Library and Dissertation Woes

I'm beginning to see the contours of my dissertation. I'm frightened because they are lumpy. There is no smooth, overarching theory, no linear logic to make it svelte and smart. But this is how I think. In montages of experience.  Isn't that how we're taught to write? The imperative as always been 'show don't tell!' Why is there so much difference between the form and subject of academic writing? 

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Julie's postings about her library stalker, her library opera singer/light bulb, and her polygamous library book prepared me for a library encounter of my own. I now have a library foe. Yesterday I went down to the bottom floor of Brotherton at 4:30. An irate employee chided me, asking why I would turn on a single stack section light when they are preparing to close (in 30 minutes). I responded as I always do in direct confrontation, a little bluntly, a little daftly,

'I'm looking for a book and I can't see.' Today I saw said closer-of-libraries, bringer-of-darkness on the second and third floors and received suspicious looks of recognition despite the fact that the library doesn't close for six hours.