Friday, June 5, 2009

Coffee break at work when it's raining outside

You sit on the steel chair lost in a large room full of others just like them, nursing a cup of free coffee. The deep smell wafts into your nostrils as you lose yourself in a maze of time, watching the rain drops fall in a movie-like fashion - slow and meaningful - outside the glass windows.

It's that time of contemplation, dreaming, hoping and pining. Your coffee break at work when it's raining outside. You realise you're hungry only on some occasions like these. Other times, you just sit alone and ignore time passing away. The atmosphere is so meditative when the clouds burst. Rain falling like a sheet against reality, screening you from what you wish to hide. You wonder about silly things. At least I do! - How big is a raindrop to grasshoppers? Do ants drown in the flood of a puddle? What would it be like if I was that small? Stupid existential questions of what ifs and how sos.

It still isn't nice having to go back inside when it's pouring outside. So you struggle to rise and help yourself to another thermacol cup, unmindful of the damage to the environment, arguing with your own mind that you deserve another shot of diluted caffeine. You slump back in your chair and revert to the comfortable vacuum of bored expression. Doodles on the table-top and eavesdropped conversations are such time-consuming and interesting passtimes.

You decipher gossip from the table nearby and feel good about your wonderful ability to understand the complexities of an unknown relationship just by listening to a stream of bitchy words. If someone you know passes by, you smile vacantly and get back to listening to the conversation, uninvited. It is still raining outside.

Alternatively, if you are the chatty sociable sort, you will still be in the cafeteria only this time with friends or colleagues. The conversation will be among yourselves and the bored loner seated at the table near you will be patting his back as you regurgitate gossip. You still spend hours at the table, eat the over-priced food, drink the free coffee, be anti-institutional and plan for the weekend.

Finally, whichever sort you are, you decide it's time to go. There's work a-pending and a boss to satisfy. You stand, stretch (as inconspicuously as you can), drag your feet to the office and give the world outside a last parting glance. It has stopped raining outside.