The Hole in the Floor and the Office

Dirk volunteered to patch up the hole in the office floor, but I’m not sure if he’s handy in that way. Since he works with computers he’s more the thinking-through-stuff type than the hammer type. He probably solders. He’s nailed a board over the hole and taped around its edges with gaffer’s tape, so we usually don’t trip. It isn't going to be your usual fix, because the old wooden floor is bowed, so it’ll be like flattening part of a trench. We’ve arranged the desks on either side of the sag, so if you put a pen on them it rolls in a nifty quarter circle before it stops.

Dirk asked me for the “history” of the floor so he could decide “how to fix it.” I think “decide” is synonymous with Googling or heading to Ace hardware. He knows that the hole showed up last week and that for the moment we’re going to take it on faith that it was made by Space the capuchin monkey. We all have problems with that explanation, not the least of which is that Space was found on the floor in a wicker basket, like Moses with very sharp teeth. None of us can fix in our minds the image of a monkey squatting there, trying to pull a dog bed through the floor.

This gets into the “character” of the office. I couldn’t have this office in a bleak business park or someplace that could be mistaken for a dentist’s office. That would be untrue to the nature of the Being & Nothingness Cam Project. We needed someplace gloomy and not-altogether-welcoming. So I rented a tiny wooden house, probably built in the ‘20’s, that had been empty a while. It was a home until it’s last occupied years and then it was an antiques consignment shop. It has no front yard and a tiny, sad, back yard in which Sia sits and smokes.

Whoever made upgrades for the antique shop had installed full length windows, which I covered with heavy, sticky plastic with a stained glass window design, telling the natural light to shove off. The hippie/churchy result was nicely disorienting and discouraging. So the living room is the office, the bedroom is the break room, and the no-appliance-or-water kitchen is a store room and there’s a half bathroom.

I think that the house is as old as Dirk and my ages combined and it has likely gotten much more accomplished than we have. I console myself by remembering that some people can shove a huge amount of stuff into the same space as others, sometimes by squishing it. I should ask one of the B&NC Team to find the philosopher who will best explain this.