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Background | Oct 01 2005

Her hair was blond, or perhaps light brown. She wasn’t tall. I know this because I’m not tall myself and wouldn’t have liked a girl taller than me. Similarly she couldn’t have been particularly thin or fat, because I would remember that.

So much of what I believe derives from what I don’t remember.

She sat at the front of my row. I was two seats back, or perhaps three.

I can see the classroom a little. It had a door at the front, on the right. I’m not able to walk through it. I know because I’ve tried. I’m stuck at my desk in the middle of the room. There must be windows to my left but I can’t turn my head that way to see them.

The other students are vague. They occupy space but have no appearance. It would be wrong to draw them with blank faces because that would seem strange. They aren’t strange. It’s as though the room is a painting, most of which is sketched in pencil. Although this too is wrong. The figures are people not sketches. Perhaps it’s more like a photograph in which the background is out of focus, although deliberately so, so that the foreground, the object of the composition, stands out. However this photograph has no foreground. It’s all background.