The Teacher (2005)

In the corner of the classroom, I stand, pensive and perturbed.
The blackboard looks like the boundless night sky that draws you in like a black hole.
The frenzied noise is suddenly replaced by a delicate silence, broken only by the odd ruffle of the notebook.
I walk towards the board, not sure if I deserve the silence that fills the air...
I have been on the other side. That’s where we all begin.
For a moment, an uncontrollable urge to return to the other side to dissolve in the numbers and confine myself to the comfort of obscurity overwhelms me.
But there is no escape this time.

Will I ever return to the other side? That undeniably blissful sense of ignorance resonates in my heavy head, reminding me of its emptiness.

As I begin to write, the piece of chalk that I wield suddenly becomes a powerful weapon that will transcend the realms of imagination, like an all-pervading transmitter pinging the most inaccessible depths of the human mind.

I write on, oblivious to the dust that floats around me, unperturbed by the occasional screech across the blackboard.

The dust settles all around me, leaving imprints of my labour all over my clothes. Lumps of powdered chalk stick to the edges of my nails, almost like they have this compelling urge to percolate through my skin and fuse with the very bones that give a form to me and fibre my blood.

The irony strikes me….
It is like a family reunion for the unsophisticated chalk after all…

The marks on my clothes will disappear soon…
But anything dabbed on my mind is precious and indelible, even dust…

And then it dawns on me…
For no matter where I am in the classroom, I am always on the other side.