Half life

We are all quietly sitting in an auditorium.  We are waiting for the presentation—for the balding man to come and turn on the projector and show us transparencies.  He will write on them in marker, circle the important bits, underline words, draw arrows.  We will all sit quietly but make no notes, because notes are not allowed.  We will just hear it again and again until his lecture is all we know.  And it is always the same lecture.  The same lecture again and again, with the same arrows and underlined words.  I have heard it so many times the words mean nothing to me.  It is almost as if they are in a foreign language.  They just roll past me like tumbleweed on the road.  I will stare straight ahead and hear nothing and turn written words into straws that represent intersecting hallways, each one leading somewhere I am not allowed to go.  If you stare at words hard enough you don’t see them.  You can read words out loud and not hear them.  I can read the same pages again and again and again and not recognize them if someone read them to me.  I am a master.  I am a genius.