The Afternoon Hours

1:30 pm: Back to class. Classroom locked. Sit butt down on cold sterile hospital-like floor hallway until…

2:00 pm: 40 bendy water swilling yoga students stream out of next room. Told by professor that we will switch into their room. Enjoy the stench of collective B.O. as another example of “sometimes sharing is NOT caring” [ya know, like STIs].

2:04 pm: Physically Present Prof literally hurls a book on the floor and says, “This is a medicine wheel.” Proceeds to build classroom sized medicine wheel to create sacred space. This student notices her intense discomfort with putting a book, I mean it’s a BOOK, on such a cold, slidey, sterile floor. Student is OCD about the book placement for the rest of the day. It occupies her even through her nap during the subsequent Guided Imagery exercise to uncover internal Animal Guides, and is only remotely downgraded into temporarily tolerable discomfort by smell of crayons on hands.

4:00 pm. Professor uses the term "Hermeneutic phenomenology." Students duly write down words, wonder how to spell them, and silently ponder if not knowing what they mean somehow makes them dumb. Except for S, who rolls her eyes and says aloud, “What the hell does that mean?! F#$^&!@* Scholar-Speak...” S then looks startled and wonders if she can deflect blame for outburst onto the Crazy Yeller.

5:00 pm: Power Point "lecture" stipulating professor's belief in Burner Alex Grey Acid Guy as not only one of the world's preeminent Sacred Vision painters but also a modern day god.

6:00 pm: Visualize being free. Receive homework, including gathering musical instruments, art supplies, and a mask to bring to following day's community dance ritual. Sigh a lot.

Projection to Sunday, 8:00 am. Back in class. Bang head on table. Repeat.

Through December.

Feel free to line up to knock me unconscious anytime.