The strangeness of a life less ordinary - (investigative reporting from the very rim of reality!)

I was seated at my desk today. At work. With my computer screen humming away in front, and me slouched in an unhealthy posture on my chair, legs outstretched in front (to prevent deep vein thrombosis!), and in my hand I held a sheet of paper. I was holding a sheet of typed paper in my hand and I was looking at it. I'd just printed it and pulled it off the printer. It was still warm in my hand with a whiff of ozone. Immaculately white I noticed. I'd never before noticed how white these things are! I peered closely at the paper screwing my eyelids together to get a microscopic look. The girl sitting next to me turned her head to look at me and then turned away smiling enigmatically (I thought). It was almost perfect; the paper that is. You couldn't make out the individual fibre strands of the pulp from afar. It was thin and 'smooth' to the touch. I held it up to the light. Again the girl sitting next to me turned her head in wonder. The paper: a slight glossy sheen. It wasn't really for writing on with ink pen. The paper had been specially designed (after much lab research no doubt) for printing. It had low absorbency - so the ink wouldn't stain or spread. And it was treated with chemicals that stopped it from turning yellow with age. I kept looking at it - Ahh, how the ancients would have marvelled! And there was so much of it! Skyscrapers of the stuff packed in those A4 sized brick like packets of 500 leaves. How much of this stuff was consumed around the world in a single day! How much of it was then thrown in the bin! The folly! The sheer madness! The waste! The ancients had to contend with clay tablets at first, and then came papyrus, then reeds (A stray thought pops into my head: I wonder if the word 'read' is derived from reed?) Then I noticed that the paper had marks or 'symbols' imprinted on it in black ink. And the symbols or marks were contained within larger demarcating lines that crossed and criss-crossed. Oh, yes - it was writing. My writing in fact! And the lines? Oh yes, that was the table I had just prepared! A table of audit adjustments for our German entity. It had various columns, with neat descriptions: a column for the currency, another for the amount in Euros, a column for the General Ledger account codes...It had a neat heading at the top left. It had a date of preparation. and probably other stuff that I can't recall right now. The spreadsheet related to the year ended 31 July 2009.

Why am I telling you this?

Because, as I sat slouched in my chair, in unhealthy posture, in deep thought, staring at the spreadsheet - reading it - understanding it - knowing what it was about - the meaning of the letters - the numbers - knowing how to read the layout of the table, knowing that you begin from the left hand side, even...thinking back to my preparation of it, how I'd quickly made a decision in Excel on what column lengths to use, the amount of space in between, layout of the headings, Italic or normal? Bold or normal? Underlined? Big or small font? How best to present the information to aid understanding, what can I leave out? etc. etc. etc...It made me wonder about the sheer quantity of unconscious thought that went into its preparation.

It suddenly occurred to me; as I lay staring at this white sheet of paper, that what I was now doing, i.e. reading and interpreting and understanding this sheet of paper, was actually an amazing thing! Let me explain: Firstly (and not as importantly) it is amazing in the sense that I realised that I spend a lot of time thinking about formatting i.e. how to present information to make it easier for others to understand, but more importantly, it is amazing because here I was - an organic 'life-form', and I was holding in my hand a sheet of paper (constructed from tree pulp), and on this paper were symbols made with ink, symbols I could understand! (because I could read), I knew what the letters meant. I knew all these things! The letters didn't look alien to me like the letters of a language you can't speak inadvertently do. I recognised these symbols. And at that moment a rolling wave of strangeness crept up on me, and put its hand around me, and suddenly, abruptly...the symbols, the words on the paper no longer made sense.


How was it that we got from sea living creatures to this: reading stuff of a sheet of paper! Doesn't the thought of this impossible thing just blow your mind?

This feeling of the strangeness of everything that had crept on me, also had other symptoms: it made me wonder who I was. A strangeness that made me look at my hairy hands in disgust and also with some interest. A strangeness that contemplated the beating heart inside me, and the watery eyes (reddened from a days staring at spreadsheets) that allowed me to see, and the ears that picked up transmissions on the airwaves - from my chatting colleagues, the constantly whirring photocopier, the air con vent above. Then there were the hormones and neurotransmitters secreted by my glands that gave me; this organic life-form, 'feelings!'. What I mean is that I also have an emotional system that makes me 'feel stuff' - annoyance, happiness, love, irritation, contentedness, and a stomach that makes me anticipate my evening meal. And this entire seeing, feeling, thinking, contemplating thing I call myself, also has a body wrapped in these clothes. The layers upon layers - a mind that wonders how it could read these strange symbols printed on the flattened pulp of a photosynthesising organic life-form called a 'tree'.


At that moment I could see all. At that moment, sitting slouched on my chair, staring at a white sheet of paper, you could call me a god. A god whose job description happened; just happened to be: accountant!

Life is weird.

I am awed.

I am humbled.

I am...

Well, 

I am very much alive.

Are you?