Brutalist Stories #41

He sits and lowers his head and takes a long breath. There’s a sandwich on the table next to him he’s just prepared for himself and he’s considering eating it, but first he just needs a moment. A second to close his eyes and breathe, lowered head, rubbing the worn knuckles of his hands with his leathery fingers. Trying to warm the joints, habitually trying to loosen sore and old bones, knowing it never has any effect, but doing it anyway.

The endless churning of the manufacturing facility hums outside as millions of other works just like him walk back to their tiny room to have their small lunch, a moment of respite in the circle of endless labour until eventual death, working toward an unachievable goal, the world-bridge that has been on-going for millennia.

A shaft of light breaks through the curtains in the old concrete room where he’s lived all of his life. It picks up a moat of dust that he’s noticed every day for years and years and years while he’s been sat, eating the same lunch, at the same time, before returning to the same job.

Today’s no different, he picks his head up eventually and opens his eyes and examines the shaft of light and the millions of little sparkling dust particles within it. He picks up the sandwich next to him and takes a bite without looking at it, setting it down the same way, all while concentrating on the beam, the mote of dust.

He considers it, every day he comes here and considers the contents of the light, examining the way the dust shifts in its beam, reflecting on the contents, remunerating on the chaos held within. He sits, he eats his sandwich, and he looks and meditates on this peculiar little shaft looking into it and trying to understand. He asks himself, I wonder if I’ve ever seen the same piece of dust twice?

Standing he walks over to the small refrigerator, opens it, takes out the milk, pours himself a glass and goes to sit back down. The sandwich is finished, and he sips on the milk, furrowing his eyebrow just a touch, wondering about the dust held in that beam of light, the particles passing in and out of it. There is so much chaos here, he says to himself. Why must I be so ordered, when it is clear there is so much chaos all around? Why must I follow his particular path, when it is evident there is so much freedom in the universe? Why do I have to stick to this meaningless road that has been laid out for me, when there is so much independence all around me. Here in that tiny beam, countless specks of dust twisting and merging.

He blows at it and watches the dust swirl and swirl, each little speck replaced with another as one skims out of the beam and into the darkness. There’s something in that, he considers. The action of blowing and the reaction of the dust, perhaps it must too follow a certain order, a certain chain of commands, a sequence of consequences. That chaos, that freedom, that independence, just an illusion.

The airhorn signals that his lunch break is over and he tilts his head and raises his eyebrows. Maybe, he thinks to himself, maybe. But he will think more on this tomorrow, that is the beauty of regularity, that he knows he’ll be back, and he knows he’ll sit and stare again, looking for the chaos.

Building inspiration: RW Concrete Church