An unusual place for an office

Pragmatic mobility
Montreal, QC
October 2018
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Scene from a hospital (part 4): After spending much of the week wandering the halls of this gigantic hospital complex, I've come to realize how much I treasure photography's ability to make an overwhelmingly chaotic planet seem slightly less so. I've been quietly pulling my smartphone out of my pocket and taking fast photos of whatever the hell I'm seeing or thinking. Later on, I've been just as quietly pulling that same device out of my pocket and reviewing the results - for me, or my wife, or whoever's visiting, or my bedridden father-in-law who's at the centre of this week's grand adventure. And if it brings a smile to anyone's face, I'm good.

Every pic tells a story of the moment it was taken. Seeing it takes me right back to the moment I took it, and suddenly I can feel what I was feeling then. It's weird and powerful. And incredibly welcome when nothing else brings comfort.

The story around this particular scene is an interesting one. This is the giant atrium that defines the entire length of Pavilion K, an ultramodern new addition to this 84-year-old hospital. I stole a small corner of the stage at the edge of this space to rip through some work and send it on its way. The folks who designed this amazing facility also arranged for free Wi-Fi (bless you, Telus) and I routinely came back to this end of the hospital whenever I needed to get stuff done.

The scene reflects a number of truths about how I've felt since the universe first decided we didn't have enough tangents to wrestle with, namely my tendency to go quiet, far away from others, when I hit turbulence. I'm hoping folks understand that some days, I just need to be alone, and this space gave me the option on this day. It sped up the work, and it made me feel a little better about life.

Ritual is a crazy thing, and as I composed this seemingly innocuous shot, it hit me that I was subconsciously telling the story of our life in the simple act of dropping a backpack in the distant corner of a very large room. Strange how that works, but I'm not one to question it.