“I am reading, and everything I read seems to belong to our syllabus. I’m working too much. The restaurant has been crazed. The people moving to this neighborhood never thought they’d leave center city, and they walk around looking for a familiar perch from which to look out at what’s unfamiliar to them—at the people who lived here before they arrived and before the people who made them feel they could move here had arrived. I’m in the middle, not truly from here but not a newcomer either. I guess I’m one of those people who made them feel they could (etc.). An accidental translator for an interim period. We just spring up, like clover, which permaculture calls a pioneer. I’ll be crowded out soon by more substantial plants. I deserve it!

“So, these fragile monolingual lilies were resting at the outdoor tables, scanning the street for something recognizable or comforting, and there was a lull, no bell from the kitchen expected for a bit, so I went back to my book, which I have been opening at random, no bookmark, couldn’t tell you why. The book is called G.—it came up in a search for ‘Don Juan’ (I was trying to expand the syllabus). But I can’t tell what it’s about, not really, the way I’m reading around in it. It’s pleasing.

“One day I’ll send you something I’ve written myself (maybe). But for now, here is a paragraph from G. that I found myself wanting to copy out and send to you in my hand.

“Yrs, S”

A DIAGRAM

A COPIED PARAGRAPH

“The crowd see the city around them with different eyes. They have stopped the factories producing, forced the shops to shut, halted the traffic, occupied the streets. It is they who have built the city and they who maintain it. They are discovering their own creativity. In their regular lives they only modify presented circumstances; here, filling the streets and sweeping all before them they oppose their very existence to circumstances. They are rejecting all that they habitually, and despite themselves, accept. Once again they demand together what none can ask alone: Why should I be compelled to sell my life bit by bit so as not to die?”

THE REARRANGING UNIVERSE

It has been some time since my mentor disappeared. Enough time to stop expecting my attempts at contact to be returned, enough time to stop initiating new attempts, but not enough time to feel certain that the disappearance is permanent.