.On the stairway at the train stop !There .He was chasing invisible bubbles made of air pollution .Then he was dreaming he was inside a hollow ocean, an empty one
.He was the only creature in the whole universe. There was a warm light around him .He was finally making sense of it all .He reached out for his cell phone to call someone and tell him all about it, but he couldn’t find it. He then wasn’t sure he had a cell phone .He wasn’t even sure he had a body anymore .He was just feeling and thinking, all alone in a vast ocean
.That feeling quickly passed. He was suddenly facing his first grade grim-faced teacher. Her hair resembled Marge Simpson’s hair .Her name was Mia. It has been 36 years since he last saw her. Mia was floating in the thin air, or was it the thin empty water. She had a text book under her right arm, and she was holding a chalk with her right hand .There was a moment of awkwardness, with no sensory input of any kind. He somehow appreciate it. Then Mia held her hand up, the one holding the chalk, and was writing something in the fluid matter stood between the two of them .Her movements were firm but calm, like those of a bird safely crossing the winter skies .Her movements have caused the water to gently vibrate, and these tiny vibrations turned into lines and curves, that eventually turned into meaning :It was a question, written in capital letters ?SO NOAM, WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED
.It was a question he needed time to contemplate on :After some time (maybe a minute, maybe an hour, It’s very hard to feel time underwater), he raised his hand and slowly began to move it across the water in front of him, forming a capital response .I’M NOT SURE WHAT I HAVE LEARNED, TEACHER MIA. NOT ENOUGH, I GUESS. BECAUSE I STILL STAND HERE IN FRONT OF YOU. I STILL HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS, AND THE WORLD IS STILL TOO BIG FOR ME TO GRASP
.Teacher Mia was his age now, or even younger. She carefully read his response, her eyes were dancing across the flying letters he had just formed .She was then becoming more and more transparent, like the feeling you get when they pull you out of a dream. Just before she completely disappeared, he thought he saw her nodding in consent .The train have entered his stop, and he was following his fellow human beings, out into the peer, then into his car, back into his life