Close your eyes. 

[This is a script.] And

if you could find space to lie behind your lids, I would appreciate it. 

This is an academic space - and lying down is prohibited - but regardless. 

Semi-prohibited - because experiment - and this is an experimental house. [In theory]

Stretch here - within your slot - allot yourself time to stretch philosophically.

Is the light coming through red or white? Or black. Black is most peaceful - the others more likely - unless you have found yourself. A space. 

[   .     .    ]  That is the sound of a book not held in the library - it smells and sounds like wood - from trees - but its carcass is manufactured like the others. As with every book that lifts my soul - they do not have them waiting for me. 

Do you feel - engaged - can you rate it for our records - for our survey? [I joke, because without surveys I would know nothing - not even who I am in the world / what shape my hands are. Unlike me, you are lying quiet and cannot see your hands - fanned out and waiting.]

Her hands, Maryam’s are tracing immigrant hoarding - the objects imbued with power -  to tether you back to a place. I am from some such place - but tethers are always fraying - with the looking and taking - I cannot locate the door at the back of the museum - where the real objects are - I want to look for inspiration in the stolen past - but cannot locate the door for crusted wallpaper, only our national sense of owning common sense. And the common sense racism, echoing in an unseen corridor - the one academics use when they are truly in the know - when they are granted access. If their records are untroubled / spotless clear.

‘Academia and activism can be mutually beneficial as there is often a gap between academic knowledge and practice.’ Lucy Potter And I see the page unfolding truthfully. I too am isolated - I too sit, academic, waiting for something to hold. Perhaps Maryam can lend me, something solid. An heirloom of solidity. 

But it isn’t solid - the racial ether - the radical becomes too sleepy - I become so sleepy in the white blue light - the bright cloud cover / first snow feeling - the can’t look at it / get away [what escapes in the margins]. I don’t know if you can see it with your eyes closed and I worry - that you see him there - statuesque - body preserved - head/ bust haunting - in amongst the blinding light. The accidental halo. The rest; thrown into relief. Even though - we are not so novel anymore. The posters are all pregnant with possibility. Pasted brightly - alternating.

Now she [Christiane] has me looking at the walls - the shunting halls - the height of doors, the height of desks. I feel made to crawl, womb dragging / dragging. I would like pictures to be hung on walls at angles that do not strain my neck. More places that purvey light to fall through ceilings. Do the people who design toilets wear flowing clothes and try to shift between the wetted toilet and the in-swung cubicle door? I do not want to remain wedged between the walls and floors. 

But this is not a toilet - or a library - or any other ill-fitting place. Right now we are emptying out, in hope of eventual nourishing. 

Please, open your eyes. See what you were meant to be seeing. 

I hope the place that is building here will be one 

we can safely return to.