Gilman Hall (long) (239 hits)
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Submitted by ampersand (View user info) at 2007-02-12 21:45:53 EST
There is a building on my campus called Gilman Hall (or Silly Gilly if you are an ambiguously gay librarian). The clock tower of Gilman Hall, at no more then five stories high, is the highest point on campus, apparently by the decree of some person who is probably now long dead. I dislike the clock tower of Gilman Hall because it is constantly reminding me that I am one and a half minute late to wherever I'm going. If I'm going to discuss a paper with a professor in his office, or if I'm just going to class, the bell always rings one and a half minute before I want it to. But to give credit where credit is due, the bell never seems to ring when it wants to either. Or at least never when its own clock wants it to, for the clock and the bell do not seem to be in any way synchronized. The clock is always wrong. And it is always wrong by a different amount each day. Not in the sense that it ticks a little slow so that each day it gets later and later, but in the sense that some days its late and some days its early and some days it just calls in sick, but its coughs over the phone don't sound too realistic and then it blows its nose, very loudly right into the speaker at which point you're certain its lying. There's nothing you can do though because the Gilman Hall clock tower is the highest point on campus. A dead man said so.
Gilman Hall is an old building. It is mostly unadorned bricks and a few, perhaps a dozen, large and similarly unadorned windows. Its exterior features three colors: pale brick, pale grey (the roof), and white. It has three doors on the front side of the building that are very close in color to the pale brick that surrounds them. The center door is at the top of a small flight of stairs, in front of it four large, white columns stand idly supporting a small roof that shelters nothing at all. If the columns notice the purposelessness of their burden, they do not complain; they bear it steadfastly because it is theirs to bear. Above and slightly behind the columns' little roof stands the clock tower of Gilman Hall. It does not shoot into the sky, it does not reach for the clouds or the stars. It stands only, because it knows that it is a clock tower and it realizes that clock towers have very little use for clouds or stars.
If the outside of Gilman Hall is steadfast and humble, the inside is, well, something else entirely. Parts of the first floor rise and fall seemingly only to allow for the large staircase in the center of the buildings exterior. The foyer of Gilman Hall has a bronze seal in the middle of its floor. Current theory holds that if you tread on this seal, you will not graduate. Thus two sides of the seal are roped off; the other two sides are open though in case you end up deciding that not graduating is for the best but would rather put responsibility for the task in someone else's hands. Walking past the seal, you enter the area where the floor needlessly rises and falls and also the area where the coffee shop is. This area is frequently bubbling with life (coffee), or at least a literature students' interpretation of life (coffee). Otherwise, Gilman Hall is mostly classrooms, hallways and stairs, but not at all in the way you would expect. The hallways are generally rectangular by nature of being inside a rectangular building, but there are tiny, claustrophobic little sub-corridors that twist and wind through the buildings core. The entrances to these corridors are small enough to walk past several times without ever noticing. In addition to tiny sub-corridors, Gilman Hall has more staircases then even a senior math major would care to count. One central case scales the building from basement to fourth floor; others are only four steps high and don't even truly lead to a different floor, rather to just an elevated portion of the current floor. Why one portion of a floor must be four steps higher then another is unclear, even to the professors who inhabit the elevated portions.
The rooms in Gilman Hall can be divided into two different types: offices and classrooms. The classrooms in Gilman Hall can be divided into two different types as well. Those above the basement are carpeted and have plain white walls. They are interesting to look at, usually, because they are filled with strange things. They are uninteresting to sit in though, because the strange things are all very old and under no circumstance are they supposed to be touched. Still the rooms are serviceable. Those in the basement are tiled and the walls are a strange color that seems unable to decide if it wants to be white like the rest of the building, or yellow as an individual. It chooses to be somewhere in between and ends up being neither pleasing for its uniformity nor attractive for its rebellion. The heating system in the basement of Gilman Hall is, unsurprisingly, just as old as the rest of the building. Like an old man, it enjoys making everyone around it aware of just how old it is and just how much its bones and muscles ache. It does this, in most rooms, by constantly imitating the sound of an iron pipe being hit hard by a steel wrench. Some rooms are quieter then the others, but these 'quiet' rooms are actually the most frustrating of all. In most of the rooms, the noise is a drone and you can tune it out, but in some select few the noise is more clever then that. It sees that, if it gets too constant, people learn to ignore it. So it waits. It waits until the moment when everything else in the room is silent, and everyone in the room is deep in thought, and then it erupts in a cacophony of metal on metal fury. The physics students who sit in these rooms are reasonably convinced that they never get loud enough to permanently affect ones hearing.
As for the offices of Gilman Hall, they are more difficult to generalize about but every single one of them is filled with books. The offices are quite tall thanks to the building's architectural oddities and many have bookcases full up to the ceiling on two walls or more. Unfortunately, in all of those books, there is not one which any person in his right mind would have any interest in reading. Quite a lot of the offices have paintings hanging on their walls, usually painted by some artist no one has ever heard of. Most of the offices are, if not in complete disarray, at least thoroughly messy (though this varies considerably by department, with the history department being by far the worst offenders).
The basement of Gilman Hall consists of classrooms as described above and very little else. Every semester, every physics I and II student has section in the basement of Gilman Hall at eight in the morning. Every semester, every physics I and II student goes to the first section of the semester in the basement of Gilman Hall at eight in the morning knowing full well that the TA is just going to introduce himself, give out his email address, talk for five minutes and then dismiss them early. It is by far the least important section they could possibly attend all semester; they know this. When the second week of every semester comes around, and the clock tower of Gilman Hall rings eight times, the basement of Gilman Hall is virtually empty. Of the hundreds of physics I and II students who are supposed to be there learning physics I and II, less then two dozen make it to section. Above them are three more stories of offices, seminar rooms and classrooms. At eight in the morning, virtually none of these rooms are occupied. If they are, the occupant is probably asleep. Every semester, excluding the first week, Gilman Hall is dead at eight in the morning. The bell in the clock tower of Gilman Hall does not know this though so it dutifully rings out its eight tones each morning, even on the mornings when the clock itself decides to stay in bed.
By the time the Gilman Hall clock tower rings nine in the morning, the basement classrooms are a fair bit different. There are fewer people with thick-lensed, wire-framed glasses and more people with thin-lensed, black glasses. Expensive graphing calculators in backpacks are replaced with expensive pens and pencils. The people with the calculators can't figure out as they are leaving the basement of Gilman Hall, why the people with the expensive pens are willing to pay six dollars for their pens when ninety-nine cent Bic's will do the same job. The people with the expensive pens can't figure out as they are entering the basement Gilman Hall, why the people with the expensive graphing calculators bother with calculators at all. That is to say, the physics students leave and the writing students enter.
In the first week of spring semester 2006, this scenario played out more or less exactly as is written above. One physics student however, did not leave the basement of Gilman Hall, rather he just left one classroom, which droned, and entered another, which did things the more clever way. The boy wore contacts but in his backpack were thin-lensed, wire-framed glasses, a pair of four dollar pens and a cheap graphing calculator. It would not be fair to say that, as he entered the writing classroom, he became a writing student. Nor would it be fair to say that he ever really was a physics student in the first place. As he took his seat, he looked at his cell-phone and smiled a small smile because he was not one and a half minute late. He looked around the room and saw that he was seated with about a dozen other students. Immediately he decided that he cared not at all about eleven of them, and a very great deal about the remaining one. She was dressed somewhat unusually, which he liked. She wore a skirt but it was long instead of short, and stockings but they were of the fishnet variety rather then the sort your grandmother would wear. Her sweater was of the variety your grandmother might wear, but only if she were a particularly stylish grandmother, and it looked much better stretched over the girls ample chest then it would over any grandmothers. Her hair was long, black and fairly plain and the boy liked this as well. The skin on her face was clear and pale and, at the moment bore a look that lacked expression of any sort, and the boy liked this as well. It would over the course of the semester though, wear a great deal of greatly more expressive looks, and the boy would like all these even more then the first.
The girl would not speak very much over the course of the semester, but the boy would speak even less. As for speaking to each other, they did this very little, and then only when the instructor arranged them to be in the same workshop group. Surprisingly, it was easy to speak to one another in workshop groups, but perhaps this should not have surprising as they only spoke about the stories and poems they had written and never about anything else. Certainly never about one another. In one particular class though, they were arranged into a group, with two other students as well, and given an assignment. Their assignment was to pick a famous song and sing it, but to the melody of another completely different famous song. It was supposed to be a study of form and function. The boy cared not at all for the instructor's ideas on form and function but very much for the girls form and a particular function he thought he might enjoy doing to that form. He spent most of the next several minutes thinking pleasantly about form and function.
Meanwhile, the girl and the other two people in the group searched for songs that they all knew well enough to sing; it was difficult because one of them was from a different country and thus not very familiar with what she considered foreign music. Eventually they asked the boy what sort of music he listened to and he told them quietly: "Rock music." This was not specific enough for them though, so they asked what some of his favorite bands were. Usually when someone asked the boy this question his answer included no fewer then thirty bands and also certain intricacies like what genres people thought they belonged to, what genres they really belonged to, and what were his favorite albums and songs by them. Inevitably he would veer into a discussion of what distinguishes Post-Punk from Punk, or something else of that nature which absolutely no one in his right mind would have any interest in hearing. This time when he was asked, he mumbled as quietly as possible, "Oh, you guys have probably never heard of most of it..." and trailed off into nothing.
The girl said, almost as quietly, "No, don't..." and trailed off into nothing.
The boy said, "Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., stuff like that..." and trailed off into even more nothing.
Someone else in the group asked the boy if he liked Led Zeppelin, he responded that he did not. The same someone else then informed him that Led Zeppelin was, like, great, and if he liked rock music he had to check them out cause, you know, Stairway is probably the best solo ever. The boy immediately listed in his head two dozen solos that he thought were better, starting with several by J Mascis.
The group continued to pry more bands out of the boy (he didn't make it easy), and eventually settled on his suggestion of Pink Floyd because they all knew at least some Pink Floyd. The boy started listing in his head all his favorite Pink Floyd songs, rearranging them constantly. First he wanted to sing something off Wish You Were Here, as that was his favorite. But then he realized it was mostly his favorite for the instrumentation and the best lyrics were on Dark Side of the Moon. He thought Us and Them or Brain Damage would suit their purposes well. It then came out that the others only knew Another Brick in the Wall, Pt.2 and further that they didn't even know that it was titled Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2. They thought it was just called The Wall. In the end they sang the first verse of that song to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was surprisingly creepy.
Outside of class the boy and the girl did not interact at all. Once, early in the semester, he saw her crying on a bench outside their dormitories. He acted like he didn't. A more curious occurrence took place later in the semester. One of their classmates and, presumably, one of their classmate's frat brothers knocked on the boy's door to announce a party at their house that night. It was common practice for frat brothers to go around knocking on doors in dorms to advertise their events so normally one would not make anything of this. However, on this particular occurrence, the classmate pointedly mentioned to the boy that the girl would be attending the party, which, in the boys experience at least, was not common practice. The boy still made nothing of this. At the end of the semester the boy expected to never see the girl again.
But this was a silly notion for the boy to hold given how small a campus he lived on. He realized this when, on move-in day for sophomore year, he saw the girl moving into the same building as he was. He also saw what seemed to be the mother and the sister standing next to the car which seemed to be expensive and German. The boy did not see what seemed to be the father and was not sure what to make of this. In the end he decided not to make anything of it, it seemed that to do otherwise would be unfair. The boy did not sleep well that night, nor did he many of the nights that followed. He assumed this was because his body somehow knew it was closer to hers.
Still, her room was not near his in the building so he didn't expect it would mean he saw her very much. The boy's reasoning was correct this time around, but he still ended up being wrong. He had a history seminar class which met every Wednesday from 2-4pm. It was also in Gilman Hall, but it was on the topmost floor in one of those famous old seminar rooms. Apparently important people had spent a lot of time in this room talking about important things. And if the professor had not explained the room's history, the numerous plaques, paintings and old books would have explained it anyways. The historic table even had a plastic sign screwed into it instructing people to not fuck with the historic table. It was an awfully boring room and an even more boring class. The boy probably would have skipped it for the majority of the semester, except for that the girl had the very same history seminar class which met every Wednesday from 2-4pm. The boy still had a habit of running one and a half minute late to everything so he never got to pick where in the room he sat. This was probably a good thing because he would likely have chosen to sit as far away from the girl as possible. Fate however, or more likely simple chance, determined the boys seat; on or two occasions, it determined his seat be particularly close to the girls. He spent the entirety of these two hours making sure he never once looked anywhere near the girls direction. He also spent the whole two hours trying to pretend his heart was not beating dangerously fast. When chance, or less likely strange fate, determined the boy's seat be far from the girls, he spent the entirety of those two hours looking directly at the girl. During these two hours his lungs breathed dangerously slow. The only time the boy did not look at the girl was when the girl looked at the boy. He found the thought that someone was looking at him hard to bear.
Even though the boy lived in the same building as the girl, he saw her very little outside of class. Once, early in the semester while walking to a nearby deli one evening, he saw her returning from the same deli. He waved with half his arm and kept walking. She waved back and presumably also kept walking; the boy is unclear on this last point as he did not turn around to look back at her. At the end of the semester the boy expected to hardly ever to see the girl again.
This time finally, the boy was right. Next semester, he saw her while waiting in the hallway for a professor to unlock a classroom on the first day of class (even he made sure to get to class on time for the first day), but she was waiting for a different professor to unlock a different door. The boy once again had a morning writing class in the basement of Gilman Hall. There were also around a dozen people in this writing class and, when he sat down for the first time, the boy immediately decided that he cared about none of them. One morning a few weeks into the semester, while walking in the basement of Gilman Hall after his writing class the boy again ran into the girl. He almost missed the encounter completely though, as his eyes were directed to the screen of his iPod on which he was attempting to select the album he wanted to hear. He arrived at the bottom of one of Gilman's staircases and so paused to pick the right song before ascending the stairs. Before picking the song though, the boy noticed that the girl was standing on the landing some six or eight steps above him. He looked back at his iPod, quickly ran a thousand options through his mind, selected a song which was not at all the song he was searching for, and walked past the girl without acknowledging her in anyway. In the end, he wound up missing only 99% of the encounter.
After class that day the boy went home and wrote a meandering story about nothing. He titled it something very mundane, even though he knew a title like "Boy meets girl and acts like a pussy; boy stalks girl and does this like a pussy too" would be probably draw much more attention. Attention was not what he wanted. But then the boy posted the story on the internet because he had a strong appreciation of irony (or because attention was what he wanted, he just preferred it to be anonymous attention). Then he changed the song because, somehow, iTunes had gotten to thinking that the boy wanted to be listening to a cheery pop song when really he wanted nothing of the sort.
User Reviews
Submitted by LisaD (user info) at 2007-05-18 13:39:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by locksly (user info) at 2007-02-13 03:03:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by locksly (user info) at 2007-02-13 03:02:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
FUCK man, mine eyes * wtf i'm not reading all that etc. etc.
did it really have to be so long with so little paragraphs?
but its GOOD
but only a 1.5 YOU KNOW WHY - YOU HURTED MY EYES
Submitted by Yougotthatright (user info) at 2007-02-12 23:22:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
<reading> "There"....falls into a deep, dark coma while blood pours from my eyes.
+1 for the Carpal Tnuunel
Submitted by ampersand (user info) at 2007-02-12 23:04:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
PS I just found out that I suffer from a condition that causes aortic dialation and can sometimes result in sudden death. That should make it easier to wake up in the morning.
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-02-12 22:46:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Honestly, I skipped a few paragraphs of the description of Gilman Hall. But I still like it, because it sounds like my life.
Submitted by ampersand (user info) at 2007-02-12 22:43:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I kinda figured it was too long but I wrote it so I wanted to do something with it.
Submitted by DarthFaded (user info) at 2007-02-12 22:15:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I am not going to read all that.
It is too damn long and I lost all interest when I read the phrase "Silly Gilly"
-1 for being too damn long
-1 for no picture as a attention grabber/keeper
+2 for pity since it looks like you put some time in to it.
(Hey I feel bad -2ing something that I just don't want to read, I know... what a humanitarian I am)