The Arcane Arts
From: Rawlins.T.M.
To: Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Re: Re: Re: my thesis Proposal
Ellsbeth,
Your impatience may prove to be an impediment to your success, as the gears of the academy turn slowly.
But your selfishness, owned and acknowledged, will be a great asset; whatever drivel you hear about the selfless nobility of teaching, the pursuit of novel arcane knowledge demands relentless, singular focus.
On that note: No, I am not married, by choice.
You probably are not either, given your age, but is there anyone in your life who would take exception to your leg-brushing and drunken emailing?
I hope not, for the sake of your academic future: The focused study of arcane mechanicals does not allow for the sacrifices that romantic partnerships invariably demand.
You may be tempted to imagine partnership with a fellow scholar, one you can respect as an equal, but such pleasures are invariably short-lived.
Our department’s own Babbs Tran, a brilliant transmutation professor, briefly enjoyed a passionate and enviable marriage to her colleague Paula Veldt—until they were both up for the same fellowship.
I’ll spare you the details, but they involved an undergraduate lover, the thaumaturgical obliteration of all Veldt’s possessions, and a restraining order.
Perhaps a more pragmatic approach to matrimony is that of Dean Lennox, who has been stably wedded for decades to a man outside our field entirely—but he is so agreeably dull, he resembles a suitcase dragged through her life, ceaselessly oppressed by her moods and whims. I would prefer occasional loneliness to such settling.
Don’t worry, I’m not advocating monastic self-denial; the carnal appetites just have to be indulged without messy entanglements, in order for the mind to preserve the autonomy it needs.
I am telling you all this for your own good, and mine.
Your character as an academic will reflect on me for years to come.
Toward that end, I would draw your attention to a trait of yours that you’ll need to work on before you present at any reputable conference: your rambling digressiveness.
But I will also point toward, underlying it, something worth preserving: your curiosity.
You see the merit in subjects (like stage magic) that most would ignore to their detriment.
And I do wonder (my own curiosity) at where the trait came from, in someone such as yourself—if it was natural or learned, if it was cultivated deliberately, and what discoveries and difficulties it may have led you to in the past?
I know from experience that a restless mind can be both a blessing and a curse.
Regardless of its origins, curiosity will serve you, especially when it leads to ideas at the margins and dark corners of our field—which is exactly where you will have to look in your study of writ magic.
But such notions need to be approached with caution.
Are you familiar with the work of Ariana Greyburn?
In 2015, she published a well-received paper on arcane practices with medical benefits for prostate function.
But the article does little to explain the theoretical basis of the ritual she developed; she certainly does not cite Martin Perl’s controversial 2011 field study on ritual practices in Berlin’s underground “sex magick” clubs, even though a close look reveals that Greyburn’s innovation is only a minor revision of one of the rituals Perl describes.
While Perl was pilloried as a pervert, the academic who built on his work (without attribution) has gone on to great acclaim and (pardon my pun) bottomless funding.
Innovative ideas may be found in the disreputable gutters of our field, but they must be shined up with a veneer of respectability before they can find public acceptance.
I’ll not bother with clichés about curiosity and cats, but I urge caution as you undertake the study you have in mind—for what you propose carries the threat of academic exile (and also, if you happen to get caught performing such rituals, federal prison).
As for Friday night, shouldn’t you, as a not unattractive young woman with a new cohort of colleagues, have some sort of social plans?
I do. But since we’ve established your impatience and how far behind you are, you can come by while I’m out (1022 N.
Bernwick Lane); I’ll leave a key in the birdhouse on the elm out front.
My Wentz volumes will be on the coffee table in the study.
Everything you need should be downstairs, so please, mitigate your curiosity with a modicum of self-control.
I will be back around nine to verify that you are not making a mess of my books, evaluate the appropriateness of your attire, and answer your questions—about Wentz and whatever else you wish to know.
I am, after all, holistically responsible for your education, and knowledgeable on a good many things beyond century-old arcane theory.
And perhaps it is because you have proven so headstrong, but I confess to a certain Pygmalion pleasure at the prospect of shaping you into a perfect pupil.
Sincerely,
Rawlins