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A woman appears onscreen Her hair is short While the film is black and white, by the colour gradations I assume she is a redhead She’s wearing sleek, cat-eye glasses and a polka-dot blouse, while holding a book as one holds a cafeteria tray She has fair skin and delicate features; her dimples run deep Sitting in the small, dark room screening Clayton Cubitt’s film Hysterical Literature at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, I am both aware and unaware that today is Valentine’s Day That is to say, more so than most holidays, if you want to you can forget this one is happening – but you’ll have to stay indoors And we didn’t, my boyfriend and I We’re not mentioning the day, but we’re living in it: the other couples around us, in cars, indoors – when did this happen, the fury of coupling? It began to snow moments before we left Northampton, Massachusetts, and as we watched it fall from the kitchen window we had a talk about whether or not we’d go anywhere at all, whether or not we could leave the house, which soon became a talk about what kind of people we both are without our ever saying so explicitly, and also became a call to arms against winter malaise and the circumscribed community one finds in small town New England We’ve both been indoors so much of the last month and under the impression that little rests between our insanity and faux composure, although this isn’t true, not for us, not for most We are, unfortunately, so much of our put together selves And what it will really take may not seem like a lot, although it is And so we leave; and I undergo that particular staying of the mind, which must take place, when driving in the conspiratorial quiet of new and heavy snow   I have entered this screening space, have found myself standing before this woman – messianic as a large, disembodied torso – and this museum as I enter every exhibition: I look for some form of orientation I look