I really don't feel like working. So instead I am writing this. The small window to my left, open just a crack because it doesn't open any more, lets in a faint cool breeze. The crisp evening air keeps me from nodding off, but the sounds of evening rush hour interrupt my thinking. Thinking hasn't been going too well today, though I don't mean that in an academic sense. I've already accomplished my most important task for the week. My thesis topic is now formulated as a question, "How does art manage to escape the metonymic contingencies of place and time and instead exist as a metaphoric unity?" Remember that this is art as represented in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, specifically in the first two books, Swann's Way and In the Shadow of Young Girls, and in the last book, Time refound (regained). Notice that my project has both expanded and become more specific (though I now have a question, I also have one more book to write about). I fear that this may become the pattern of my thesis. Moments of insight will be followed by flooding questions and uncertainties, and my feeling like I'm surrounded by an abyss of incommensurably expansive jest. Yes, a noun without a place, or an undeclined verb, things don't quite fit together, and yet they do in the reading.
My heart's been heavy today, but I see no reason for it to be so. This is why I said thinking wasn't going so well today. Reason has brought me no solace and I've no time for murky self-reflection. My sorrow hangs heavy in my chest and I've not found a cause to ground it.
In more cheerful news, I've developed rough ideas for a three volume magnum opus, but they shall remain secret until I've completed the first draft, or at least just for now.
A question for thought: Can protest be productive without an alternative in mind?
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