The city is changing. Only last month my favorite cafe closed, no more the scene of good boozy dinners and perfect espressos sipped over textbooks. The view from its windows is unavailable for now, awaiting reincarnation, new aromas and sounds to accompany it.

I am changing too. Once upon a time, I would sometimes feel sorry for myself and take to my bed for a couple of days. Or I would thrift and browse and read fantasy books for hours any given day, to distract myself from boredom or anxiety. Now work draws me from house and city centre everyday, to my desk among the trees, so that I am absorbed by notes and piles of books and questions into utopian imaginings and alternative histories, waking from my trance only when the campus is dim and empty. When did everything start to change?

Where the swan's nest lies, water grass grows and grows, concealing it; only the one who remembers its once-occupied state can find it now.

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