Of Air Castles on Marble Floors

The day was bad even before it was day yet. I had two TOK essays and one English essay due, all three of which had to be sent off to the IB for evaluation. They all accounted for between 10% and 20% of my final grade in all those various subjects. I began working at them at about three past twelve in the morning, but was just far too tired to be productive. I set the alarm for twenty past twelve. Just 20 minutes, I told myself, would be enough to get a power nap and re-charge. The alarm might have gone off, but I simply didn’t hear it. When I finally woke up, it was morning. 6 o’clock. I told myself – half an hour to spare. I could still do something…

It was break time. Memories of the shock when I found at ten to seven that the saved version of the TOK essay on my laptop was incomplete by a page and a half were still fresh in my mind. The clouds were grey and it was slightly chilly. I remembered the wind howling through the window of the bus as it hurtled towards school, while I desperately fought to type in the rest of my TOK essay from a hard copy that I’d found in one of my files. The laptop was thrown around quite a bit and typing was virtually impossible as we rode over the fissured tarmac. I never want to travel down this road again, I thought to myself.

I found a little black marble square in the floor of the portico where biscuits and juice are served at school. To my left and right were green plants contemplating silently in the corner. Everything was a little subdued as wisps of cotton wool of gloom hung in the air. Standing in my little black square, I began to read through the TOK essay. Out of the corner of my eye, I could still see that no one was coming into the little black square. Suddenly, for some strange reason, and for one I am at quite a loss to explain, I felt a little better. It was like I was in my own little black square. I could stand in it how I wanted and do in it what I wanted. I began walking in a circle in the black square and couldn’t help but smile a little, even though there wasn’t any conceivable reason to do so.

Looking back on the incident during lunch, I decided that appreciation of the small and childish things in life, something as simple as standing on the main portico floor and standing in the black square inlay, and knowing that they are different, can make one happy. These things appear at one like realisations sometimes, single lines from unfinished limericks, and can make a difficult situation so much more bearable!