67. Silos, a barn, a house, sheds, confusing though only six or seven buildings in total, converted to classrooms and lodgings and a hall for eating and putting on performances. Some sort of undefined concrete structures too, seemingly materialized straight from the mind, uninterrupted by draughts on paper. Were the builders qualified? It is hard to admit how much worse the thing is I’m thinking than what comes out when I imagine speaking it. The worst thing that could happen, I think at the censored level, would be for someone to fall down an old, forgotten well, or for there to be a fire at night when everyone is asleep, or for something to collapse. But there are always worse behind worse. I have been thinking over the contract I signed that has me leading students through a course in composition. Seven students now sitting in a circle, eyes on the pages I’ve handed them, eyes like empty harbours. What parents worked for to keep them clear of public school. To get you the best marks money can buy, I say to them. The students don’t follow humour like this, and I ask them to put the article away for now. I hand out a quiz on faulty parallelism. Fifteen minutes, let’s say. Other groups of students claim other clearings of short grass, beneath trees, beneath the concrete lean-tos. I ask mine if any more time is needed on the quiz and they throw the papers into the centre of our circle. A wind picks up and carries them out of the circle and scatters them across the long grass. Nobody moves, as if a serious accident had happened.