A College Nightmare?

As I sit here staring at the page, I wonder if I will ever be able to write anything again.  It is so daunting looking at a blank page.  If I look at it, there is nothing.  No color, nothing to distract me from the fact that there is nothing on it.  What a foray into the psychological aspect of writing or creating.  It is never as easy as it seems.  Take words and create characters and a place and make them do things.  I wish I could do that.  I wish I knew things other than my life.  I wish that there was life outside of the four walls that I look at each day.  The walls are as blank as the paper.

Wow.  It is so depressing to think that all there is in life is a computer where my thoughts become a story for someone else to spend hours of their life reading, thinking and considering.  I don’t think that my life has ever been that important to have an impact on other people.  It was one simple idea that has brought a flurry of emotions from the people who read it.  Where can I go now?  Those characters are finished with their story.  There is nothing to do with them.  Fascinating characters and I have nothing I can do with them. 

Maybe I should take a break and go for a walk.  That could clear my head and allow me to find some inspiration of some sort.  Maybe if I were to find even the smallest road to take a journey.  That’s it; I’ll get in my car and just drive.  It’s not like I have anyone that will worry about me for a few days.  I can just leave and take some scenic routes around the countryside.  This seems like something all writers do in the movies.  They take a drive and find their souls and write another great novel and their lives are all the better for it.  If I could be lucky enough to have that kind of experience.  I hate being cliché.  It is annoying. I suppose that’s why the book did so well.  It was such a skewed view on life, that somehow it struck a chord with people.  What sparked that story anyway? 

It could have been seeing Jira again.  That was such fun.  We hadn’t seen each other in about 3 years and seeing her was just like we had never left.  Except now she’s got 4 kids and a husband.  Lucky her, I suppose.  Dissecting that would take days.  I need to figure out what sparked that story.  We had been together for about a day, as I recall.  After we had been out shopping at the local mega-mall, we ate at our favorite restaurant.  It was so much fun because we had been able to be out for so long without any children.  I know that was a great vacation for her even if it was only a few hours.  She kept saying to me, “Lona, I feel like I’m 21 again.”  I couldn’t agree with her more.  The memories of our time at college together came flooding back; the times of no sleep, crazy classes, and even crazier professors.  It’s a wonder that anyone survives it.

We reminisced at dinner about a certain science professor that we had our freshman year.  He was the most off the wall guy we had ever seen.  He kept class interesting mostly because he would do experiments that I was sure would blow up in his face.  The idea of that professor started me thinking about what would happen if some seemingly benign experiment went awry and was actually harmful to people exposed to it.  That still wasn’t the end of it.  Maybe that can get me to a similar place as the first book.  Tracking down a train of thought can be such a pain. 

Dr. Middlesect was your typical white-haired crazy looking science professor.  He looked as if he could have a lab of chemicals bubbling in his office.  I never actually went into his office, but the hall where he had his office was an experience.  I went twice to attempt to discuss issues I had with class.  Each time I arrived on the 4th floor of Connor Hall, an odor was present that made me wonder about what might have died.  I think it was a combination of Formaldehyde, something smelling like moth balls, and mint.  Those are not smells that I enjoy on their own, let alone together and in an enclosed space.  I’m not one to confront people, so that was enough to deter me from going to his office for at least a couple of weeks.  The next time I braved the stairs, it was even stranger.  I decided to try and brave the smell since I felt what I had to tell the professor was important, and he left the room as we were dismissed from class.  As I walked closer to the door to his office, the smell got stronger, as I expected, but what I didn’t expect was the sound. 

The sound wasn’t even a sound of tinkering or what I would expect experiments to sound like.  It grew stranger as I grew closer.  I think it would be considered noise by most people.  I was able to begin to separate the sounds as I stood a few feet from the partly open door.  One noise I heard was being created by what I guessed to be a squawking bird.  A thud noise I heard I surmised to be a treadmill.  There was also a rumble I could feel in the floor that I thought could be a bull frog croak being played over a microphone.  Then a squeal that was high pitched and varied between about three tones.  I knew I had to talk with this professor, but these noises had me at a stop.  I remember that I stood there for probably 10 minutes, not moving, waiting to make some sense out of the noise.  The longer I waited, the more difficult it became to discern any sound. 

All of a sudden, it all stopped.  The bass sound shaking the floor, the high pitch squealing, the squawking, all of it.  At the auditory release, I was able to move again.  I decided to open the door all the way and enter into the insanity.  As I reached for the door to open it, my crazy professor came bounding out carrying nothing other than drum sticks.  His sudden exit from his office and what he was carrying startled me.  He recognized me and asked me what I was doing.  I decided to be bold and ask what he was doing.  He invited me in and as I entered everything became clear.  There in front of me were my crazy science professor playing drums, a well known physics professor playing electric bass guitar, the head of the math department playing lead guitar, and a published English professor singing.  All that I had heard and smelled were from these four men.  What an unexpected find on the 4th floor of Connor Hall!