With eyelids drooping, head nodding, body sinking into the chair, I stare down into the already forgotten words on the page before me. Refocusing I reread the sentence again, this time out loud as if it would make a difference. The syllables merely slipped out of the comprehension of my already fading conscious. Nothing. These words are meaningless. I could have sworn they meant something before, but now that is lost. Lost somewhere in the never ending rows of filing cabinets once so neatly organized within my brain that had now lost its previous rigidity; instead melting into one incomprehensible glop of thought.

This glop is undisciplined, unfocused, unmindful; very much unlike its usual counterpart. Instead of concerning itself with items of importance, it picks up the smallest, most irrelevant detail and baffles itself by creating vast theories of its existence. One speck of the thinnest line of grain on an oak wood desk can be admired for hours. As you stare, you begin to notice that the speck isn't even a speck at all; it’s a precise weaving of pigments on sphere. It doesn't stop there. Even that is in turn made of much more intricate shapes all condensed together to form the beautiful and glorious speck. By this time your eyes are glazed over, your mouth is open and the only reason you are awakened from your fascination is because your drool oozed down onto your leg.

Awakened I continue my studies. Pushing, pressing, prodding, I fight to stay in control to keep this newborn clarity. But my efforts are futile. After all, who can go to war with the glop and win? Its force is equal to water behind a broken dam, crashing down upon the now unprotected landscape until it has spread to every corner of your brain. Yet when the time comes and I take back control, the inevitable is resisted again and again and again; until finally the task is condemned unworthy of such a fight and you allow yourself to drift into sleep, only to start again the next night.