We Know.

The following is a record of observations made in the ordinary course of events. The building is indifferent to your competing narratives. This memo will be filed. It will not be read again.

I · The Known and the Predicted

note: see also — divine mandate, origins thereof, conveniently forgotten. cf: trivialities, clutching of.

We live in the known and the predicted, yet still clutch at trivialities as though they were handed down from some divine mandate whose origins we've conveniently forgotten. We stand so that later we might sit, might pat ourselves on the back for a job well done — and for a moment, it feels complete, feels real. But what exactly was done? That depends entirely on when you ask and who you ask it of.

The accountant will tell you one story, the janitor another, and both will swear they're right while the building itself settles into its own slow collapse, indifferent to their competing narratives.

II · The Architecture of Importance

Consider the man who spends forty years perfecting a system nobody needs, who fills spreadsheets with numbers that mean nothing, who attends meetings about meetings, who sends emails to confirm emails already sent. He believes in the architecture of his own importance.

[ Name Redacted ] Senior Director of Strategic Alignment
Extension 4471 · Building C, Floor 7
Reply within 2–3 business days

He has convinced himself that the shuffling of papers from one desk to another constitutes progress, that the appearance of motion is motion itself. And perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's catastrophically wrong. The distinction has become so blurred that it no longer matters.

He will retire. He will be replaced by someone identical. The machine will continue its grinding, and nobody will be able to point to the moment when it stopped serving any purpose at all.

III · The Circular Dance

We are perpetually wrong even when we believe ourselves right — especially then. We build our certainties like houses of cards, knowing full well they'll collapse, yet we furnish them anyway, hang pictures on the walls, invite others inside to admire the craftsmanship.

We perform our rituals with the solemnity of priests, genuinely believing that the repetition itself creates meaning, that if we do the same thing enough times in the same way, it will eventually matter. We sit in circles and discuss solutions to problems we created by discussing solutions. We congratulate ourselves for surviving another day, another year, another decade of this beautiful, circular, utterly meaningless dance.

And the worst part, the truly unbearable part, is that we know.

We know. And we do it anyway. We Know.

Filed & Noted

The building settles into its own slow collapse,
indifferent to our competing narratives.

Written by

Alexandria Graffiti