Brief History

National Geographic. Hundreds of issues, all in rows. On a pressed wood bookshelf.

Tiles line the floor underneath it. Cold tiles.

And there’s a chair with a chrome-tube skeleton. Red cushions. A kind of fabric that feels… knitted?

And a desk. It’s very long, and very plain. A slab of pressed wood on three stubby file cabinet legs. The surface is white. Cold.

There’s a record player. The tall, living room fixture style. I don’t think it operates. Or maybe it does. There’s an assortment of records. These things, I know not to touch. No one had to say. It’s just true.

All this, arranged in a corner. Desk, immediately touching the corner. Then bookshelf. Then record player. Then… a huge mirror, covering the rest of the wall. And back, in front of the desk: the ugly chrome-tube chair with blood-red cushions.

There is a large wood support beam on the ceiling above the desk, which separates the room from… well, everything. It is its own strange appendage to this building.

The rest of the desk, which extends out from the corner office, is bare. Unused. The desk presses against a half-wall separator. This separator is under the wood support beam on the ceiling. It is white. One-half me in height. Less?

My feet are cold against the tile. I never wear socks.

I am in the office chair.

Under my hands is a keyboard.

In front of me, a screen. A soft glare against my face.

My hand rests on a cheap, plasticky mouse. It’s about as wieldy as a bludgeon.

The screen is devoid of meaning.

I am enrapt.

The heater kicks in with a soft, deep thud.

And a whir. Fans. White noise.

Central heating. It’s… somewhere. Somewhere past the half-wall separator.

Somewhere beyond the screen.

I flex my toes.

Click.

The chair creaks. It is stiff, and creaks uncomfortably. Groans.

Behind me are large, beautiful sliding glass doors. I cannot see them, but I know they are there.

Anyway, there’s nothing to see. They provide a wide, sweeping view of empty grass. Not well-tended grass, but not rampant. Not hilly grass, but not flat. Not muddy, but not sturdy.

Indiana clay soil is like quicksand, when wet.

A wall of pines blocks the horizon. Wide-branching pines. Old pines.

Sticky to the touch. Although, I’m not sure how I know that.

These glass doors are barricaded with broomsticks. You take a broomstick, about the length of the door, and lay it along the rail on the floor so that it stops the door from sliding more than a couple centimeters.

This is how you stop intruders from dirtying the tile. Or maybe stealing your record player.

The color of the glow changes sometimes. The glow from the monitor.

The sun never shines into this room. To tell time, look at the pines. They are green during the day. At night, they are gray.

There’s a wide, round table between the glass doors and my creaky office chair. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it.

I did homework there, once.

But not now.

Not now.

Hours pass.

I remember how I know the pines are sticky. They are wide, wide pines. And the lowest branches, are not so low. Taller than I used to be.

We could hide there, under the dress hem of the pines.

We could play.

We would live there.

Sometimes, we made dinner out of pine cones. We argued.

Sometimes, we made headquarters. We went on daring adventures.

Sometimes, we practiced in a dojo. We fought invisible ninjas.

Sometimes, we took sleds there, and pretended they were beds. Or tables. Or airplanes.

And sometimes, the Indiana clay soil was wet.

And sometimes, it was cold.

And sometimes, I will think of this.

As I sit in front of the glow of a monitor devoid of meaning.

As my hands rest on a keyboard.

As I wield a cheap plasticky bludgeon.

Click.