My goal today is to read several art history articles for a section of my literature review, and to write that section. So far I've read three articles and written this one line: "I am an unpeeled banana / waiting for its peanut butter and jelly sandwich." I might sneak it into my draft to see if my supervisors notice.

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As a young apprentice, the eighteenth-century Irish landscape painter Thomas Roberts "acquired his pocket money ... 'by painting the black eyes of those persons who had been fighting and bruising each other in his master's tap-room on the preceding evening'."—Anthony Pasquin cited by Anne Crookshank and The Knight of Glin (and revisited by Fintan Cullen). Photoshop in a pot of paint.

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My hyacinths have bloomed. They are leaning against the desk lamp because otherwise they will fall over with the weight of their lavender six-petaled blossoms. What is a flower but a memory of the sun? I marvel at the juicy long leaves and fat stems, which I've staked into place with chopsticks and twine. Altogether, they look heraldic, reminding me of a fleur-de-lis. Here is my perfumed arabesque, on the coat-of-arms that is my desk. My realm is scholarly, and books are my inhabitants, which I am sworn to protect by proper citation.

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