Lady in Waiting

In a cold, empty room we sit, cold and empty only with a bacon and avocato subway down the throat some two hours ago, swallowed in a rush with just a gulp of water. Waiting and waiting, not knowing when will I get out, when will I go home, not knowing if I'll have to do a presentation or only stay here and backup my boss. And here we are, rehearsing one time and again, and then again just in case and the information is flowing so damned redundant it mixes in my head like the conjugation of the verb "faire". Heard it so many times I just forgot how did it go. Fait, fait, faissons and services or something like that.

I've become a lady in waiting, and aging Festetics of sorts minus the appaling obsession with the master. A lady in waiting that steals minutes here and there to amuse herself, to do something productive while she's required to do this and that. A lady in waiting.

Never this expression has made so much sense to me than now. It is a position where waiting is the general expectation, where human time and effort is engaged only in waiting, in meaningless chatting to spend the idle minutes while someone else, the master, the important one swirls around in all important matters, collecting big decisions, making grand speeches and hearing self-gloating audiences. And all the meanwhile human effort engaged in this futile, dead waiting, where all worthy activity must be held tight under the mask of inactivity, tucked away, made in secret, as if activity itself were such a shameful thing.

The hour three of the waiting is coming near, reaching the human sculptures, the servants, the ladies in waiting, tucked away in the cold, empty room like dolls in a box.