He felt a bright light burning his eyes. It was as if it challenged him to open them. A rhythmic, repeating sound gave him an inner beat on his breathings. It felt like water, a small wave that approached him and then was drawn away. At a distance he heard something that sounded like a frog. Or maybe not. He had nearly forgotten all the colors, all the sounds and somewhere there he had forgotten himself. In page 34 of his old notebook.
He lived there for the past two months. He was trapped while solving a very difficult astrophysical problem. He was trying for days and nights. He was having nightmares about it and during daytime he kept notes and wrote down all the possible combinations of math types that could solve it. He was awake at his office that night. He was so much into that problem and his thoughts that he got mixed up in his own scribbles, in his own handwriting and numbers, in his own symbols. It was like slipping into his own way of thinking at top speed. There was no point in shouting or pushing his scribbles to climb up to an invisible exit. There was no point in following the lines he had been drawing reaching the edge of the page or trying to find a small hole at the four corners of the page. So he stopped trying to escape. He got used to the total paper whiteness, the absolute silence, the absolute fear that he would be hidden in his own thoughts and into himself for ever.
Since the exams had just finished everyone thought that he was off on a trip. No one was worried. One day a student of his found his notebook when he entered his office and took it. He always carried it in his backpack and he would open it and have a look every now and then. He would frequently be on page 34 but he couldn’t detect the familiar human figure screaming and waving his hands for help.
He went on a lake trip with his friends on that morning. They opened it and had a look at their professor’s notes for a while. They left it by the lakeshore and had a swim.
The slight wave made its edges wet. That was his chance. When the pages became a bit soft he managed to escape. He fell unconscious on the damp soil not knowing for how long lingering in time and place. He opened his eyes. They got used to the landscape. A picturesque lake that looked like an ocean, tree trunks that looked like cold skyscrapers, rocks on the ground like scattered meteorites. Light, colors, stimulations back on track. Everything seemed to be in place though they didn’t seem to fit anywhere. He managed to escape from a claustrophobic environment only to feel misfit again in the greatness of his own world. His body was still small, in the dimensions of page 34. There was nothing in his size, only the fear of this new reality and the need for immediate adjustment.
He gathered all his strength and courage and he dragged his notebook until the first stake. Nearly gasping he set it up like a tent. It would be his home again, his shelter, his nest. He didn’t know if he was either trapped or free. He didn’t know if he should either laugh out loud or let himself cry tears of despair. He had to solve an even greater astrophysical problem and not only by taking notes on math types and scribbles this time. He was now well hidden within himself in total clarity. He greedily gazed at the scenery. He took off his jacket and headed carefully for a swim. All new. All clear. All ready to be learned from scratch.
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