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I struggle to pry my eyelids open during the remote meeting. It’s not the witching hour yet. Perhaps the witches are still bathing in ice cold moonlit pools or applying indigo eyeliner.

It’s a discussion of some kind of special case the client wants to add to the software weeks before the deadline. The customer is always right, even when their suggested course of action will add an eternity of support headaches. It’s a Faustian bargain for sure, but I can’t tell which side of the deal has pitchforks and horns.

I look at the code that has to be changed and shake my head. A tangled mess of “if” and “else if”. Where is the grace? Where is the elegance?

A character in an anime watches other anime characters walk, and talk, and keep their formal clothes dry. “Elegant,” he says. As if he lives in a world of ladies and sirs instead of women and men. Where are the open rivers of sewage, where are the multiple hour train delays, where are the tacky advertising billboards, where are the pimples? Is there any lack of grace? Is there any deficiency of elegance?

I didn’t iron my wrinkly button shirt for the company party. Nor did I put on the shiny black shoes. But the company party is in a barn upon a field of grass, and my boss is wearing an unwrinkled T-shirt. I sip a Sprite, not to be confused with 2D graphics. He sips a Corona, not to be confused with the virus.

I’m overdressed and underdressed for this thing. I think as I step into the passenger seat of my coworker’s car. Where is the grace? Where is the elegance?

My friend’s parent’s house has a map of Canada on the wall. But not a map from this century. The living room is multiple stories tall and has a plant growing in the natural light. The tables are polished, the tableclothes have detailed embroidery, there are books of philosophy to be read and books about art to leave on the coffee table. Outside of this house is a neighborhood of perfectly spaced trees and suburban homes, with driveways and street lamps and yards and sidewalks.

An insect manages, despite all odds, to fly into the temple of design. “Disgusting,” my friend says, and seeks to eliminate it. Is there any lack of grace? Is there any deficiency of elegance?

A pigeon is flying around in the TTC subway. Everybody is staying put, including me. I really don’t want to touch the thing, I don’t want it to touch me. It’s such a strange event that I take a video, and I’m not the only one.

The pigeon stands proud although it’s only inches tall. It stops flying in futility and walks upon the floor of the subway. It walks past the drying vomit of some anonymous drunk, the excited children and the disapproving parents. Finally at York Mills station someone with a wheel-bag scares the pigeon out the door. I didn’t know anyone below 50 with an income above 50k would even own a wheel bag. Where is the grace? Where is the elegance?

I sit in a tea shop near the library. The wallpaper is from Turkey, the matcha is from a small farmer in Japan with no other Canadian clients. The wall has a smorgasbord of tea varieties for sale. The owner-slash-barista strikes up conversations with every customer about every item, and about every aspect of his business. I can’t believe in a shop with so many types of tea, I ordered a French vanilla latte. The Tim’s is right around the corner! I might as well have ordered chicken nuggets.

I shift my uncombed hair before plugging in a keyboard that’s supposed to be wireless. Where is the grace? Where is the elegance? Here, but not with me.