things move around

On my way into work, two blocks from the office, there’s a new apartment building, the driveway of which forms a shortcut between the road and the seawall. This shortcut was popular until the building was completed and the few millionaires who actually decided to live in their new apartments began moving in. At this point, the management of the building employed a security guard whose sole remit is apparently to prevent non-residents from walking across the driveway from the street to the seawall, or vice versa.

The security guard is a pallid, disaffected-looking bloke, mid to late twenties I’d say. His hair is short and springy, his lips are thin and unexpressive, his eyes inert. I have passed him twice a day for the last four months or so. In the sunshine, he sits, just off the street, on a fold-up chair, elbows on knees, staring into space, sometimes smoking, always with his earphones in, staring off at nothing: not even at what’s right in front of him. When he smokes, his cigarette dangles listlessly from his hand in between methodical drags. In the rain, he shelters under a temporary wooden lean-to erected nearby by a construction crew. He never reads, or paces, or fidgets; he has abandoned any thought of staving off oblivion and instead surrendered himself to it. Perhaps he’s illiterate. Ennui has consumed him and radiates from him, slowing time for passers-by, thickening the air in the morning when I pass by him on my way to work, and in the evening when I return. Perhaps he’s an automaton.