It was after Calculus, when I was in a daze of utter bewilderment at the new topics. I wondered if it was normal to feel lost after nearly every class. Walking toward the escalator, I tried to brush it off and focus on my next task, which really wasn't a task at all. I was to go just down the corner to the office supply store to buy another notebook, because as it turned out I had filled another notebook from inefficient notes in math, ones that were filled with wasted space and sloppy writing to keep up with the professor. Among these were notes from literature, equally sloppy. The escalator clattered on as my peers and I descended the uncomfortably tight room. There is something so stupidly familiar with the sounds of the middle-spaces that I have learned to enjoy. At the mall, it was the quiet howling of the sink—here, it was the rhythmic, mechanical hum of the rolling chain. In a way it also reminded me of the sounds of my printer dispensing copies of a novel late at night, so that I may write my heart out all over it. After doing research, I affirmed that by significantly reducing the size of the font and cramming as much text onto the page as I could, printing in draft mode was more cost-effective than buying a new book. It did not have the glamour or aesthetics of an actual paperback, but the value of words are not lessened merely because of how they are presented. How I just loved sitting in the leather seats of the car with the paper in my left hand and my coffee in the right. 

        At the bottom, I exited the tiny hallway into the fresh air. Phew. The back of my hand held the door open for a few seconds, and then I was on my toward the store. And people can't even sit down and read a fuckin' book. It was a short walk. The weather was perfectly September: cloudy and cool even in the late hours of the morning. On the way I saw a couple of students headed in the direction of campus so that when I finally reached the storefront, there seemed to be nobody that were evidently students. In the aisle for paper supplies there were boxes upon boxes of brand new notebooks. Upon closer examination, however, I realized why they were untouched. I truly don't understand why manufacturers still produce wide-ruled paper. Annoyed, I dug around the back of the boxes to search for any others that may have been leftovers from when the store did have normal notebooks, but all I found were wide-ruled. No, I figured I did not walk all this way for nothing, so I picked up two interesting looking college-ruled books that were slightly smaller than a typical notebook—they'd do the job. I continued to wander the aisles, looking for anything that could catch my eye. A snack, of course! As I was grabbing the chocolate-covered pretzels, a man having a conversation on the phone approached the aisle I was in. He went on, loud enough so that I could hear, talking about how somebody was mad at somebody because of some financial issue within their relationship. I tried to eavesdrop as much as I could, but once he strayed a few aisles away his voice became muffled and unintelligible. When I got within range again, under the inner-pretense that I was moving to pay for my stuff, the conversation became impossible to relate to what he was saying before. Whatever fragments I was missing in the time he was away plus the obvious absence of the other person's voice prohibited any further intrusion on his business, which I'll admit was entirely unnecessary anyway. I lost interest and went to buy the notebooks. Four dollars exactly, said the woman. I paid, and left the shop.

        People-watching, or rather people-listening, is one of my favorite things, you know. I'll beat a dead horse and say that in Kauai, that was the second-best part of being present in any place. Even the mundane conversations, like "what would you like on your burger" or "I haven't used snapchat in ages", were always so interesting. The different subtleties in each person's voice, their manner of speaking, their vocabulary, and everything else in between were things I paid pointless attention to when overhearing conversations. This was besides what they were actually saying, which most times made no sense to me. Despite this, I find myself doing this often as I did in the store. At best, it feeds my imagination and gives inspiration. Most times, it doesn't lead anywhere.

        I only decided to write this because, on my way back to the campus, I received an e-mail that my professor had called off class.