Priscilla’s Mental Tangent:

Ever get that feeling when you’re aware and awake, but only just? You’re functioning, but you’re in such a fog that you really can’t be bothered to have an IQ larger than your shoe size? This happens to me rather often in my Studio Art class. It’s happened the past three or four lessons, and it happened again today. We were working on a design project, in which we take a few pieces from our dozens of smaller design assignments and try to fuse them into a huge design image. We had each scattered our miniature design assignments around on the floor so that we could begin to synthesize the ideas. I smiled when I saw my whale.

Now, the whale needs some explanation.

He was born a few class periods ago, when we were cutting up construction paper to make images that represented simplicity, excitement, tranquility, and chaos. I picked up a scrap piece of paper and there he was. He was such a wonderful whale, this scrap piece of paper. He was my friend. Just looking at him made me happy. I saved him and pasted him on a seperate piece of paper and kept him with my other design mini-assignments.

And there he was, waiting patiently in my sea of images, ready to be used in my project if I needed him. I slowly circled the pile, looking for ways for my shapes and contours and lines to fuse together into a legitimate design. But as my eyes travelled back over my whale, I felt not happiness but horror. I audibly gasped, making a couple of my classmates turn around to see what was the matter.

“My whale!” I wailed, “Upside-down! It looks like a snake head! And it’s laughing at me!”

Yes, indeed. It was laughing at me. It’s huge, innocent eye was now wide and menacing. It’s amusingly bent tail was now a vicious, gaping jaw. No question about it, it was evil. My whale had been tainted. I felt crushed.

This must be what it’s like to be Delirium, I thought to myself. Earlier, in the car, I had remarked to Mimi my feelings of what a surprising word “Suburban” is. It’s like popcorn and bubbles, swimming in hot fudge. I felt the urge to make butterflies. I think I’ll be Delirium for Halloween next year.

I’m still upset about my whale.