The sunday

The back of the room is passively lighted by a round globe lamp, supposedly Japanese style, hanging at the top of the room, too distant to illuminate anything important. The fingers on this laptop do the work of the unworked brain, tapping away as the small thing of Japanese perfumed hand cream does not sit flat on the table, slightly elevated by a piece of plastic with no apparent use. An umbrella hangs from the table, nothing to do. Another lamp, silver and this one perched on the ground, stares blankly into a blank wall with an invisible expression of blankness, nothing apparent of issue. Two sneakers that could be hugging the wall are instead positioned as though they were ready to run into the desk in front of it. Atop this desk sits the laptop.

It is a Sunday, very late. 10:15 PM. Any much later and it's bedtime, a time less silent than this, when the sound of the Paris subway train can be heard rumbling through the floorboards, onto the soundboard of the bed with no headboard. Nobody is around. If people are alive and nobody is there to see it, well, yeah. And how easy is it to trust other people's viewpoints?

Sound enters from somewhere. A door opens, another closes. In Germany arguments are in session, doubtless unfriendly ones. In Paris the city sleeps, dreaming about an end to all strikes and to all of Sarkozy and his enemies. Supposedly university students have done work on this day, the pre-ordained Sabbath. No evidence of this can be found on the Internet, although everything else displays itself in glittering charm or simplicity. It all claims to save time while it ticks precious moments away. Actually, sometimes it makes precious moments happen. Either way, the thought of the Internet being a time-saver is irrelevant now in this room.

A white box. Black hieroglyphics upon it. Illumination from half-white light. A scene of doubt. A scene of hidden trepidation, perhaps? From one eye, a scene of boredom. From another, a scene of the desperate unknown.

This is every Sunday in Paris.

(Luckily, there are 6 other days in the week.)