Althusserian

Althusserian
A Philosophy Sketch

Excerpt: When I close my eyes now, in the brief moments when I am uncontrollably blinking away the reality of the way we see the world together, the brook which flows in my mind has taken a violent turn. Help me master, the noise of its water is no longer serene to my ears. You may not hear it, but I hear it as clear as any other sound. Please, help me.

Invigilator: please remain seated till the exam time is over.

Girl 1: Can we leave if we finish before time? I mean, we don’t have to keep sitting till the alarm bell rings?

Invigilator: The door will be unbolted at all times, miss. You can leave anytime you are happy with your response to these questions that I am going to circulate right about now. Your time starts now.

The clock starts to tick loudly.

Invigilator: Your time is valuable. Make use of it with precaution. You may leave before time if you want to.

The invigilator throws one piece of paper infront of the girl.

Girl 1: (COUGHS) Thanks.

In the window a railway coach passes with no definite purpose against a setting sun.

Boy 1: Has anybody got a pen?

Invigilator: Remain seated at all times, please.

Boy 2: Here you go.

Hands him a pen.

Girl 1: I’m lazy, it will be such a pain to be patient all this while.

Boy 1: And a joke goes by unnoticed.

Invigilator turns around and continues handing out slips of paper, this time to the two boys.

Boy 1: I wonder what I’ll do when I get into trouble.

Invigilator: You sir, do you have an intent on erring? If so be careful not to evaporate with the water.

Girl 1: Water! Not possible.

Invigilator: Mister is sweating with anxiety. He’ll surely evaporate as time goes on. (Pause) As you have been already told, duplicity of answers will not be marked correctly.

Boy 1: Oh my world! Why has the temperature suddenly taken a tremendous rise?

Invigilator: Keep looking at the clock: Don’t feel gracious enough to leave before time. You will ofcourse regret having left early but we at this school have learnt to remain indifferent to your choices. (Pause) Another addition to the way of our world, I must mention to you that the walls in this room do exactly what an expansion of space does not do.

Boy 2: It will shrink!

Boy 1: Yes! I think what he means is that with time the temperature will rise and the room will shrink.

They continue writing.

Boy 1: Quite a replica of our circumstance sir, a marvelous puzzle you have created here, master.

Invigilator: Talk only in whispers. I’ll be walking around the room, snatching papers from you as soon as the alarm clock rings. I’m not rooting for any of you to answer correctly to these questions. But, in the given time you must replace the blankness you see in this script with the way you see this world we live in. At the end of the duration of the exam either I’ll leave first or the last man.

Girl 1: Oh! A lovely equation.

Boy 1: But we do… write the answer, right?

Girl 1: We can look around?

Invigilator: Quit dreaming, the things you can see inside this room are blank, so I have come to learn the length of my career.

Boy 1: I think, I am going to leave right now. This is a waste of time. I don’t want to make a fool out of myself.

Boy 2: Hold on! Yes, sit the duration of the exam, it is brief. I’m sure the questions infront of us will not add to the burden we already bear. I think I know most of it but the problem with me is that I have always longed to impress myself with vainglorious words. I used to think words are dead poetry, but now that I’m in a position where I’m facing a form of slavery I am sure of my alienation to the words of many. Maybe in this way I’m a good student of this school.

Invigilator: Try not to befriend this boy, I request all.

Girl 1: Yeah, thanks.

Invigilator: Time is up. Hand over your sheets of paper.

Girl 1: But the alarm still hasn’t gone off.

Invigilator: Pardon. I forgot I must go out first to the hallway and strike the bell with the hammer myself. I will do it now for it is my job. What I expect of you is that you remain seated instead of living up to the idea I have of you. That sounds a tough task, but it is not as complex as it sounds it might be. Free yourself of the efforts you take to command your body towards action. Just saturate yourself in the surface of your chairs. 

Invigilator leaves the room and the alarm siren resonates. He comes back to the room. He now waits next to the students for them to submit their answer scripts in his hand. Another train sways past the window.

Girl 1: (Looks up) Sir, are you going to be standing on my head or are you up to something?

Boy 1: Don’t you know, master invigilator can control everything from our actions to our thoughts, but he can’t touch us. What a pity!

The invigilator has walked over to the window.

Boy 2: I’m not yet satisfied with my response. I think I’m going to take some more time.

Girl 1: What a wonder, master invigilator led us to this examination and even though he has the power to hypnotize us into giving him our responses he’s standing there waiting. I remember having seen him carefully entering the school every morning how he sulks in himself. I bet he hides all the reasons in his life which cause him happiness.

Boy 1: Then he must hide happiness itself.

Boy 2: I can no longer come up with a voice to air my inquiries into the virtues of life. My mind has moved far beyond the presumptions of my own world.

Boy 1: Why must you stress yourself like this? I happen to have identified which one of your habits has led you to a state of despair. If you really think about it you could figure them out too.

Girl 1: How will we know if what you’re thinking about his problems is right or wrong? How do we know you’re speaking the truth?

Boy 1: It would hardly matter if my perception is true or not. There cannot be any truth in my intuition about the root cause of the distress to our friend. I have merely set a trail of thought which might ne true or false.

Boy 2: He is replicating the situation that master invigilator has created for us. If we let him sustain our attention not only will he create a vortex for us to be lost in but he will also persuade master invigilator that his response to his question is the correct one.

Girl 1: Is that what you are doing?

Boy 1: I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to translate to you what I am thinking without having to cause an ambiguity within my mind. I only know what I’m thinking. I am fully observant of my own voice.

Invigilator walks over to the door and starts pulling at the threshold like a mad man.

Girl 1: Control yourself master. Why must you exert yourself violently? The boredom has gotten to you, has it? It is alright. I am ready to give in my response. I wish to leave the room.

Boy 1: I too wish to leave.

Invigilator: No one will leave now. The door which was unbolted is now going to be locked.

Girl 1 and Boy 1 are dumbfounded. They return to their chairs. Boy 2 is writing outrageously and muffling his head for answers.

Invigilator: I have never been evil and I’ve never been good. I’ve been plain old master invigilator for so long that now by virtue of being constantly that I’m lost in the surrounding. What I’m experiencing is much more dangerous than a crisis. (Pause) It is not the same kind of danger as a crisis offers so you may rest. But It is in my favor and to my benefit that I am enough self aware to identify what has happened to my peace.

Boy 2: My war!

Invigilator: Yes! It is my war. I have come on terms with a condition that implies an intent on madness. What shall I do if not exert myself? The very rules I had set to the establishment of this school are now failing me.

Boy 2: The times have changed!

Invigilator: Everything but the time changes. My capacity for conforming to the classroom has started showing itself. What may happen next?

Girl 1: Maybe your hands will turn into glass…

Boy 2: Maybe…

Boy 1: (confused) I now ask… If the room hasn’t shrunk yet leaving nothing but invigilator master existing, then what will happen now that the life of the invigilator master may not go on living without the existence of the classroom?

Invigilator paces around the room biting his nail.

Boy 2: You know, there used to be a time when yelling across the hallway was perfectly reasonable. Regardless of age, I used to do it myself. Now when I really need a string of glum meaning to enter the loops of understanding that is circling around my curiosity there is not a single echo in my head voicing the clarity of the world.

Boy 1: I can hear the sound my head fairly well. It is the sound of a brook falling down a stone into the still waters. It’s the sound of droplets, feather droplets.

Girl 1: If a thing like that occupies your mind then you must be really happy with the way you have done in the examination.

(Pause)

Invigilator: All these years I have dedicated myself to your success. I instilled a feeling of competition in you all but never let you contest against each other. I had bad faith it is true.

Boy 1: We don’t know yet if you have been living in good or bad faith. We don’t know yet. But if you say it like that then I must reconsider my response. I shall stay a while.

Girl 1: (annoyed) Well that leaves me in an awkward spot, it sure does.

Boy 1: Master invigilator, now that we are somewhat clearer on your condition we can go over these questions and respond once again. I hope the time I take to act upon these inquiries from a different perspective is less than the time you take to change your mind. (Pause) In the meanwhile, do you ever change your mind? Is it possible for you to change your mind, given your high position in the school?

Invigilator: (relieved) Yes. I do. As far as I am concerned I have changed it recently and this dilemma has caused an alteration in my being as I see it. Here, I say that you have responded well to my counseling and deserve to pertain some more information in its most raw format. The school is advancing and the number of students in this very classroom can be foreseen to proliferate exponentially.

Girl 1: (exclaims) That means all our progress will dissolve. Evaporate.

Invigilator: It will vanish, yes. That is what I have been trying to convey to you. All I could be was blank.

Boy 2: (marvels) Will we have an opportunity to show our superiority to those who have come after us?

Invigilator: you have always had too many questions. I’m afraid you will have to come to stay quiet till the time you identify with the thoughts of these students. I have come to live with the sensation of not being able to touch anybody and I have developed a set of principles around it to make the most of this kind of a detachment. I am afraid the three of you will have to go through a similar process of detachment. But you will have each other to pass through it.

Boy 2: Being away from them will bring us closer to you! That might be the truest fascination we have time for. The more I think about it them more I am driven towards the idea of intrusion. (pause) Look at it this way… Once the batch made up of the new students are here they will start to ask their own questions and the questions we have been building up on till now, I wonder what will happen to them, you know?

Girl 1: I guess we will have to adjust our perspective to their innocent eyes. Once we line ourselves with the way master invigilator will look after them our dilemmas could, I think, shift whichever way we observe them to tilt.

Invigilator: Yes, observance will have a crucial role in maintaining control over our actions. All my life I have sought to control the material without having to come in contact with them. With the power of my mind, I have shaped the world as you know it.

Boy 1: Master, I refuse to take the role of your mind in the way I see the world and I wish to abstain from having to see this classroom as the only essence of my own life. For me the reality of the brook which flows is as true as the reality of the stone which is unmoving. I will continue to mingle with them.

Boy 2: Then I will have to negate each and every thought you will express in the presence of those who have no prior knowledge of our consciousness.

Girl 1: Nothing is our own, isn’t it master? Everything we have, we share it equally with the brook and the stone. The students may come, let them come and see for themselves. Why don’t we give them a demonstration of our learning and your teaching?

Invigilator points to the door and continues speaking.

Invigilator: You are speaking well, but the rule must remain the same for everybody. The moment you step in this room in my presence, your heads bow automatically and you see me as the judge of your morality! You obey what I have to say about psychology, then why do you dispel what I have arranged as your coming of age?

Boy 2: We have grown in days with the help of the simplest of things taught by you. We have respect for you.

Boy 1: We have nothing to say against an exam.

Girl 1: So is our choice. We are treated fairly. I choose to speak too in the presence of the students who will come after us.

(Pause)

Invigilator: What do you do, tell me, when you leave for your houses at night? In the morning you are hungry for knowledge so you come here, but in the night you go to your bed and sleep there. I didn’t have that in mind when this school was being made. When we brought this school to life for you, we wanted you to learn and then live on your own terms. I have seen and I know the pains of having lived the mundane life.

Boy 2: Master invigilator, what I do here is loved by me and that is why I am able to sleep at night. It is the satisfaction of having more and more answers to the mysteries of life. With your guidance I have lived a healthy life.

Invigilator: You must leave.

Boy 2: (sadly) You are hiding something from us.

Invigilator: Yes. Truth is that the new students cannot enter here till the time the three of you vacate the classroom.

Boy 2 gets furious with despair. He goes over the door and starts to pull on it with both hands.

Invigilator: By shrinking the room you cannot ensure no more persons come in. I have already tried it and that is why I am telling you that you must leave.

Boy 1: When I close my eyes now, in the brief moments when I am uncontrollably blinking away the reality of the way we see the world together, the brook which flows in my mind has taken a violent turn. Help me master, the noise of its water is no longer serene to my ears. You may not hear it, but I hear it as clear as any other sound. Please, help me.

Boy 2: You have chosen a different path on where you want to be led by the knowledge that is ours. I praise your courage, but you are a fool!

Invigilator: There seems to be some pleasantness you have borrowed immediately from the spirit of failure.

Boy 2: I have given up on these questions. If we must remain here indeterminably, let us be.

Girl 1: If we are staying, then we won’t have to worry about talking to them. Master invigilator, if we are united in this decision then why you continue looking after our responses to the questions…

Invigilator nods to them. He rushes out. The three are scared the room will shrink and they will cease to exist. The invigilator has been unable to wipe them from his memory. He comes back with some wood and some hammers. He keeps them on the ground on an equal distance from them.

Boy 2: What might be the meaning of this?

Boy 1: It is to build a boat so that I could feel safe despite the storm which is damaging my brain. I guess I wasn’t as brilliant as the two of you. If this is a part of the stream of my response to master’s questions then I have surely failed.

Invigilator: You have forgotten the reason why we gather knowledge… In your lust for power you have ignored the harm inflicted unto those who will not be able to come here. Where is your sense of altruism? Why are you failing to express it with the same freedom you use to call for help?

Boy 2: He will liberate himself of suffering himself, and so will they. I am right in trying to make my way to the last divide that will pass me to the state of their living. Death. It will show me How I suddenly find myself every morning on my bed with a will to wake up and do things. This room itself has been a collage of different things I have found to do in order to keep away from becoming you. I want to see the nature of the world but I don’t just want the life of a pilgrim who knows himself to be existing but has no idea of what the meaning of it all is. I don’t want this kind of a life for someone else. It is a good life but I must have it for myself.

Girl 1 moves to the planks of wood and the hammers. She collapses near it.

Girl 1: How do you feel now?

Boy 1: I feel like I am destined to suffer but still I will make it past the crisis. I would much rather build a boat with my own toil and give it to someone who isn’t in this classroom and has a perfect use for the boat. I merely identify the uproar of threat in my environment and the easiest way I can tell you about it is if I call the outside of this room a stone and the inside a brook clashing with a  river.

Invigilator- … Or vice-versa? Look for everything inside this room, what is that one thing which has always given you the reflection of the world as we know it beyond these walls?

Girl 1: It is you. You are the one who have given us the crudest form of a reflection of the world outside this classroom.

Boy 2: It is this window which has given us the best insight into the outside world.

Boy 1: It is the soul inside us that has made us aware of the world as it is. Whatever it observes when we go back to our hostels and lodges and sleep there is the best reflection it gets from the outside world.

Invigilator: How can we then continue on the path of learning we had taken for ourselves now that we are aware of the people who will come in this room and distort our environment with inquisitions that are right on their part but a hindrance on our part? How can we continue to learn what we had set out to learn in their absolute absence?

Girl 1: Let’s say I leave this room and never turn back to look at it. Will the balance be restored then?

Boy 2: It surely must.

Invigilator: (calmly) The question is will you have balance.

Boy 1: (In distress) Master. I am already quite troubled internally. What good will come to me if I remain here is up to your graciousness. It might be the regulations of the school we are in which might lead you to decide whether my response to your blank questions are adequate but I have never experienced such a fickle strength opposing the current of information in the mind.

Boy 2: (comes forward) I am well equipped with the skill of building a boat, I will earnestly build a boat for you. Just say the words and I will help you cope with your depression.

Boy 1: It is not a depression.

Invigilator: Perhaps the act of building the thing that will eventually save you from dying is an act of healing. I have given you your tools and what you decide to do with them is up to you.

Light fades in the room and soon it is completely dark.

Stage is bright again. The three students are sitting on a boat and battling a mild thunderstorm. Rain is falling very lightly. Girl 1 is emptying the water from the boat one bucket after another. Her bucket is in the shape of a boat. Boy 1 is trying to row against the current while Boy 2 is sitting with dampen spirits. He breaks out with cheers at once!

Boy 2: Since we have come here to overcome the crisis of the proliferation perhaps our pedagogue will see our adventure as a collective triumph.

Boy 1: Maybe. Maybe.

Boy 2: By the time the batch of the new students would arrive at the school for their education we would’ve cleared the turmoil that is stirring in your mind. Personally, I can say I have some faith in the way you have paved a path into the way master Invigilator thinks.

Boy 1: I’m not quite sure I truly understand faith.

Boy 2: (shocked) But you are brooding over what goes on imaginatively within you all the time. How can you not have made up an opinion on faith by now? Imagine how disappointing such an uncertainty may turn out to be if we choose to remain amidst the newcomers and they bring to notice a conflict of such sorts!

Then suddenly Girl 1 sits herself down and begins to weep. She gradually breaks down into a loud cry.

Boy 1: What’s wrong with you?

Girl 1: (controls herself) Is it possible we might’ve struck a stone? It has made a hole in the boat. The water keeps seeping in. We are going to drown.

Boy 2: Impossible! It has never happened in my lifetime that a boat built by me has sunken low and it will most certainly not happen for the first time when I am floating on it.

Boy 2 leaves the rowing and starts to mend the boat.

Boy 1: Ah! The harbor is very near from here. If we keep rowing we will be there soon. (Pause) Where are you?

Boy 2: Do you feel the surface on which you are resting your feet?

Boy 1: Yes.

Boy 2: It is me. I am down here mending the boat. You row the boat yourself or else the current will take us back into the storm. We need to go against the current.

Boy 1: I cannot row this boat. I feel a strong comparison with master invigilator. The wind has stopped brushing against the hair on my skin. My body has begun to separate from me. I no longer need it to be.

Boy 2: What nonsense. Row the boat you fool or else we’ll all drown!

Boy 1: Hey lady, why don’t you row the boat? Don’t you want to live forever?

Girl 1: No I will not row the boat. I think I can move it without having to put in the effort.

The boat starts moving forward.

Boy 1: Isn’t it amazing how without having to build anything myself I find it using it’s power to its fullest potential to empower me. I wonder if it does so in helplessness or because it has a fondness for the way I am. Yes. It is really wonderful, as wonderful as the golden sunset which we are passing by. And now I have given myself to the illusion of action. Come up from under my feet and do tell me please if it is true what I am seeing!

Boy 2: What is it?

He appears.

Boy 1: Is it true that being an accomplice to the powers of master invigilator gives me such vision? Am I seeing myself walking on the road there?

Boy 2: I am blocking the hole in the boat with the sole of my shoe right now and you are limiting yourself to seeing an image of you on a road. These could turn out to be the dying moments of your life…

Girl: Only if it is all true.

Boy 1: Yes, only then. Or nevermore.

Boy 2 disappears again into the boat and a few repairs are thrown out into the waters. He continues to mend the boat.

Boy 1: Yes! It is me. The very nose, the very eyes that are on my face are on his face too. There he goes. Look!

Girl 1: (Stands up) Yes! This is a powerful experience… What is this?

Boy 2: (speaks) It’s madness!

Boy 1: Oh no!

Boy 2: What do you see now?

Boy 1: I am on a rampage. I seem to be assaulting and terminating young people who’re trying to enter our school. I seem to have taken competition a bit too seriously, help me.

Boy 2: Calm down, if you’re here then you cannot be there. It is physiologically impossible, everyone knows that.

Boy 1: I must have identified a threat to my existence as a pupil at the hands of these younglings and a part of me has set to eradicating the root cause of this problem. I am ashamed of myself.

Boy 2 appears and handles the ore vigorously.

Boy 1: No! No! Row me away from myself. I cannot bear to see the violence I’m inflicting on innocent beings because they are in way of my satisfaction. I’ve had enough of the barbarian in me and I can no longer continue to dwell in negativity. I too have become indifference. Row me away from myself.

Boy 2: The water here is silent. (Pause) Will you take the ore from me now if you will? It won’t be too much trouble, as for my arms, they are tired and they are burning.

Girl 1: No I cannot ease your burden. I think I have sought a perfect response to the exam master invigilator has put before us. Say how wonderful it will be if we let as many of the new pupils enter the classroom and let them learn from the master himself. If any space remains for us, I mean the three of us then we will sit amongst them.

Boy 2: We have experienced many negations at the hands of the master every time he has walked out of the room and left us rattling our brains inside our bedrooms. But, below our adventurous fervor there is a point of the matter that master has always tried to emphasize on.

Boy 1: To not corrupt. In times of distress, we have been instructed to take aim and act according to our goals. The school has offered us ambition and we must not take this away from others. What is this urge then to succeed at something prestigious?

Boy 2: I tried being the best at words but only to realize on a psychological level that words are stories untold.

Girl 1: Or is it that you have been failing at trying to give the words any meaning? I know what is more important to me, I know I don’t have enough time to accomplish what I had set to achieve… My aspirations from life have lost all magnificence.

They’re approaching the school they must now go on foot. They step down from the boat and exit the stage on the right. Dark.

Light gains slowly but not completely. The invigilator is standing along the window and his three students are on the floor talking to one another. The most notable thing is the wrecked boat. A train passes in the window.  

Invigilator: Is it possible you all might’ve constructed a faulty response to this problem? Do you accept it?

Boy 1: (exclaims) It is unfair! The three of us learned the lessons you gave on the way we see the outside world together. But the way you have used the conflict of my inner self to test our perseverance, the way you have disrobed my fragility to measure the strength of the fabric of time has hurt my sentiments. What am I to do?

Invigilator: The exam was for all of you to respond to, if you think it was too close to your essential qualities then you are mistaken. You need to keep aside the prejudices you have for the way things seem to you and only then will you look at the world, stare out the iris post aligning it to yourself. Only then can you find yourself in this realm of sincere ignorance doing something really worth mentioning. It would be a waste of something greater than you if you just sat here and paid attention to new views when the pupils who are coming to study actually appear before us. You will have to leave then. That is the most one can do for the sake of the life of your imagination. (Pause) You have been treated as equally as anybody else.

Boy 2: This imaginative continuity will go on, not after we are gone but in this very moment in several realities in one go.  (Articulates) something greater than ourselves… Something more powerful than the will to power? But how did I get here, what am I doing, and who am I?

Girl 1: Oh c’mon! Grow up! We haven’t any time for such absurdities. We mustn’t validate a crisis by responding to it, we must negate the I and look at the world from the perspective of the master.

Aside.

Boy 2: (Introspects) So is it time for us to make our love known to the world?

Girl 1: If the time is right then I believe we must.

Another train passes in the window and the sun starts to set. Girl 1 and Boy 2 regain consciousness of the classroom.

Invigilator: So it is, a dreams end.

Boy 1: I still feel incomplete, master. It was you who stirred the peace in my mind and it was us who dealt with my own psychological discomfort. But it seems to me you have forgotten the reason behind my paranoia. The boat had a hole in it, yes it did. I didn’t know right from wrong for the crisis was my own, but these two did. When I didn’t know how to make a boat he offered me help and I took it, and she nearly caused my breakdown, my collapse, by refusing to handle the ore when the storm was too strong…

Invigilator: … These are not just your thoughts and your actions! These things happened I agree…

Boy 1: Then why should I be the only one to leave the classroom unhappy after my knowledge and more importantly my peace has been put to the test.

Boy 2: An examination for you was also an act of being tested for us. There might be unhappiness and anxiety in your mind, even after we have gone through a series of inquiries and explanations but in all honesty, the burden of being your friend has kept me here this long. I tried it all and look how much you have appreciated an effort. An effort is all that counts.

Invigilator: The burden lies in existence and not in the essence.

Boy 2: (scared) Forgive me master Invigilator, I am bad with words. What you think is not what I mean.

Boy 1: He’s deceiving us. He’s been doing it since the beginning. He left the boat unfinished on purpose and he is the reason I foresaw the extent of my own action.

Girl 1: Humans have always had a violent tendency in them, master, and the ones who will come after us must be taught to go around it. This is what I’m here to do, I’ve thought very carefully and I’ve decided I’ll give feedback and I’ll exit from here.

Boy 2: Master, a question has been put on my decision making, thus I can no longer be here. I’d rather be elsewhere. I don’t know what I’ll be doing and that is precisely the problem, but I will think of a way to put that problem to an end. I too, bid you farewell.

Aside.

Boy 2: Come lets go, we have many a stories to tell each other and many a nights to spend in each other’s arms.

Girl 1: (Points at the window with her finger) Only perhaps we’ll stand outside that window on the street every day and try to overhear the wisest words of the master. Praise him.

They swiftly begin to walk towards the door of the classroom. Boy 1 runs after them and blocks their way. He stands guarding the door with enraged eyes. A violent red overshadows on the stage. The source of its brightness appears to be coming from outside the door. The window loses all its panache. 

Boy 2: If you leave now this classroom will contract eventually withdrawing the minutest of the intricacies of our imagination. I cannot say fully how much it would ail me if the glories of master invigilator have passed onto the two of you, for it is in my thoughts that the two of you share with me an equal degree of freedom to imagination.

Invigilator: (with grandeur) Alas!

The light gains sobriety and fades to white. The three regain silently their seats and begin scribbling on the sheets of paper in front of them. The invigilator assumes a stance facing the three and fixates permanently as a thing that has been molded by hands and baked till it’s burnt. It is a statue which the three were supposed to replicate for a common purpose.  

Boy 2: It seems to have been nothing afterall. My thoughts and what I made of them are a disjointed survey into the timeline of consciousness.

Boy 1: It would be much to humble of you if you didn’t steal the intellectual ideas of my mind. (Relaxes) My word you have shaken my mind much worse than it has ever experienced. To be honest it isn’t my age to have these kinds of thought processes.

Girl 1: Stop regressing yourself. If you find yourself to be unhappy then why not accept it. It is an equally important part of who you will grow to be…

Boy 1: (Interrupts) Evolve!

Girl 1: Yes, fine! Have it your way. You’ll ‘evolve’ into something stronger if you accepted the way you’re feeling once in a while. That is what I really think.

She gives the portrait some finishing touches.

Boy 2: I was blank, but now I won’t say I’ve realized something but essentially there might not be such a thing as something capable of realizing another thing taking place outside of it… But what I will say is that you have taken your thoughts not only way too personally but also somewhat proudly. (Pause) You might turn out to become a superman, which is something you might or might not have already laid the design to but to the rest of the world, to society since you will be the same as you appear to be you will be that thing and nothing more.

Girl 1: That might be the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard you say about our friend, today.