The beginning of the beginning.

Another kind of beginning, one of those that isn't really the beginning of anything but why not make it feel like a beginning? Maybe that feeling will begin something.

I'm in the library working on the never-ending essay and I got distracted by the word "refraint" that turns out isn't a word. Unfortunate. A small taste of the texts I'm working with:

"When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever...
When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o'th'sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And no other function."

" Our souls (which are put into the stirring earth of our bodies) have achieved the cause of their hither coming."

"This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door work."

This has been some work. Some work that is done when the days are unbelievably clear and unbelievably cold. I think we're in the low 20s and then some, and each day I'm colder in the library than I was before. I love, love, love this library -- I'm in the Brotherton -- but I can't stand the cold. I'm literally wearing fingerless gloves right now, and it's the warmest in the computer room. Such a shame because I love it in here, the stone steps, the long wooden desks, the bell tower on the top with the bells every hour -- it's a building that never ends, it goes around and down and up and farther back. It's a library that loves people and knows its beautiful.

I love it right down to the separate water basins for hot and cold in the bathrooms. I've dreamt about those bathrooms -- they're astonishing, and very obviously memorable. A wooden door to each stall, a small foggy pane of glass at eyesight (just at eyesight, no higher, no lower), a doorknob just below (just below eyesight, just above normal), a longer, thinner colder flushing lever, a whiter, smoother marble back. One horizontal, deep mirror at the end of the narrow hallway, opposite the thick faucet basins, black metal sieve-stoppers swaying from a chain. You'd expect the water to come out very hot, but you don't even have to turn the forked faucet-handle to know, you just have to wave your fingers over it on the way to the cold.