Deep Waters
by herespang
The floor is lined with wooden tiles; in perfect geometry they lay—ordered patches of vertically and horizontally aligned rectangles, altogether shaping an unity that’s furnished with a touch of quiet variety. Painted jet black and finished with plastic coating, they reflect in a dull gleam the filtered, white fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
And you wonder, you wonder how you feel about all this—the modern, monolithic theme that leans so inconsequentially on Black and White to convey its contrived notions of streamline simplicity and sleekness. It really is rather…puzzling:
Why am I fond of this depressive sight?
Yes, why? Why like it, despite your outward disdain for it?
Well, it is striking, in its bold way. Maybe you like the convenience of it all—how it unapologetically defines its lines and boundaries in two of the most metaphoric and quintessential hues, altogether illustrating a drastic solution to the complications of your own state of being: at best in shades of uncertain and cumbersome gray; intertwined—no clear cut floors or ceilings, resembling nothing of the interiors you are “absent-mindedly” observing.
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Outside, it is getting nearer and nearer to that fully-bloomed season, yet during the prized moments of each day, when you get to take a few strides in the open air, all the fields and branches in bright greens—bursting with vitalizing scents, all seem to escape your senses.
Maybe one cannot forcibly smell the roses?
Or maybe that somehow, too wrongly you indulged in your busy vocations that its endless clusters had lulled you under a paralyzed complacency, one that sneaks up and renders you senseless. Constantly moving onto the next assignment, diving into, one after another, the new projects, have you carelessly abandoned your deeper and far more intimate connections?
Your unfinished scripts and drawings, sitting neglected, in a room that is left to dust. Letters received and nothing written back—you irresponsibly leave 6-month, cruel gaps in the priceless exchanges between you and faraway kin.
Am I really that caught up?
You like the simplicity of this hallway. It causes you to fantasize—maybe one day, you might just in a single sweep, trash all that is not necessary; throw everything away. No souvenirs or mementoes. Sentimentality is your deeply entrenched trait; you like to remember and record the value of moments and occasions, but what’s the damned point, if all they do is cause you to resign in stagnation?
Away with the trifles, and lay down the black tiles, then properly match it with smooth, splash resistant pale walls—physically and beyond. A quick but effective fix to it all.
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But really, that’s exactly what’s wrong with the commercial nature of society nowadays, isn’t it? Everybody wants a slice of convenience at his/her disposal—use and pile atop of it, and when it is milked messy and dry and full of garbage, away with it and snatch a new but soon-to-be disposed one; do this over and over without immediate consequence in hindsight, it’s an easy ride. And when supply runs short and spacing gets tight, just source the merchandise from a new land, so far as it’s not our land.
Perhaps you like this modern, nearly non decorative design that which you are numbly sitting in and inexplicably mesmerized by, for reasons synonymous to the above nature. Maybe you like it because it has got plenty of room for you to ruin, just as you did your own personal life. You like it because it’s a metaphor for a cop-out cure. You haven’t got the time to slowly and carefully sort things out, right? Right?
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And there you sat, dazed, while a higher conscience wrestled against your implanted, paralyzed, and desensitized self.