VOICES
RALLENTANDO
By Linda Kebichi
This hamster is tired. I’ve been running on this wheel for hours now, hacking away at my to-do list, slowly but surely before the day ends. Under the yellow lights of the Tisch Library reading room, the only sound to be heard is a symphony of syncopated typing as it fills the air with its percussive cacophony. I observe the engravings in the wood along the desk, tracing my fingers over messages from students past, as I continue to neglect the work in front of me. The creak of a door draws my head up from the desk towards the source of the sound. I know that I’m not the only one who’s this hopelessly bored because every time that familiar creaking blares a sea of heads rises to look at the new addition to our reading room. We’re all entertained for a second, but each head eventually falls again, resigning itself back to work. I’ve exhausted almost every distraction I can wring out of this room, and now the hamster wants to leave.
8 TUFTS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 8, 2021
This hamster wants to be somewhere else, even if it’s just for a few minutes. So I put my earbuds in and listen to “Somewhere” by Hauskey, and I get to escape for two minutes and fifty-one seconds. As the music plays, everything slows down. I’m no longer obsessing over tomorrow or next week or wondering what could be coming next. I’m inside the music, entwined in its rhythm. It moves, and I follow. The lyrics float around in my mind, taking me to a fictional land decorated with green skies and oceans made of ice cream where the sun never sets. Sweet melodies take me somewhere in the distance. Thursday morning rolls around and I’m back in the reading room. Today is almost exactly like yesterday, except the to-do list is different, and now tomorrow is Friday; I can almost see the light. As I flip through my assigned reading, my mind wanders, meditating on thoughts of lunch at Dewick, soft serve, and the exten-
