hold music muses

I’m on hold with my bank right now - the MITFCU as it happens. The great thing about being on hold is that I’d rather do anything else, even catch up on some things I’ve been putting off. Not to say of course that I had been putting writing off - that’s between me and my google docs. And probably a lot of other people, on account of google.

I made it exactly 6 minutes and 28 seconds until I decide to open up my laptop. The call length is now up to 9 minutes and 3 seconds. If Einstein hadn’t done it already, I’d like to think this experience would lead me to the conclusion that time is relative. Another 9 minutes and I wouldn’t be surprised to see grey streaks in my hair. By half an hour I will have shrunk a little bit as my vertebrae compress, in the way that astronauts grow a little taller. By an hour? Anybody’s guess. Maybe I’ll have to go into orbit for a while to let things cancel out.

There is art hanging next to me on the wall. My partner’s childhood friend painted it for her, and a few others, and now they’re secured to my apartment with double sided tape. There’s also a traffic sign next to me - “SAFETY ZONE /n SPEED /n LIMIT /n 20”, though nobody made it for me or anybody that I know. If I could run 20 miles per hour, I would probably be in a different line of business. I found this sign on campus one night my freshman year, and gave it a new home. It would then have another new home when I moved to East Campus, another when I moved to Lowell with friends at the start of the pandemic, another when I went to my hometown for that summer, another when I moved to East Cambridge for my internship at Formlabs, and yet another now that I’m in an apartment at the North End. I’m not sure what the significance is of any of this, but I do realize now that I tend to live in places named after cardinal directions. If I went east from here, and east some more, and north a bit, I would be in the harbor, though ending up in water after moving any given direction from anywhere in boston is pretty likely. Just be sure not to do it at more than 20 miles per hour.

It has now been 17 minutes and 58 seconds since I called the MIT Federal Credit Union. If I did my math right, which I think I have, that means I’ve been writing this piece at 40 words per minute. If I reach the estimated wait time of 35 minutes, I could have a novella on my hands. Or on my lap rather, on account of the laptop resting on top of it onto which I’m typing. I wonder why they named portable computers that way.

A little further to my right, is a cacophony of literary works. Bottom shelf: Half of the Percy Jackson collection. There would be a little more than half of it, except somebody put ice inside of the penultimate novel and stomped on it. I’m not making this up. Middle shelf: the entire Twilight series, as well as a true crime book. A design book, a 900 page book full of cooking science, and Infinite Jest. On the top shelf, a lot of Shirley Jackson and Vonnegut. The College Vegan Cookbook also lives 

26 minutes and 23 seconds. A voice on the other side of the line.