Talking To Myself

My thesis will take the form of around ten related essays (or so it appears now). Each essay will be about a theme essential to understanding ancient Rome and a place to demonstrate the spatial repurcussions of the theme.
Number One was called Foundation and was about the Tomb of the Founder and the Tarpeian Rock.
Number Two (and this is the order I am writing in, not the order they will be in the final document) is called Magic and it is about Roman religion and the temporary theaters built by Triumphators. It is the start of a series about representations of the Roman house - first at the size of a theater, then a much larger size for an imaginary crowd, and finally the Imperial fora conceived as houses for the city.
After two attempts to write Magic without speaking it first I gave up and took my recorder to school. I sat outside and talked to myself for half an hour. Then I walked down the street to buy cigarettes while talking to myself. Then I sat in my office talking to myself.
I was able to do it without an audience but I couldn't get the bang at the end - it squirmed out near the middle. And that's no way to write an essay. I was left wondering "shit, is that all I have to say?"
The big revelation in this essay isn't even mine; it's Michel Serres'. What relates a house to a theater is the conception of a house cut in section - atrium becomes a stage and the private rooms become the wings. Pretty clever, eh? I wish I had thought of it.
Now I am wondering if there is anything in the essay I did think of myself.

There is one part - I think I can demonstrate the modern world believes in magic to almost the same extent as the ancient world. At least in the principle of religious contamination; contact with a ritual impurity will put you in grave danger. This is the only way I can account for the panic over the statistically non-existent swine and avian flu strains, or the way people run through the slightest indication of cigarette smoke. It is as if any contact at all will pass the impurity.

If anything really interesting results from writing the thing, I'll let you know.