Level Three. Shapes and Sounds.
Level Three. Shapes and Sounds.
By Michelle Lloyd.
It was easy to decipher what was what and how it connected to something else. R V felt that no more needed to be learnt when it came to this particular area of study and thought.
Subjects varied greatly for R V at school and in certain classes he felt far more at ease than in others. He imagined that it must be the same or at least similar an experience for everybody else who had ever traipsed the long corridors of his school before.
There were subjects, such as those which involved numbers and those were easiest for R V, he had no problem following patterns and sequences. When it came to other classes, he understood that being able to engage in creativity was useful but it was not always for him. He was used to this way of thought and practice but that was until he experienced the plight of the newest member of their class.
Elli was not often vocal or communicative about any of their classes. He was new and everybody had been informed that his way of looking at the school and experiences there, was slightly different to everybody else’s vision of it.
R V had at first found this a difficult predicament to ponder. Did it mean that Elli felt the same way about him to any other subject that was not maths? It was hard to know. After attempting several times to talk to him about this particular subjective view of their subjects, he had not got any further in response to it.
Everybody had learnt that Elli took his own time to do things. He did not talk a lot but sometimes he would stop, stare and smile in a way that could share a multitudes of emotion and thoughts. R V believed that in his own time Elli would unlock the mystery of his love and loath traits for their subjects and he decided that he had to be there for that very moment when he did.
Since R V did not and could not know when Elli was about to become less mysterious, he stuck to his side and awaited the very moment when he would make his revelations. It was difficult to always keep up with Elli because sometimes he would take his time and then at other moments he would spur himself on in a frenzy of activity. R V though rode it all out and stayed hopeful of the end result.
At first, slightly tedious had been the many mirroring experiences of the two in different classes. As R V sat with Elli and observed almost everything that he did, he noticed two very important things. One, was that Elli seemed to take in everything and that was even in minute detail and two, nothing appeared to him as it did on surface value to everybody else.
It was in maths class that the breakthrough key for R V began to show. Elli had just indicated adamantly that he had finished the collective equation that the class had meant to be working on but he had completed it in double quick time, even quicker than R V, and that was saying something. It was when R V went to look at his working everything out that he screwed up his face in confusion. All the numbers were to him a jumble and the answer was not where he had expected it to be, R V who loved looking at maths problems, decided to do what he always did when he came across a particularly tricky puzzle. Start at the end and work your way backwards. As he traced the pattern of numbers from end to start, he found that there was the answer.
In subsequent classes R V found that Elli had a similar method of production. He always used the papers in art class the reverse way too and all of a sudden when R V knew what to look for everything became clear. All he had to do was hold Elli’s rather detailed drawing the other way around and the lines suddenly took shape to form a beautiful, almost mirror like image of what the class had collectively been attempting to draw. Similarly in the sounds that he made, R V found that Elli, was making endeavour after endeavour to speak but not with the pattern of words that everybody else depended on. Once R V worked it out, the shapes and sounds of school and beyond, were never the same for either of them again.