Voices Carry

From beyond the wall is a voice, an annoying voice, drifting past gray cloth and darker gray metal

supports. Laughter and stories and non sequitur abound. I look around my area at others who also look up at their walls to the voice, and I recognize that I’m not the only one in my opinion. I clack away on an overly-formed plastic keyboard, overly crappy, in an attempt to drown out the voice. Yet, the almost bibulous chirping only gets louder in retaliation. As if the voice insists that, ears bent, the office absorbs all words spout out across the room. A sort of annoying siren song that would turn ships around and encourage travelers to find another path. The problem lies in that I’m unable to steer past or around. I’m glued to a chair, and the voice’s flows out and talks its way in. Like an elderly man in the elevator going up the Sears Tower he cannot escape it. You have to sit, nod your head and attempt to create some kind of white-noise in your head to defeat the sound. I’m not so sure that works for everyone; as I look over the woman to my right is looking up again toward the source of the voice.

Pithy conversations these are not. As the voice continues to pontificate to whomever sits on the

other line, the receiver probably not at all focused, I wonder when it’s next telephone-monologue will be. Probably in another few hours. As it stands right now the voice is, in a round-about way that can rival a trip around the Earth, wrapping up it’s conversation, and preparing to return to work. I suppose I should follow suit in at least one of these actions.