I always try not to see her, but it's hopeless. She sits in the second row up front always in the same seat next to the window, always blowing the same color bubble gum. The ritual never varies. A little pink balloon begins to sprout from her mouth and slowly grows into a translucent tumor. I turn around and write down some equations on the blackboard. Then I face the class again. I look straight ahead, trying to banish her image from my retina. It's no good; my peripheal vision trips me up. The pink tumor has collapsed on her lips, and thin, vicious fibers crisscross her mouth. She pulls them inside with a flick of the tonge and starts masticating again. After a while the pink ballon reappears.
Her dark, comatose eyes look at me from above her bubble. They express no boredom, no interest, no anger, no joy; they are serenely not of this world. The pink bubble expands, bursts, threads of gum crawl into her mouth, a new bubble is born between her lips, and the cycle begins anew.
I turn to the equations on the board and interpret them for my class. I tell of the Big Bang, the expanding universe, its unavoidable death my indifference. I mention the galaxies, arranged in strings like beads on a fish net. I speak of the great cyclic Hindu cosmos, of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, of quantum fluctuations, of God and Tao.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the great pink bubble breathing.