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Sometimes
the biggest decision of the day is deciding between an empty computer
lab and an almost filled-up lab. Of course, it is hardly science;
it depends on the prevailing mood of the day. Depends on whether
you want to listen to music on the speakers or your headphones.
Depends on whether you think
TB Sheets sounds better piercing through your head, or as
background static. Depends on how disembodied you're feeling.
Depends on whether you want to ruminate over how alone you are--in
a crowded or an empty room.
On Friday
nights, the decision is a no-brainer.
It is
a night of losers in the computer lab. The labs are empty enough
for you to be conspicuous, and yet anonymous enough for you to be
comfortable in your own insecurities. In a room of 25 computers,
exactly four people, including me, are currently typing away on
their keyboards or staring at the screen. Each of us is sitting
in the four corners of the room. On nights like these, about half
of them are in chat rooms, chatting, in all probability, with people
like them: losers.
If you
have read the celebrated recluse Henry Thoreau, his writings on
solitude almost sound ironic when compared to the "chatting masses"
in this day and age. In his most influential book, Walden,
he wrote about the cycle of his life at Walden Pond, a lake about
two miles from the center of Concord where he lived from 1845 until
1847. Describing the solitude when he was living alone in woods,
he said, "This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space.
How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants
of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated
by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet
in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most
important question. What sort of space is that which separates a
man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no
exertion of legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another."
In the
lab, where Thoreau's statements are uncannily true, almost all of
us use headphones, probably listening to music. On normal days,
this is a convenient way to drown out the noise. On morbid days
like these, it is a way to create some noise, to distract from the
utter silence of the room. Clicks have a way of amplifying anxieties
and loneliness, so the fewer clicks, the less you give away. It
invariably tends to be a click-frenzy night.
The
lights here are always on. They have to be; the wide-open spaces
need to be filled up, if only by ether. In an empty room, the fluorescent
light invariably creates this feeling of caustic cleanliness. It
is this feeling of being completely transparent and completely disassociated.
The windows here are either in abundance or completely absent. Windows
and lights, complementary and yet parasitic.
Rarely
does somebody walk in. If someone does, all faces turn toward the
door, peering out with the same semi-expectant look. It is almost
never anyone you know, somewhat of a relief, if you think about
it. The new person is almost too embarrassed to step in and disturb
the peace. He (and it is almost always a "he") retreats to a corner,
eager to go unnoticed. He has joined the silent communion of losers.
Even
the lab consultant seems to add to the stupor. Normally, the consultants
would be pacing around the labs every hour, making sure everything
is working. Tonight is a different attitude, a difficult attitude.
Officially, it's called the "Graveyard Shift." Little do they realize
how uncannily accurate they were in the description. It is the graveyard
of human energy. It is the detritus of human interaction. It is
the debris of human will. Rejoice.
Copyright
© 2000 Rafat Ali. All Rights Reserved.
Rafat
Ali is an angry young helper, whiling away his time as a master's
student in journalism at Indiana University. He is also the chief
designer and Webmaster of www.thesynapse.or,
an online zine of contemporary thought.
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