Jacques Tati

So I'm standing there in the break room at work, and another woman is there too. Actually, she's the one I posted about a long time ago (link here) whose restroom behavior is so odd.

We're both working around each other. I'm making a cup of tea, and she's making an instant soup or beverage of some sort from a package that has Chinese writing on it. And we're standing there, each doing our own thing. I hear the stir-stick in her cup going, swish, swish, swish.... Then I smack the pink fake-sugar packet against my thumb a few times, and it goes, flappy, flappy, rip.

Her swish, swish keeps going, then I rustle the stir sticks and start my own swish, swish, and it hits me as I'm standing there that we've been transported into a Jacques Tati movie.

His movies, especially Playtime, are light on dialogue (non-existent on plot) and heavily focused on sound. You hear the tapping of shoes coming down marble floors, the ringing of elevator bells as they arrive, the honking of cars, the snap of a newspaper opening. Nothing really happens in the movie. You just watch people do everyday things and listen to the sound of the mundane. It's pointless.

And there I am in the break room, making my fourth cup of tea as a reward for finishing a task in my endless supply of tasks that I do at work. It's mundane. And it's pointless. My worklife is a Jacques Tati movie of sound without dialogue. The tapping of the keyboard. The slapping of file folders onto my desk. The thook sound that Microsoft Outlook makes when I get email. The ripping sound of the admin opening a new box of supplies she ordered.

I know what it is: My office-mate is on vacation. She's on an inner tube, floating on a lake with her extended family, and I'm here in an office that I didn't know got this quiet.

Hugh comes on soon, and he'll be talking. I sure hope that helps.