The Fire Escape

These days, the faculty room is agog with piles of exams, postlabs, formal reports to check. Stress levels are high. Instructors cramming for the deadline for the submission of grades, their hands smudged with red ink. Microsoft Excel in laptops wherever you turn. Instructors making exams, shuffling through books and piles of notes and previous exams, debating with each other about how difficult or how easy the exam should be. Instructors themselves studying for their own masterals exams. So much paper everywhere that it appears I can almost swim in a pool of lab reports.

My table is undoubtedly a mess. In fact, it's the messiest one in the faculty room at the moment. Towers of old papers piled so high I'm in danger of being crushed beneath them. Farewell tokens given to me by my students in danger of being lost beneath the dust. I've jokingly told my colleagues that there might already be living things (cats or some other) housed underneath all my stuff, and that if I suddenly vanish, it means that I simply got lost among my things.

Always, I've set myself a date when I'd clean and sort all those papers but I just can't have the heart to rummage through my past students' lab notebooks and papers. Foolish. I don't want to be overwhelmed by flashbacks and memories. I can't throw them away. Somehow, it seems better to just let them lie there, though I know sooner or later, I really have to organize my things.

So many papers for me to check. So many tasks and duties. So many responsibilities. So many names... and memories. Gone.

Amidst the busyness of my colleagues and the clutter of my own table, I found myself walking through the back of the faculty room. I unlocked the barred forgotten door and walked out into the open air. I was again, on my own in my special place. The secret fire escape.

I rummaged through my pockets and brought out my smokes and my lighter. Smoking has been forbidden in UP, and it has become increasingly difficult to obtain smokes much less to smoke in the places I used to frequent. I lit a stick of my staple Marlboro Menthol and inhaled the smoke, hoping to be relieved of my present worries. With my earphones on, my relaxation was complete. A sigh of contentment escaped me as I listened to music from my albums, My Own Radio. A simple pleasure I enjoy fully.

"It's Britney, bitch..." my Walkman fone told me.

I smiled and stared at the sky as I momentarily forgot about my duties, alone in my own haven, cigarette smoke coming up in spirals and swirls around me.

On the other side of the wall, time continued to pass.