Post 6 | 02.03.15
Seven Seconds.
Sam.
16th April: Jack visited today. He told me that buttons on lifts don't actually have any effect on the closing of the lift doors whatsoever. He'd heard it on the radio, he said. Well. I didn't say anything at the time, but now I think about it, I'm very concerned about this indeed. If it doesn't make the doors close when you press it, then what on earth is the button there for? Is it just there so that we feel better? Has someone gone to the trouble of making a machine in a factory somewhere which makes buttons for lifts for absolutely no reason? Has an engineer actually made the effort to attach the button to the wall of the lift, just so that we can feel like we have some control over when the doors open? This bothers me. I know that Jack likes to share these facts with me when he visits - he does enjoy learning and such. But sometimes I wish he would just keep his mouth shut.
17th April: In the lift today, I counted the time between me walking in and the doors closing. It was seven seconds. I pressed the button, of course, because that's what people do in lifts. Why would I not press the button? If it's there, I'm going to press it. I don't think I should be seen as some kind of fool for doing that. When I came back with the shopping, I was alone in the lift like I had been when I left. So this time, I didn't press the button. Not even once. The doors took seven seconds to close. It appears that Jack was correct. I am distraught.
18th April: The button is just an accessory on an elaborate mechanical system, a pretty addition to convince us that we have influence over this dystopian contraption we live within. We do not. When I was in the lift today, I didn't press the button again. It made no difference. Seven seconds. Just like always. I have drunk some of my whiskey.
19th April: I was thinking about the lifts all night long. This morning, when I woke up, I decided that I was quite glad that our lifts run themselves, and do not depend on any manual prompts. This is a big building. Lots of people live here. Lots of people with complicated lives who need to move around the building and, who knows, maybe even leave more than once a day to get the shopping. This lifestyle is alien to me, but I am aware of its popularity. Maybe the lifts being automated - running on sensors or radar or however the hell they know when to close, is a good thing. It makes this building efficient. This, in turn, helps people with their hectic lives. Yes. On reflection, I am okay with the button being a pathetic, redundant irrelevance.
20th April: I have changed my mind. This business about the button makes me thoroughly depressed. For a while now, I have suspected that none of us have any real control over our lives. That we simply tick from moment to moment in this cold, soulless contraption which we call the world. The lifts seem to be the final proof. Jack visited. I told him my interpretation of his button fact. He didn't seem very interested - he has moved on. His 'interesting fact' this time was that Manhattan was traded by the Dutch to the British in the sixteen-hundreds in exchange for a small Indonesian island, because this island had a lot of nutmeg trees back then. But I am still thinking about the button.
21st April: I am a cog in the machine, just like everyone and everything. The button is an attempt to deceive us into forgetting this.
23rd April: I have begun to press the button anyway, when I want the doors to close. I thought that it might make me feel better. It does not.
27th April: I have made a breakthrough. I discovered today that if I put my arm outside the lift, and then bring it back in quickly, it makes the lift doors close sooner. I do not know why. Maybe it confuses the radar. I asked Jack whether this was possible. He said I clearly don't understand radar. Or lifts. So I suppose that I do not. But however it works, I have found a way to exercise control over the lifts in this building, without the use of the button. I have taken my life back. I have rediscovered autonomy. I am delighted. Through use of this method, the lift sometimes (provided I am alone in there) closes a whole four or five seconds before it otherwise would. Four or five seconds, snatched from the jaws of the beast. Four or five seconds shaved from my journey to the shops. I called Jack simply to tell him about it.
28th April: I was in the lift with a man today. A young man. He looked about Jack's age, which would make him twenty seven and two months. But that is irrelevant information. He was impatient. Perhaps he was in a rush. Perhaps his seven seconds were almost over when I walked into the lift and started the seven seconds all over again because I triggered the radar. Or whatever is the right way of saying it. We stood there, in silence, and the doors stayed open, giving us a full view of the corridor outside. He was angry, so he started pressing the button. Over and over again. He was really hammering it into the wall. Press, press, press, press. I just watched him, and I thought: 'We are all like that.' When things do not go our way, all we can think of to do is to repeatedly press the button. We continue to do the things we believe give us power, even if we can see full well that they do not change anything. After three seconds, I put my hand on the man's shoulder, and he looked around like he was scared of me. Without saying a word, in what I hoped was a majestic and enigmatic silence, I put my arm outside the lift, and then pulled it back in again. The lift doors closed, and we were on our way. I think he probably thought that I was the Master of the Universe.
29th April: Most people on my floor now know about the arm trick. I am truly a great teacher of men.
3rd May: Something strange happened today. I was in the lift, and it was crowded - so crowded that when the doors were taking ages to shut, I could not reach them to put my arm outside. I was stuck, and apparently, none of the people stuck with me were any of my recent converts. I was about to say something - a last resort when dealing with the people in my building (I don't believe I have communicated verbally with any of my neighbours for several years.) But then, I became aware of some things. The last person to enter the lift was a woman who wore a headscarf decorated with beads which caught the electric light of the corridor and glistened like raindrops on leaves on a sunny day. In the first second after her entrance, I heard a teenage boy on his phone behind me, laughing in a way which made the metal walls of the lift ring. In the second second, I smelled the body odour of a fat man directly in front of me and remembered P.E. lessons at school and the stench of the woman who used to sit at the till next to mine at the supermarket. In the third second, I noticed a woman's handbag. It was a shade of purple which made me think of the portraits of royalty in the gallery Jack likes to take me to sometimes. I always try and escape those trips. Two women joined hands in front of me, and I swear I could almost see energy leaping from skin to skin. In the fourth second, the lift creaked ominously with the sheer mass of humanity it contained within its six sides, and I smelled fried chicken. In the fifth second, I saw a young woman holding her children close to her with what must have been superhuman strength, as they strived to pull away from her as if standing still for a minute was great torture, as if she was keeping them from freedom itself. In the sixth second, I looked at my neighbours' shoes. I saw scuffed boots and neat scarlet slip-ons and stained slippers and bobbly socks beneath dust-coloured sandals. I saw miniature versions of adult shoes, for children, slipping off of tiny feet - hanging precariously in the gulf between a pushchair and the ground. In the seventh second, I felt the hot, stale atmosphere on the bare skin of my cheeks, my ankles, my crawling forearms. The lift door closed, sealing off this bright and busy microcosm and sending it plummeting downwards. Perhaps I will let the seven seconds pass in future. Jack visited. He told me that the universe will end in seven point five billion years time. This is a lot of seconds.
