Out to Lunch

 

Think of your brain being a collection of rooms.  Each individual room is constructed of thoughts.  The room farthest away is the future room.  Whenever you enter it, things look and feel very distant and not quite in focus.  There are closets filled with imagination in that room and they might seem pretty wild, maybe even a little scary.

The room out back, of course, is the past.  Everything in there has already happened.  Instead of furniture, there are hundreds of crates, each one packed with memories. They have been tightly packed, and some may even be hard to recall, they’re so wedged in.  

It’s not unusual to see people just wandering the halls between rooms.  There is a vacant expression on their face, and if you ask them what they’re thinking about, nothing will come to them, for they are not actually in any particular room. 

The present room is the smallest, and yet you can’t get to any of the other rooms from anywhere but there.  All of the hallways come off of the present room and the items in there are more distractions than furniture.  The window draws you away - the smell of coffee snaps you back.  The paintings on the walls pull you towards the back room, while friends and family tug on you, trying to keep you in the present. 

If you stay out of the present room for too long, it can become a very lonely existence, so be careful.  Most tend to get stuck in the past just because there is such a great deal in there and it all looks and feels so familiar. 

 

 

 

 ZC

Forage Industries

 

I was hired to be a sorter.  I sort.  I stand next to the conveyor belt and as the various items come along, I pick them up and place them into the appropriate bin.  If they are broken or damaged, I turn and place them on the conveyor line behind me.  That takes them to a completely different room.  It is someone’s job in there to decide if they can be fixed or not.

The person next to me is Larry.  He is also a sorter and has been here for many years.  He’s been telling me about all of the odd and strange things that have come along.  He wears gloves.  He said he won’t ever do this job without gloves on.  I’m not sure if I believe some of his stories or not.  They seem pretty wild.

We get a ten-minute break in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon, with half an hour for lunch.  There are vending machines in the breakroom and that is where the only wall clock is.  There are plenty of tables and chairs and Larry says that is where the company-wide meetings are held.  The last meeting, according to him, was about the changes to our insurance.  Larry says that we now have a deductible and less coverage. 

There are safety posters everywhere.  Safety glasses and hearing protection are recommended but not yet mandatory, even though the mechanical grinding noise of the conveyor is loud and annoying, I can still hear Larry’s comments and complaints throughout the day.

The one event Larry had mentioned was still festering in my thoughts.  It had happened last month.  It was a Tuesday morning, and everyone had walked into the plant as they always had, but something was off.  The entire place was eerily quiet.  No conveyors running, in fact no sounds at all.  Even the employees that had already walked in were not talking.  People were wondering if someone had died or something, but they weren’t even speculating about that.  They weren’t saying anything.

Then, like a shadow of sound, moving through the place they learned that management and front-office people were all gathered around station 5.  Nobody could believe what was there on the conveyor belt.  Larry said that was the day he started wearing gloves. 

 

 

  

 

 

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This is an unauthorized photograph

 

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