It’s Friday. I just posted WCBE’s morning news broadcast online. It’s a slow news day. The stories bore their headlines to death: a funnel cloud, another corrupt politician, safer mines and other propaganda that would probably never even exist if there wasn’t so much time to utilize.

Outside the window to the right of my desk, I can see the wind’s shadow brushing up against its surroundings. The sky is gray. Nobody bothers to answer the phone. The person on the other end of the line grows tired of waiting and hangs up.

Short, stilted phrases barely trickle through the canyons of my mind. And yet I can’t help but over elaborate.

The sound of saxophones slightly sifts through the silence of the room. The unanswered phone rings again, just twice this time. The mundane Ohio politics book I’m supposed to be reading sneers at me. A spider lowers itself from the ceiling and crawls across my desk. I don’t really mind.

Strumming, strumming of beautifully subtle songs on a pretty little guitar and “the unfortunate combination between a banjo and a ukulele,” sweet voice coming from Jedi trucker cap, red flannel, bearded soul in Studio A. It’s a slow day. Video camera set to record waves of sound.

Digital seconds pass visibly.

Tomorrow night my friend will paint an upside-down solar eclipse on a community mural. A three-toed girl will press her pink-paint-saturated foot against this mural, and she’ll become a part of it.

“I’m writing on the windows, the walls are full, the forests are buildings grown from concrete, beneath which there are no roots,” I will write near the bottom. And hours will pass conceptually.

The night will continue to expire as I sit on the roof of my building watching the formless clouds form shapes in my imagination as they pass over my head.

Now Monday night, post-politician networking at a rooftop banquet, squirming thoughts that I hope will align for just 20 more words – bare minimum.

For future reference, I don’t know anything.

Nicole Hennessy is a senior magazine journalism major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].