Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

I attempted to write about Mickiewicz this evening and produced exactly one sentence of value, which I then abandoned out of spite because the wall was vibrating with a song about someone's *serce* for the eleventh time. It occurs to me that exile is best understood not through lectures but through the experience of sitting three metres from a boy who believes repetition constitutes music. I have relocated to the kitchen, where the acoustics are worse but the company is silent. If anyone has a recommendation for where in this city a sixteen-year-old can sit with a notebook and be left alone, I will accept it, though I expect the answer is "nowhere," which is itself rather Mickiewiczian. The essay remains unwritten; the radiator, at least, has the decency to click in an unpredictable rhythm.