recorded
you find yourself seated. the desk is too small for you, but you have always sat at it. a paper has been placed face down in front of you. the room is full of others, all of whom appear to have studied. there is the smell of pencils, the smell of varnish, the smell of a long childhood.
you turn the paper over. the questions are in a script you almost recognise. the subject is one you have never taken: a discipline of measures, perhaps, or of weather. you understand that you should know this. you understand, with the calm of a dreamer, that knowing is not the issue; the issue is that the page is already filling itself in, in your own hand, in answers you cannot read. you watch your hand work. it does not consult you.
somewhere a bell will ring. somewhere a teacher is already collecting the front row. on the wall, the clock has hands of unequal speed. you do not stop your hand. you would like to know what it is writing, but the writing is for school, and school belongs to a different dream.
recorded on waking · undated