The Night Lies Eternal, For the Beauty of Caring, Survival, Whispers on the Wind, Hope Endures, Indefinite Bohemia.

One week ago. One week ago I was desparately waiting for a distraction promised. It was enough to make me go mad. There was the suggestion and the tension of expectation, but for her- she, the still point of the turning world- time was an agent and accessory not the cruel assassin it had long since become for me.

Long afternoons in the CIT. Long evenings in the Watson. I was writing something about Roland Barthes, Cortazar's "Blow-Up" and the language of photography. I called "Multiplicity and the Disjunctive Identity." I had clearly lost my mind to post-modernism.

I was hoping beyond anything I knew or held dear that my distraction - she, the eternally silent images on the wall that I could not read- would appear at any moment and ride me away into a glowingly brilliant sunrise.

She came just in time.

Crushed an without direction, I exited the Sun Lab and crawled soulless back towards Keeney. I was the anti-thesis of all the I was and had become known for. My spark was buried beneath work, finals stress, and cold responsibility. I swiped into Poland and took a long, dreadful look down the hall.

She was glowing, I promise. There was fire at the end of the hall.

(Enter the interlude: Walk to the MCM, room occupied, return to the Triple XXX (222), kick Evan out to Joy, Whispers in the warm winter air, Evan returns, the night will not go unconquered, kisses forever, hold tight and fast, fight for the dawn, a mission for sunrise, glory in the unoccupied morning air, indefinite bohemia)

I needed no more inspiration. The muse's invocation was like new breath in my lungs. I breathed a thousand fires and felt my mind open up a fountain of youth and love. I could write again as I had not been able to write years.

The muse re-found, re-forged, re-invented.