In times like this when premonitions of darkness lace my thoughts, I think it best to commit thought to paper.

I'm a bit tired of being a constant occupant of my mind, a stubborn tenant and the locus of experience. It's a drag.

I think about sleep
and air travel
and the insides of silent elevators, where you unknowingly, unfeelingly, glide up and down dark shafts.

These three things allow you to arrive at a new destination without the sense of having travelled.  They disturb the experience of time, and it's passing. They leave bits of time unattended, unaccounted for. Three hours vanish. Who knows where they went having escaped the merciless, brutal ticking of the clock.
A security lapse is a welcome breech.

Sleep is a strange thing. You are allowed to forgot the details. Who are you where are what day is it what time is it. It's a precious thing, that feeling of not knowing. And in times like this I wish I could hold on to it, prolong it, forget about remembering.

I wish I could discard hours at will. Well, the next eight hours are going to be an awful nuisance. I'll just pack them away, fold them neatly into a box. The next eight hours are dismissed. Slashed out off attendance sheets, punished for bad behaviour.

If you ask me, I think it's unfair that I have to exist all the fucking time or else not exist at all. What kind of all-or-nothing game is this? No room for negotiation. No toll free number to call and politely say - I'd like to exist Monday to mid-Wednesday and then again over the weekend. I'd like to take off the entire month of June.
One moment madam, let me transfer your call...

Social distance refers to the space between people for which no precise scale of measurement has been devised. It's the space between the waiter and the waited upon, measured not in inches but in fractions of dignity. Let's say that dignity can be measured with reference to everyday signs of acknowledgement - eye contact, subtle nods  either in agreement or disagreement, smiles and other evidence of recognition. Blowing my caappi, I realise that this canteen is different. Some kind of shrinkage has taken place as the skilled masseuse and the cleaner sit at the table next to mine enjoying their late morning break. I see the overlap in the Venn diagram of difference and inequality, an intersection in the sets sealed by a burst of laugher. 

Then, I think of the indignity of silence. 

The cold absence of eye contact. 

The enforced isolation of degraded life worlds, when bodies are invisiblised through sheer force of will.

It I don't see it, it doesn't exist - sounds like some kind of shared pathology in perception.

The hierarchy of work ensures that some people are only semi-present, as they don elaborate camouflages to erase their footprints.  This is the ultimate magic trick: labour without labourers, buildings without builders. Cleanliness without cleaners. Only sharp eyesight can detect the ghostly figures, the muted shadows that melt into the background, retreat into cubicled  spaces violently separated from those who enjoy the full benefits of being human.