They taught us dust. Those were our lessons. There were other lessons but allegedly none more important than the lessons in dust the sermons. We dreamed dust. We ate dust. There was dust favoring the sunlight insisting upon the rotting wood of the windowsill. That sill was my edge, my fool’s cliff. I stared out the window for what felt like long deep spells. I learned everything and nothing from that window. When the window grew tired of its windowness it transformed into a small dark star-pointed bird and flew away. No one noticed. What kind of world was this? We had dust in our eyes. We prayed to the dust. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … our voices were recorded and this prayer was played back to us religiously. We sat at our desks listening to ourselves reciting Our Lady of the Dust, in these lost hours … The rest was left unfinished so we could complete the prayer silently to ourselves however we wanted, that is however we wanted based on twelve optional variations for prayer continuance:

1. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we beseech your mercy.
2. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we ask nothing of time.
3. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we babble on crumbling.
4. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we clutch your hem.
5. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we are certain we don’t know.
6. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we invite you to dinner.
7. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … we cannot for the life of us.
8. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … where to next?
9. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … what hidden, where hidden, how hidden.
10. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … music.
11. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … give us this day.
12. Our Lady of Dust, in these lost hours … what have the meek claimed?

We were taught away from learning with blind volitional ignorance. No one knows they are perpetrating ignorance. If they did, they would stop, don’t you think?  All the fictions that came before, the fictions preceding us, couldn’t have been intentional, right? I made myself small and scaled the particles of dust that clung to our books and desks and collected on the walls. I hung out, kin to the flea or gnat, and gained a broader perspective. All while remaining seated at my desk, immobile, unflinching, a barricade and domicile unto myself.

Painting by Egon Schiele