In law school, I was assigned a carrel.
A fancy name for a chair, a desk, and a single small shelf over the desktop.
A cool dark basement corner where the inky heady scent of an opened book lingered in my nostrils as I turned glossy impossibly thin pages. A cool dark basement corner over which fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed like some demonic mosquito/lightning-bug spawn. A cool dark basement corner that held my heart and my hopes.
A small typed name-tag within a small metal bracket proclaimed this space mine.
When I was not using this carrel, the nametag was the only evidence of my claim.
Other students decorated their spaces with photos and postcards and stuffed animals and toys.
I liked my space barren.
I brought with me what I needed and then took the things I needed with me when I left.
I had few neighbors down in this basement corner . . . it was awesomely quiet.
Just me.
Just me and my thoughts and heavy darkly-bound books.
As the hours passed, I would collect small paper cups stained with the dregs of heavily sweetened and creamered coffee. A small ritual that helped to mark the time . . . every hour or so, I would climb out of the library’s basement and walk to the law school’s vending machines. Better coffee in larger amounts was available across campus, but I never made that trip, preferring instead the comfort of this familiar routine.
Two quarters bought me a show. A whirring and thunking as the machine registered and then measured out my order. A cup dropped and was held by two metal arms over a drainage tray. Dark liquid streamed into the cup. Sugar and creamer fell in a syrupy sludgy mixture at the last moment. A light signified my order was complete, and I slid aside the small clear plastic protective doors.
Holding this momentary warmth and distraction in my hand, I walked slowly back to my cool dark corner in the basement.
Each cup had an incomplete poker hand printed on its side, the final card revealed on the bottom of the cup.
Down here in the basement, there was no one to bet against but myself.
It was easy to feel all alone, disconnected from the school and my classmates and the world.
A population of one.
When I was a kid, I learned about taking a population sample. It was difficult to count every single member of a population, so one instead counted a representative sample and extrapolated from that number to the probable entirety of the population. This notion intrigued me as a child, but I applied the logic to suit myself.
Behind the house on White Lake Drive, not far from the shed about which I wrote yesterday, there was a small rectangular foundation for another small building. The building itself was gone, but the cement pad remained. I have no idea of the dimensions, but it was plenty big enough to ride a tricycle in circles around its surface. It was also big enough to ride your big-kid bicycle if you remembered to scrape your inside foot along the cement on the tight corners for balance.
I took the broom and swept this foundation clean.
I then walked the surface, clearing off the debris that I had missed, picking up the small bits of straw that had broken off of the broom as I swept.
I then got on my hands and knees and crawled back and forth across the cement, looking for any signs of life.
Ants.
As I found them, I crushed them beneath my fingertips.
Stab, stab, stab.
Until I was confident that the cement foundation was cleared.
Then, starting from one corner, I walked in circles, ever-diminishing in size, until I reached the center of the foundation.
Here I lay down.
The only sign of life on this foundation was me.
A sample of one.
I was all alone.
I lay there on the cement and pretended that this cement stretched forever.
That there was no extrapolation to be done.
That the entirety of the population was me.
An entirety of one.
I lay there and made bets with myself about what the future might hold.
No one to bet against but myself.
Years later, I sat in a cool dark basement, a small coffee cup in my hand.
Again on a foundation.
A sample of one.
A population of one.
An entirety of one.
Apart.
Alone.
Examining my cards, and making bets about what the future might hold.
No one to bet against but myself.
