5:41 am … this morning.  I was thrust out of a sickly sleep back to the world of solid things.  Not sickly like physical.  Sickly like emotional pain.  I’m sure you’ve been there.

I was in a university program.  It felt like accounting.  There was a prof at the bottom of a lecture hall, talking about incomprehensible concepts of mathematics.  I looked around and all of my pen-wielding classmates were nodding in approval at the wonders of calculus.  Then it was a seminar room, with everyone walking around with rolled up blueprints.  Person after person unfurled their creations, to the delight of themselves and all assembled – except me.  Someone asked me a question about balance sheets and I stuttered and drooled.  Disapproving chins dropped in a 360° dance.  I blobbed to the floor.

In the cafeteria, I sat alone, shunned by the mathematically inclined.  No cell phone, no internet, no use on the planet.  Eventually some kind soul offered me a ride home in their van.  Seven folks watched me walk up the steps of home.  No one said “Goodnight”.

(Bam!)  5:41.  My mouth was sour, perfectly aligned with my stomach.  The details of university accounting poured out easily and I knew they’d remain throughout the day.  They did.

Where did this yucky world come from?  Why did it visit me, a spiritually sensitive human being?  Don’t you graduate from nightmares eventually?

Apparently not.