It’s not so good when you meet with your thesis advisor and one of the things he says about your work is, “Well, that’s a problem.” First: like an overwhelming desire to vomit, the panic rising in my throat. Then: going back to the library to take care of bizniss, because, crap, bizniss has got to be taken care of. Heading up to school late in a Friday afternoon turned out to be not so depressing after all. The sky was still light when I got out of the subway, and, when I got onto campus, the sounds of the too-loud drums and the twangy guitars of a good ol’ college band playing somewhere on the green were floating in the evening air. I headed upstairs in the library thinking, “Maybe I’ll see Jason, and that’ll be great,” and then I saw Jason, and it was great. We sat together and ate chocolate like study buddies in the big room until they turned out the lights and the man with the little bell came round.

At six p.m. Mallarmé sounded like a sweet biscuity treat. At ten p.m. I am starting to see how to tie the Symbolist poet and his treatment of words into my take on Michel Leiris and the revelatory nature of language. Sometimes things get done just because they need to get done.