Their walls are white. Our walls are grey. Grey being an overstatement of a pure-off-white tan. Pure like dirt buried underneath sand on a washed over shoreline by the lake. The man in front of the class ears a starched blue shirt and gold rimmed glasses. Peers through narrow lenses at a freshly groomed student body. Catholics with their crosses hanging on silver chains around their neck. Beneath -- no -- beneath -- their shirts. Pressed shirts. I am a tourist. Is it my camera. My camera rewinds before it advances. Confounds a picture taker already responsive enough only to point and shoot. Without the camera. I'm writing with a triangular pen that says 'Campus Ministry' in bold red letters and being absorbed by physics. Where, exactly, am I? Everything is slow. Everything is new. I think I'm in a farming ground for bright and shiny Jesuit zombies. We must learn algebraic substitution. Must learn it to create our society. Create it as a clear fountainhead spurting over bronze naked women at the top of a hill with the blue (always blue) in the backdrop. And I feel like I'm watching on a conveyor belt. Dragging. Dragging words from thoughts in a broken stream across paper. Equation 3. The ultimate simplification of the master plan. What difference is there in two competing velocities when crosses thrown against walls shatter into more than two pieces. Equation 3. Picks up the pieces and pretends the glue dries clear. Jewish girl sitting in some kind of vacuum. Seeing blotchy white spots in the cracks and on the pristine cement walls and parochial clock towers. Something is missing that is emptiness in the dry air that fills a volumous room. We have 80 kids overcrowded in a dimly lit tower. The sides of our buildings are green rocks and unmatching mortar. We have construction and our construction makes dust. Physics is getting boring and I long for deep confusing discussions of words written long before white boards were erected on these walls. Our teachers wear overlapping threads of heavy garments draped over old. And fat. Newness escapes to the West. And here. The gateway to the West guarded by floating Jesuit saviors who seek to coat our old buildings with infinite layers of white paint. Until we forget. And build engineers to help us forget. Only they forget themselves and the Catholic churches that share our green brick overlooking the Atlantic. They're left handing out pens in the hopes that somehow the words will stop flowing.
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