(snp)

Oranges.

Loose cigarettes.

A long snow, making it impossible to go outside when I did not want to go outside anyway.

A pair of silver Doc Martens I’ve had for three years. Silver shoes, unlike shoes in black leather, are impervious to snow and to salt, which is useful when I do find it necessary to go outside.

The discovery, by way of my husband, that David Markson wrote crime novels for money. The purchase, by my husband, of these novels so I could read them on a weekend. One is called Epitaph for a Dead Beat, the other Epitaph for a Tramp. The phrase in Epitaph for a Dead Beat I won’t forget: “She gazed at him the way she might gaze at a rain she knew she did not have to go out into.”

The existence of someone as original and ingenious and unapologetically smart and learned as David Markson, especially in a time that is hostile to any learnedness perceivable as élite. That is, until I remember that David Markson is dead.

My best friend’s return from Montreal. Even though she was there for only five days. Even though I hadn’t seen her for two weeks before that. It’s easier to live in this city when she’s somewhere around.

My prescribing shrink, who cares what she prescribes. My prescription for lisdexamfetamine in buttercream capsules, the prettiest pill.

Montana sapphires, or rather pictures of Montana sapphires online. The sound of saying “Montana sapphires.” The idea of having a child in order to name it “Montana Sapphire.”

The hundred and fifty dollars my husband transferred to my checking account because I ran out of money three weeks ago.

The recipe given by my friend Dayna for her Nona’s spaghetti sauce: half a large onion, placed cut-side down in a pot with a half-stick of butter, followed by a can of crushed tomatoes. When these three ingredients have simmered for an hour, make the spaghetti. Then add salt, maybe parmesan, maybe fresh basil. Serves you and two others.

A one-litre bottle of red table wine.

A thought that occurred to me, drunk: I’ve never gotten over anything in my life.

A glass breaking on the Velvet Underground song “European Son.” A long interview with John Cale on the fiftieth anniversary of the band’s debut, in which he says the sound of a glass breaking is actually made by “little plates of tin.” 

The vial I picked from a cup full of perfume samples on my mantel before I went out the other night. The fact that, because the name of the scent was not on the vial and the brand name was unfamiliar, I had to guess how I would smell and then guess at the best description of the smell. Like Old Spice almost masking an amphetamine sweat. Like green walnuts tumbled into hay in the summertime. Later I looked up the brand and figured out the scent name and found that the notes were: wasabi accord, fig leaf, bamboo leaf, bergamot, lemon, galbanum, cardamom, violet leaf, fresh cut grass, myrrh absolute, fir balsam, patchouli, tonka bean, vanilla, musks, labdanum. Of these I had guessed only bergamot, galbanum, and fresh cut grass, the latter two being elements in my perennial favorite fragrance, Margiela’s Untitled. I would never have guessed “wasabi accord,” which is almost as good as “Montana sapphire.”

The cling of the sampled perfume to my copper-dyed and dry-shampooed hair and to my old cotton pillowcase. The sense upon waking that someone else had been there when no one else had been. 

A new nineteen-sixties alarm clock with a mirrored face, so that when I wake up, roll over, I’m reminded of time in two ways.  

A new book called Dining With Humpty Dumpty by Reba Maybury, a.k.a. “Mistress Rebecca,” which is about sex work with food instead of sex. A reading she gave at Bridget Donahue’s loft-space on Bowery. The way she was dressed, like she’d climbed out of a garbage can on Easter Sunday eighty to a hundred years. The copy of the new book she gave me, and the copy of her zine, Big Woman. The bar-sign pink of the gel pen she used to sign the books with “all my love,” the same ink with which my best friend in high school wrote me personalized samizdat in class, on lined paper folded into two-inch squares. The incongruous memory of my virgin best friend in the presence of this high-concept whoredom.

The weird few minutes after the reading when a tall, attractive, yet purposely unmemorable-looking man came up to me and said, aren’t you Sam’s friend? The fact that I am indeed Sam’s friend. The way the man seemed quote-unquote in love with Sam. Only when it struck me that he wasn’t hyperbolizing his love, or being coy about not giving me his name, or joking even a little bit about wanting to know where Sam “hangs out every night,” did I remember that you shouldn’t talk to strangers unless they look strange. I began to suspect his midcentury normalcy. I wondered whether I wasn’t by accident in an unpublished crime novel by David Markson. Sam’s epitaph would be Epitaph For A Dipsomaniac, and mine would be Epitaph For a Dropout.

Finally, the cover line and contributor’s bio I have, for the first time, in the latest issue of a magazine I’ve been writing for since 2014. The patience and good nature of my editor there, which as you can tell by the “finally” far exceeds mine.

These are the things for which, in order to write this, I became thankful. I suppose I should add: the ability to write at all.

- snp (3/25/17).