She arrived late for class unzipping her jacket while navigating the isle steps downward. The auditorium was buzzing with incandescent banter when the professor had just begun to speak, signalling without asking, for everyone to adjust their intentions most assuredly toward academics. As the quietness became more pronounced, her own jacket rustling, became a problem now. She did not want to attract any attention. She was shy. This was just her usual way of feeling.

Finally sitting, her jacket still only partly removed, she let out a slow and silent sigh. She pulled the rest of her jacket off in an amazing demonstration of contortion and politeness for her surrounding neighbors and stuffed it under her seat. Bent downwards in the crash position, she took this opportunity to unzip her bag and pull out a notebook. Upright in her seat now, the blood collected unevenly in her head, she opened it to a blank page and pulled a mechanical pencil out from the coil binding, sliding the tip along its metal spine the whole way out. Sometimes she leaves the pencil clipped there at the end of class. She wasn’t sure if this was lazy or helpful. She armed her pencil with a few clicks and crushed the graphite into the shape of today’s date in the top right corner of the page.

The professor droned on. And on. It hadn’t been that long before she felt herself possessed by a lightness of being. A haze in her consciousness leading to a switch of mental programs. She entered sleep slightly. And then exited. And then a little bit again. Her eyelids were half open. Her outward appearance was meditative, but if someone had been assessing her keenly, say a love interest seated a few rows up and to her left, it would seem she was being moved by a calm piece of music.

More asleep than awake now, her mind treaded within an early morning, caffeine-deficient jacuzzi. She floated in a warmness through the relaxing and soothing water, her toes pointed, navigating the deep height of the pool like a small ballerina. Her nose pointed up and her chin submerged in bubbles that slightly foamed around her jaw. Just like when she was a child. Just like this. She wanted now to cross entire pool to the other side of the jacuzzi where she could climb up and sit on the edge of it. She’d let her legs dangle over the powerful jets, her lungs and small heart relieved from pressure and slowly cooling.

Before she could make it to the edge, her head flew back as if pulled by fishing line attached to her scalp. Her eyes frightfully wide open, she was back in a brown auditorium filled with people who were powerfully alert. Her body heated like a quick fever, onset with a slight vibrating nervousness. She was now awake, dazzled with guilt, having stolen a bit of shut eye during class. She held her pencil tight, hoping it would awake the entirety of her physical being and started writing words without appreciating their context. She focused her hearing outwards but remained self-conscious.

The professor continued his lecture:

“…Our observations today are only a light stroke upon this matter. There may not be a great truth to unravel at this time, and no pleasure in the form of our own congratulations. We can only acknowledge our disconnect from a complete understanding of it all and trust this as our only consolation in a less-than-perfect but entirely natural failed effort we’ll continue to assert in finding the competitive edge we so commonly believe is our right and our cure.”