I’m trying to help bonnie get settled in a new office on the campus of a boarding school—and she’s decided she wants a room on the ground floor of the freshman dorm, and she’s working with the facilities coordinator, a young woman not long in her job who’s doing her best to accommodate the tenured faculty member—and I feel obligated to speak up on behalf of… the students? tradition? inertia? in any case, I feel it would be wrong for her to go in there and displace freshman girls and make structural renovations to the internal architecture of the old building—so I’m making arguments—and I know the dream really bothers me because I’m tossing and turning, going over the lines of argument half-consciously.
there are burrs in the cat’s fur, all through it, deep up against its tender belly skin, and I’m trying to work them out with my fingers, careful not to hurt it more.