When you write, or I guess when you do anything that involves watching how other people exist, you find yourself being delighted by the smallest things. I had one of those moments last night when I was watching Lateline Business (although I have to be honest: I am clever enough to watch Lateline but not nearly clever enough to understand a blind word of Lateline Business. It's like the degree of difficulty increases the more tired you get).  

So anyway. I'm watching Lateline Business and trying to remember what the All Ordinaries might be when they're at home with their carpet slippers on... and there's a guy doing a report, very serious, lots of nodding and agreement with Leigh Sales about the state of things and whether there's likely to be any improvement as a result of something or other over the next period of something or other else... and behind him, in the background, is an office.  So there's this guy looking down the barrel of the camera and he's extremely focused on the matter at hand (something about impending global financial doom) and he's talking about the work he does for Macquarie (otherwise known at The Millionaire Factory, or it the Billionaire factory? I don't know, I'm merely a hundredaire factory at the moment) and there's a huge sign to his left that says Macquarie, for those viewers who may be deaf. In the background is, presumably, the office at Macquarie.  

Now, nothing devastating happened. Nobody mooned the camera. Nobody waved at mum at home. In fact, the beauty of it was that nobody in the office knew there was a bloke in a bowtie talking earnestly with Leigh Sales down the line at the ABC, apparently. But there was this one guy, and remember this is only just before midnight, who had his back to the camera and was sitting in a chair a whole open-plan-office away from where bowtie man was being interviewed. He's about an inch high to the top right of my TV screen.  He stood up from his office chair, still looking at the computer screen, back to the camera, and he sighed. You could see his shoulders drop. Our bowtie guy was talking about inflation and consumer confidence and stuff, but this guy was sighing. He was wearing, I seem to remember, a pink shirt, so your eye was drawn from bowtie man and the Macquarie sign, towards this guy with his pink shirt and his deep sigh.  

Then he raised his arms in the air. For a moment, it was unclear where he might be going with this. Was this an exclamation of joy? Was it an appeal to the heavens? The night before last, I saw a film called Hancock, about an ordinary bloke who could fly. It seemed to me that Pink Shirt Guy might just be preparing for takeoff.  He then proceeded to stretch. He grabbed his right hand with his left (both arms still aloft) and he swung like a pendulum in the background of the interview on Lateline Business. He then had a crack at the other side. He did a bit of basic physics after that, swinging his torso around in a little semicircle as he continued (I surmised) watching the computer screen. Then he looked briefly out of the window (what was he thinking about?) and he sat back down.  

I'm sure finance would fascinate me if I knew the slightest thing about it. I'm sure it would help significantly in my attempts to understand the workings of society and to detest capitalism while simultaneously admiring its superstructure or something. Somehow, though, for me, I understand a great deal more about society from watching Pink Shirt Guy having his little break in the middle of the night in his Millionaire Factory office, looking out the window and enjoying the simple sensation that is swaying. I see small children doing this. Testing out gravity. Leaning forward on their toes until they fall. Having a private moment with just them and the universe.  

I know I am probably presuming all sorts of things in this mini narrative that I don't even realise. I'm probably being patronising and pretentious and projecting my own simplistic romanticism on what is a fairly ordinary picture of a dude who is richer than I am but not as rich as BowTieGuy and who is simply having a stretch and letting his mind go blank, but it's not that I think it MEANS anything. It's just that it's a privilege sometimes, to get a glimpse into another person's universe, and to think your way into it, somehow.  It's one of the reasons I write. Pink Shirt Guy is one of the reasons I write. I wonder if he knows that.  

Probably thinks of little else.