Maxx Wright

Tesseract
Every night, my father would wait patiently as I brushed my teeth, jumped into my pajamas and burrowed into the soft covers that my mother had used to sweetly make what I called a "nest" - a pile of blankets on top of my bed. I had spent the day by her side, as young children do, enjoying the clean, loving protection of her care, but when Dad came home at night I was glued to him like a wet sock on a foot. As a young boy, I was instilled with the power to see literacy in its full, transcendent glory as a young man under the tutelage of a father who could access brilliance with words. He could bring the blandest story to life with a steady, careful rhythm and a sincere, rich "Tenor I" timbre that would put me right to sleep as he turned the pages of a carefully chosen novel. I can now see incredible lights and colors that others are blind to, because of his magical storytelling that would catapult my thoughts to a completely separate macrocosm, inspired by the words that were blasting into my consciousness. His renditions of The Hobbit or the adventures of young space traveler Tom Swift would develop into my most poignant memories; this time in which I spent hoping to be like him in that small, yet inspiring, way that children can grasp. In consequence, I desired to be a word-smith of the highest caliber, capable of breathing imaginary characteristics into any singular-dimensional literature - unrestricted to terrene perspectives of the universe around me. All that ended when I arrived onto the modern scene of education. The accepted way to convey information to students, through endless lectures that were simply ill disguised, slow acting tranquilizers, appalled me and shocked my previously multifaceted mind. For indeed, I felt insulted by the incumbents who positioned themselves in the front of a room and said the same 50 words over and over again with very little variance. I honestly have never heard a more perfect rendition of this single-

planed speech than what can be heard in The Peanuts animated films. Most of you know what I am talking about. Speech that makes noise while achieving the feat of conveying almost no depth and consequently no information that the human brain can shape into memories. At first, I was more immune to this atrocity than were other students, as I was always hopeful for an interesting tidbit in a textbook, or an unusual sentence in a lecture. I could usually stay awake for an entire class period. However, the longer that I existed in this paradoxical void between language and sentences comprised of simply strung together words, the more I began to utilize a state of brain dormancy when an instructor began to talk. Where was the love for words? Where was the desire to enhance language with tangible adjectives and multidimensional nouns? In the academic atmosphere there was none of this and it is still devoid of this passion for conveying life's essence from one person to another. My poor brain, having been trained to see another plane of existence in the form of literacy, has slowly atrophied in the absence of creative articulacy or literature. Everyday, I watch my friends exist in what appears to be a perfectly normal, three dimensional life. This morning, while droplets of glistening raindrops fell outside, any unfortunate human beings who found themselves trapped in my class were asleep, or half dead, by the time that Spatial Physics lecture was over. Nothing moved in that room, unless I included my screensaver full of multicolored plasma rings interweaving their dimensions on my screen, while creating new shapes and fanciful designs. As my peers gathered their bags, or woke their comrades from a deep, boredom induced lethargy, my neighbor would be desperately trying to delete the endless string of letters that his head had surreptitiously typed onto his laptop screen as he had slumbered on its now slightly squashed keyboard. No polychromatic conception or creative tracery for his machine; for he had not programmed it with an ability to be demiurgic. The senseless input on his computer reflected the muddled information that was left in the space of memory after the linear and generally flat lecture we had all just sat through.

When did vibrant, colorful and flexible words begin to fulfill no other purpose than to kill brain cells? When did beautifully transcendent language begin to be my most feared drudgery? Sentences that I had at one time soaked up with an enthused science for their intricately hidden meanings were now only entering my head by the raw force of my will in this new and terrifying form of parlance that is spoken among adults. The people of this world seem to be losing their grasp on a dynamic fourth dimension in which innovation and prolific thought are conceived. When I open the pages of a book, access a webpage online, or simply take in my world around me, I can feel an underlying phenomena and see a new plane of beauty in even the least interesting of concepts. I cannot look at anything, manmade nor God inspired, that does not invoke words to appear in my mind, bouncing off of each other and building a construct with which to see something else. These adjectives and nouns, that have been dignified with such bland identities, come to life and awaken an interwoven masterpiece that is hardwired into our universe. They turn into building blocks that unlock the majesty of our world. The shock of a frigid, spring raindrop; the peace in the aroma of an apple pie; the memories in that old Pooh-Bear; the awesome power of the mighty ocean surf. These images, smells and feelings can all be taken in and processed by the human brain, but language is what carries them to another dimension. Words fill out every experience with exquisite delight and touching details that can only be retained and shared with articulate vocabulary and an understanding of that voice in your head trying to fit everything you feel into something you can grasp and quantify. This bridge between reality and your perception are words. This is diction that can give life to an otherwise unreachable universe of unimaginable majesty. A mind can be cultured to access this multidimensional form of experiencing our reality, as mine has been. I can give eternal shape to my memories and senses with the incredible virtue of language. I can see the fourth dimension. I am a Tesseract.