frail, almost grey in spite of basking in the throw of this dreadful tungsten lighting: even the warm colour cast of the light was insufficient to put even the slightest of colour on the ever sagging skin under her cheekbones; the most gaunt of cheekbones. It was impressive to see this strong woman reduced to a wreck: stress truly is a destroyer of man and woman alike.