About Nothing in Particular (and Everything In-Between)
I am a literary writer noonlighting as a corporate knowledge worker—writing in the spaces between meetings, inside the folds of midday silence.
Most of my day belongs elsewhere—to others. I attend to correspondence, navigate a constellation of Zoom and application windows, manage projects that remain abstract even as they move forward. The nature of my work—its specifics—is deliberately left vague. What matters is this: I spend most of my time at a desk, speaking in a language neither free nor my own.
But in the quieter moments over the years, I've learned to pay attention. I've come to recognize what I call the ordinary liminalities—those small, passing phenomena that drift at the edge of thought. The reluctant opening of a drawer. A flicker of light across the floor. The second spoon missing from the cutlery drawer. These are not revelations. They are not events. Yet they somehow register, leaving the smallest of marks.
Last week, during a conference call I had muted myself for, I watched a single leaf pressed against the outside of my window. Not falling—just held there by some imperceptible current of air, trembling but staying. When I looked again five minutes later, it was gone. I have no idea when it let go. Would it have stayed had I looked back again sooner?
Friday morning, making coffee before my first meeting, I noticed the way the kitchen faucet dripped exactly twice after I turned it off, then stopped. Always twice. I stood there longer than I should have, waiting for a third drop that never came. The silence felt intentional, like punctuation. Does the faucet know I'm waiting? Does it notice I notice? Does any of it really matter—great and small?
These moments accumulate without fanfare. They form no pattern I can name, follow no schedule I can predict. Have no consequence beyond what I observe. Have no meaning beyond what I choose to make of them. What do they mean to you, if anything?
Yet they seem to recognize each other—the way certain strangers do in a crowded room, exchanging glances that say, I see you there. They are the day's quiet rebellion against the urgent, the important, the measured.
I began writing them down not because they were remarkable, but because they weren't. Because in a world that rewards the spectacle, the newsworthy, the shareable, these small observations felt like acts of resistance—silent activism against the absurd. They ask nothing of us except that we pause. They offer nothing except the strange comfort of being noticed.
This series is a loose record of those moments. Short reflections. Minor entries. Fragments of observation that feel like they almost mean something—until you look directly at them, and they slip away.
They are not meant to teach, or persuade. They are written to accompany. To sit quietly beside you, like a companion who doesn't mind the silence.
I write these pieces for anyone who finds themselves worn thin by headlines and conflict, but still alert to the quiet beauty and strangeness of everyday life. For those who understand that attention itself can be a form of devotion—not to anything grand or sacred, but to the simple fact of being here, now, with our eyes open.
They are about nothing in particular—and everything in-between.
There is no obligation to follow along. No subscription required. You may read one and leave, or return again later. These entries are always here, always still, always incomplete.
Just now it's 13:03 and a cold wind has picked up—a signal for thunderstorms ahead. Good weather for staying close, for warming hands around a cup.
There's tea, if you imagine it.
And always a chair here beside the everyday mysteries of life.
Until next time.
— Dean Bowman
Sunday, 1 June 2025
Dean Bowman