I who once churned out essays with facile skill am now by frustration driven to take up melancholy measures. My wounded muses implore me to write, but the elegiac verses on the monitor are obscured by tears of sleep deprivation. Not even the terror of academic probation could drive my bloodshot eyes to stumble over another section. Intelligence, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing academic career, is now languishing in this misery of my mediocrity.
While I quietly pondered such matters, and decided to give the keyboard another good flogging, there appeared standing in the corner of my cell a woman of august stature whose flashing eyes seemed wise beyond the dim knowledge of an undergrad.
Doubting my caffeine sprung senses, I rubbed at my filmy eyes. When she sensed my disbelief, she admonished my anxiety with this terse ditty.
"Alas! how this mind is dulled, drowned in the overwhelming depths. It wanders with inner darkness, deprived of its natural light.
"As a boy, this man was once free beneath the open heavens, and he used to catch a neutrino to the ends of the universe. He saw the magnificence of the red giant, the gravity of the black hole. And any comet that wandered its wildly elliptical paths, returning through generations distant, this master understood by his faith in Carl Sagan.
"Beyond all this, he sought answers: why the yawning gaps in the human evolutionary record; how radio waves pass through solid objects; how James Burke got to be so smart. He pondered the possibility of every atom as a distinct cosmos and the miracles that lie at the roots of life.
"This man used to explore and revel in Nature's secrets. Now he sits here, bound down by the heavy chains of his own making.
"But," she said, "this is a time for strong medicine, not complaint."
Fixing her gaze on me, she said: "Are you not the one who competed so successfully in science fairs, triumphed in one writing contest after another? You were given abilities that would have catapulted you to those very stars had you not squandered them. Why don't you speak? Are you still dumbfounded at my appearance or has my truth cut too deeply?" When she saw that I could not respond, she laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and said: "There is danger. I truly wish I could assure you otherwise, but you have forgotten yourself and are in fear of losing even more. Let me remove the clouds of disorder from your eyes so you may recognize me and see more clearly what I have to show you." With fingers soft as doe skin she carefully tipped my head back and dropped Visine into my eyes.
Then the night was over, darkness fled and my eyes regained their former focus; just as when the stars are covered by swift Corus, and the sky is darkened by storm clouds, the sun hides and the stars do not shine; night comes down to envelop the earth. But if Boreas, blowing from his Arctic cave, beats and lays open the hiding day, then Phoebus shines forth, glittering with sudden light, and strikes our astonished eyes with his rays.
Much in a similar way, I could see the path I had trodden and I recognized the face of my physician: Lady Hindsight.
With her hand still on my shoulder, she said: "By now you should know that the grass grows greenest where it is kept mown and watered. You cannot just hop over the fence to get to the other side. You have grown to view every day that passes as an opportunity lost. I have come to help you see the coming days in their vibrant infinity of possibility. But to know where we are going, we must know intimately where we have been."
Now her hand closed about mine and she led me from the dorm room, down the stairs, and out into the past.
Pakeha