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Last night I had a dream that I was in a very large class. A music class. It was the day of the final exam which was to be an essay in response to a single question the teacher would reveal after we rearranged our desks in a circle around the spacious room and took a short break. My job was to count the students present. It was a difficult task because they kept straggling in late and I’d lose my place and have to start again just as someone or other would switch places and I was altogether lost again. I didn’t finish the final count before they all stood up and started moving the desks around. I was terribly frustrated by this, and even more so when I realised most of them went outside to smoke during the break before the beginning of the writing.
Soon, the desks were in place and the writing was about to begin. Aghast, I turned helplessly to the teacher to explain I couldn’t count the students because they hadn’t all returned. In fact, of the very large class, hardly any of them came back after the break. I told the teacher I was almost positive that I’d counted eighty students. He smiled, then he laughed softly as if he knew the joke was on them. Then he said, “Let me see…eighty students showed up and about…how many do we see here? Maybe fifteen people stayed.” He shook his head a little sadly and said, “It goes that way. It’s too bad, really.” Then he sighed and turned back to the conversation I’d interrupted. He was talking to some woman I assumed was another teacher who had already finished examining her students and I heard snippets of plans for their summer holidays.
I sat with the group of remaining students and they all turned over their papers to reveal the secret essay question. I sat staring in shock at the back of mine. What was I doing in a music class?! I don’t play an instrument! I don’t know anything about music! I didn’t belong there. How did I end up in the class? I looked desperately at the other students and a short laugh just jumped right out of my throat. They were all looking just as desperately at each other. I didn’t expect that. I turned over the paper to see what the fuss was about and instead of a question about music, I read this:
What two elements have you seen come together in so perfect and precisely magical a manner that it made a light shine so sharp and bright and high and hot that it brought the entire world to a halt, that it caused Time to cease its eternal, infernal race to waste itself and let you taste it instead and made you Live?
The music students were in tears. They were lost. Their grades! Oh god! But one student, a violinist, stood hesitantly, eyes lowered and searching inward, obviously moving on the barest hint of a hunch, a began to play her violin. She played softly and sweetly, a slow and rich melody, something moving even to myself, a dedicated non-musical-minded person. I have a thing for lyrics, not melodies or instrumentals. They have rarely moved me to anything but a fidget. But there was something different about her music, and soon I saw what it was. It was drawing all Life to it, not just mine. The teachers, the other students, all unconsciously edged nearer. And then came the light. That was the other element.
The light edged over the window sill and slid down the wall, then threw itself across the floor and jumped onto her hands and violin. It shone on her hands and her instrument so sharp and bright and high and hot that I don’t think any of us were consciously aware of who or where or why we were. It was all about the Life in that moment, and we were satiated. I can say that is true without asking the others. I know it.
Eventually we returned to the our desks and the Question…for it was now a capital “Q”, it was, we understood, The Spiritual Question, and I understood why the teacher was a little sad for the others who had left too soon in their ignorance. And I thought about my answer. Did I have an answer to so high and important a question? I doubted that. I had no fine skills like the violinist. I made no beautiful music. What flashed in my mind was a memory of my Seanna. A very brief memory of her walking down the driveway one day.
Seanna came home from a morning visit to her Grandma’s and as she walked down the driveway that sloped toward the house the sun burst out from behind a cloud suddenly and lit up her shirt that was decorated with glitter. She had been looking up at me where I waited for her at the garage door when her whole shirtfront leaped to life and shined so sharp and bright and high and hot it stunned her even just out of her peripheral vision and I heard her gasp from ten feet away. She stopped on a dime and lowered her head slowly, as though in reverence, slowly raised her hands to touch her shirt, and carefully traced the suddenly luminous lines for two long minutes, entirely transfixed, intensely alive, as I, just as intensely aware of the Life in her, felt hot with gratitude.
Blink. Sun gone. Another cloud. Blink. Seanna’s head snapped up to look at me and she ran the rest of the way down the drive and threw her arms around me. Blink. Memory over. Blink. Eyes open. Dream over. I’m awake. I passed the test.
Steph
