today

today I'm at work. It's too quiet. The Muzak is playing some top 40 song, set to, it seems, a xylophone. I remember as a child, learning to play the xylophone, along with the other instruments - recorder, drum, and triangle. Even at a young age, I remember wondering "who will want to play a xylophone all day?" Finally, I had my answer...the musician banging away on the Muzak blaring through the sound system at my job.

Besides the sound of, Lady Gaga (I think, the music so different without words, and real instruments), I hear nothing. No phones ring. No voices speak. Just the Muzak and me typing on my computer.

Was there a memo, voice mail, email to everyone telling them to leave for the day? Impossible. I am the one the bosses talk to about such matters. Normally. But what if today was different, today they decreed it the day to leave early. Only they forgot to tell me. Was I in the bathroom when they announced it? Was I at the coffee pot? Copy machine? Lost in my thoughts?

Another strange thing, I realize, as I re-read this post...there are no sounds outside. We typically hear cars, honking, tires screeching. Sirens, blaring, insistent, screaming. Voices shouting. But again, there's nothing outside I can hear...

Am I lost in a dream, sitting at my desk, typing away, listening to Taylor Swift playing on the triangle and recorder as Muzak interprets her latest breakup song? Has my hearing failed me, suddenly as I type away at my computer? Or am I concentrating so hard that extraneous things have dropped away?

I won't know until I leave my desk.