Mario's documentary: the academy filming itself at night

texture · 11 Nov YDAU, 2100h

• When: night of 11 Nov YDAU, from 2100h (Study Period) onward
• What: The institution captured documenting itself. E.T.A. is "letting [Mario] do [a documentary] on this fall's E.T.A.," and he prowls the grounds with the head-mounted Bolex H64 his late father built, filming the academy's after-hours life: Schtitt asleep in his soundproofed room 106 amid deafening German opera; the Comm.-Ad. stairwells; the subdorm halls during mandatory Study Period (Ogilvie exam study-groups, boys under fourteen on the third floor, the injured Ingersoll/Penn/Lord rooms marked "Infirmary"); and Avril working late as Dean. The documentary is itself an institutional artifact — the academy self-recording, echoing the Founder's own films of E.T.A. (Mario's rig being the last thing James "enjoyed himself on"). The scene registers standing institutional lore and its ongoing crises: the sealed shrine of the vanished étoile Eric Clipperton — "The Clipperton Suite in East House had had a bright-yellow strip of B.P.D. plastic for over a month" — and a fresh poltergeist manifestation (an X of brooms glued to the kitchen wall "out of nowhere") that again drives longtime cook Mrs. Clarke ("with the Incandenzas since long before E.T.A.") to take a Sick Morning. See the Mario timeline, the Schtitt timeline, the Avril timeline.