Occupational Hazard

          On Monday afternoons I begin to drift.  My mind spies the classroom door, the one that does not completely close, and at the first opportunity it slips through the crack between the door and the jamb and scurries down the hallway.  My eyes, realizing my mind has left, take their leave as well and wander.  They scan the clock, hung behind the long conference table, strategically placed so the professor can tell when you are checking the time.  They rest, in the lower left hand corners of their sockets, taking in the view of the Hudson River- today, draped in a veil of grey vapor- framed on either side by the two brick buildings across the quad.  My fingers grow restless and seek the comforting feel of my cell phone; careful their actions remain hidden underneath the table.  My notebook is open, but blank.  My pen is uncapped, but still.

            Then, an unexpected turn occurs.  The class laughs, and I automatically laugh with them.  It is a controlled laughter, lasting, like all the other purposeful laughs, for a very specific amount of time.  Did my professor say something funny?  I do not know.  My laugh is a mask that lies, “Yes, I heard everything you said and therefore, I am participating.”

            My professor is no longer discussing the book we were assigned.  She is talking about being a writer.  She is talking about how writers are misunderstood, living in a “dark hole” for the majority of their careers.  If they are lucky, they are pulled from their holes, up, into the light where they bask in the golden praise of readers and critics.  But then, more often then not, they are cast down again, and must watch, from the familiar depths, as other writers rise around them.

            She goes on to explain how writers experience the world in a certain “closeness”.  They are attune to observations so minute others never notice.  The pores of the world seem large to a writer, and within each pore lie a billion untold stories.  To live in this way, to unconsciously and continuously seek, to twist the real into the imaginary and pretend it is real again, this is what it means to be a writer.

            My classmates nodded their heads.  All had heard, but few had listened.  Those that had listened understood the professor completely, and dreamed of dark holes and bright skies, their minds slipping away once more.