The Daze of a Screen

He sat, absorbed, in the daze of a screen. It does not matter what was on it. It matters less what should have been on it – a report or a spreadsheet.

He sat staring at a screen too brightly lit, his mind empty, and his mood dark.

It was nighttime.

Time was stubbornly still. The weather was decisively wet. The body was present, the soul was gone. No ring or beep, no notification or interruption, no voice or whisper, could change that.

A glance at him would register the projected stable confidence of a pressed suit and ironed tie. A look the veneer of confidence. A concentrated sight would see the loss of life.

Death was present.

Death had not manifested itself in its ultimate form – there were breath and beats in the body; there was a body, not yet a corpse.

Death set in for a tantalising transition. A smooth, careful escape.

Yet, somehow, just when that transition was about to move irrevocably towards its end, it stopped.

A knock at the window startled him out of his deadly stupor.

It could not have been a person. He was too high up. Even if someone had somehow managed to reach such heights, there was no ledge to sustain them. Perhaps it was an animal: a bird of some sort. Or a detached branch.

Whatever it was, it somehow infused him with life. He looked out the window.

It was a long time since he had really taken the time to look outside a window. Not a furtive glance, or an acknowledgement of glass, but a proper thoughtful look. A look meant to see what was out there.

Somehow, by taking the time to look outside, even in the last redoubt of night as it slowly gave way to the twilight that precedes sunrise; somehow his world became brighter. There was a world beyond him and beyond his screen, and notifications, and distractions that somehow signify importance but, rarely, value. Somehow, in that moment, there was light.

A free, caressing, light. Soon, as if this light brought with its clarity, he began to notice things.  

Debussy’s Clair de lune was softly playing in the background. Had it been playing all along? Something he had used to concentrate on his work, from a radio or music streaming service? Or was it merely in his mind? A memory, brought to the surface after all these years, of that time as a child – an age where, no matter the circumstances, hope and imagination package themselves into endless wonder.

That time when his grandmother had brought him to the concert hall, all stuffy and full of grown-ups. A ritual he was forced to share, but where, this time, this one time, magic happened when an old man – he looked old then, but was probably no older than he was now standing in front of this window – carefully played the piano keys. He seemed to caress the Steinway in front of him to bring out the most carefully soothing of music. In that brief moment, the piano player was younger, more alive.

It was something special. A moment in time both ephemeral and intemporal.

Now, all these years, all these decades later, that memory and sentiment of wonder came forth as the man looked through the window. Worry and worldly affairs slowly left him and, in that briefest of magical instants, he became more serene and more relaxed.

For once, he saw the clarity of nighttime.

Just as he began to relish this clarity, this luxury taken for granted by sought after sages and the elusive enlightened, he noticed the world would not wait for him. Nature and our precious globe have a way of moving on with or without us. They hint at it in the most marvellous of subtle ways.

The twilight that precedes sunrise was slowly emerging. Like a deliberately careful wave, it came to rest upon the sky, that shore of stars. Diffuse it gently came to rest. It was slow for those who took no notice, but too fast for those who took the time to watch as light came to reclaim its prerogative over the darkness of night.

The faint glimmers of starlight disappeared. The sky, remarkably clear of cloud or other meteorological ornaments, took on an inviting palette of subdued pinks and organs. An interplay of impressionist colours slowly, progressively, made more vigorous, and boosted by the clearest of them all: that eternal amalgamation of colour that is light.

Sunlight's prism captured the awakening beauty and concentrated it. And slowly, the sun itself rose. The man had not noticed, or perhaps he had noticed but had not seen it as important, that the sun rose on this side of the building. Perfectly aligning himself with his window. His window a stage to a sunrise which seemed to be delivered as a private show. An intimate experience that managed to be universal.

It was a most beautiful sunrise. One that no ring or beep, no notification or interruption, no voice or whisper could bring the man away from. It felt unique, but how many sunrises just like this must he have missed. 

Countless moments of beauty unredeemed. Simple moments ignored to prove that the unimportant was somehow all important. To show that one’s humanity is not to simply be, but to absolutely have.

Sometimes, the man thought as the sun began to awaken the streets below him, the darkest nights bring the greatest of clarity. Somehow, light illuminates lucidity long repressed.

He turned away from the window for a brief instant. He turned off all his things that ring, or beep, or interrupt. He found a pen and scribbled a simple note on a piece of ordinary paper. He signed it and walked to that corner office, the one which inexplicably means so much to the world. He dropped off his signed piece of paper. He did not take a last look at all those cubicles behind him as he walked to the elevator.

There was no need. The sunrise was waiting for him.