Excerpt
“And I suppose you propose that you’re the one who is
going to find these marvellous new things.”
“Actually,” Ken said, “I am – many of them. I have already found some
but they’re mine and they’re secrets.”
“Well, you seem to have some feelings about this.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Go ahead then – express your understanding of this.”
“Yes sir.” Ken picked up the chalk and drew two birds. One bird was
flying along while the other one lay crumpled at the foot of a brick wall
that it had crashed into.
“What precisely does that mean?” the master asked.
“This bird is flying along without thinking about Pythagoras’ Theorem
and this bird was thinking about Pythagoras’ Theorem and flew into
a wall.”
“I suppose you think you’re very funny,” the teacher said.
“In my universe I think I’m funny,” Ken said. “And I enjoy being funny.”
“Is that so?” the teacher said. “And I suppose you think this is very
funny.”
“No sir, it isn’t very funny. It’s actually very, very sad.”
“Yes,” he said, walking to his desk. “Sadder than you think.” He wrote
something on a piece of paper, folded it and handed it to Ken. “Take that
to the headmaster,” he said.
Ken left the classroom to the sniggers of the other students and searched
for the headmaster’s office.
This behaviour about drawing the birds was spawned by the treatment
that I got when I walked in there. I was dealt with in a rather stupid way.
If there were twelve points in one’s life that were important, this incident
would be one of my key ones. I’ve always had somewhere deep inside me a
sense of knowing the moment when I am in the moment. To this day I can’t
explain how that happens but I do know when I’m in it. It had become apparent
to me that there were very specific rules for the “good” people – the
“nice” people – and those were the people who had lots of money. The poor
people lived in a different world. And the rich people were hiring minions
such as this teacher to do their bidding. The rich people didn’t want to look
after their own children – they just shunted them off to boarding schools.
Ken found the office and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a voice called.
Ken walked in and handed the folded note to a woman sitting behind
a desk in the small anteroom. She unfolded it, scanned what was written
there and looked back up at Ken with a curious half-smile.
Manolis Aligizakis 