SM 401

In The Library

The cleaner, polishing the other side of the desk, unseen behind the partition.  Myself emerging from absorption, rising from the depths of reading to the presence of a slight shaking and trembling, of cloth rubbing on vinyl and wood.  The long strokes back and forth along the front edge; back and forth.  Trying (I imagined) to get the dirt out of the groove between vinyl surface and wooden edge.  A coarse cloth, back and forth, slowly; back and forth; rasping.  I could almost feel it on my tongue.  The smell of cleaning fluid, lemon fresh and alcohol.  The feeling of the plastic bottle half full of liquid lumped back down on the desk, reverberating through my arm.  The short, vigorous scrubbing noise and vibrations of the cloth trying to remove spots and marks.  The blurred image of the written page before my eyes and the shaking of the paper underneath my writing hand and pencil.

It wasn't unpleasant - soothing, reassuring.  I wanted to go to sleep.  The background hum of radiator water pumping around.  The uneven drone and roar of traffic outside, as the lights changed, as trucks passed; a speedy car with a crappy exhaust.  Air brakes.  Sunshine on the buildings.  Wind whistling momentarily against the window, highlighting the sharp-edged powder-coated aluminium in my mind, where frame meets glass.

How can we shut this out?  This "affect" of the moment.  This phenomenological experience - our senses compiling a thousand varied inputs, and piling them high with remembered associations, knowledge of windows, vehicles, cleaning fluids from the past.

Why am I studying here anyway?  Isn’t the sunshine and the warm radiator and the passing traffic more pleasurable?  Isn't the present sensory experience more rewarding than the cognitively imagined future that is engaged by reading someone else's words?

She's gone now.  I had better get on.