Black Chalk

III(i) Why did the presence of six water glasses prevent your narrator from enjoying a gentle stroll outside? Yes, I should explain. Rewind.

III(ii) When I turn away from the window, I see six glasses staring back at me from the floor of my apartment. As part of my routine, every night I place six water glasses very carefully in the middle of my living-room floor.

They make for an arresting image, six glasses arranged in two ranks of three. And this of course is the point of these glasses. To arrest me, to stop me on the spot. So I stand and I think and then I look up at the clock. Lunchtime. Seven hours have passed since the phone call. Which means I have lingered at the window all morning, the words of the phone call playing, rewinding and replaying in my head. And six glasses means I must not have not drunk any water today. Not one single drop.

It would seem that the phone call has already caused some considerable disruption to my routine.

Allow me to explain. Those six glasses are, to use a common phrase, an aide-memoire – although I prefer my own term, physical mnemonic. The physical imposition of the glasses helps me remember to drink six glasses of water a day. Because there was once an occasion, over a year ago now, when I forgot to drink any water at all. This liquid lapse continued for a dangerous length of time. The effects of dehydration, I soon discovered, can prove somewhat debilitating.

So now that the glasses have jolted my memory, I pick one up and head to the kitchen. Upon my arrival I see three plates lined up on the chequered linoleum floor. Which means I haven’t yet eaten any breakfast. (Nor lunch nor dinner of course.)

Next I find that in the kitchen sink and hindering access to the faucet there sits an inverted salad bowl. With a Pavlovian twitch I glance down, whereupon I spy my genitals. Yes, I would appear to be entirely unclothed.

What ludicrous notion first caused me to make the mnemonic link between salad and genitals? Every morning I find the connection vaguely disturbing. I would like very much to change this memory prompt, I should replace the salad bowl with a heavy rolling pin or magnum of champagne. But alas, meddling with routines is a dangerous game.

I stand in the kitchen drinking my water, considering my limp lettuce nakedness for a short time, and then head to my bedroom. I leave the salad bowl and empty water glass on the bed. I find shorts and a T-shirt beneath my pillow.

Now clothed, I return to the kitchen. In the sink, and previously hidden by the inverted salad bowl, sits an old marmalade pot. So now I know what comes next. I go to the refrigerator for bread to make toast for my breakfast. But in the refrigerator there hangs a single red Christmas-tree bauble. Which means I haven’t yet taken my morning pills. So I swallow my pills, put the bauble in the marmalade pot and slide the bread into the toaster. I open the cutlery drawer for a knife so I can spread peanut butter on my toast . . . And staring up at me is a Halloween mask of the Wookiee Chewbacca from the Star Wars movies.

So I put on the Halloween mask with the elastic under my chin but the Wookiee’s face atop my head, eye-holes pointing to the ceiling. (It might prove somewhat tricky for me to breakfast through Chewbacca’s mouth-hole, so I wear him thusly.)

Hungrily I eat my toast and peanut butter. And then, when I finish, I turn on the shower. Which means I can now take off the Halloween mask, its purpose having been to remain uncomfortably on my head until I remember to turn on the shower. (Although what a hairy Wookiee has to do with cleanliness, I could not possibly say. Sometimes my mnemonics make sense, sometimes they do not. Often this is the result of what lay at hand when the need to place another element in my routine arose.)

So I shower, stumble across more mnemonics, drink another glass of water and read the newspaper (whose presence, outside my door, a pair of sunglasses dangling in the shower closet alerted me to). This all takes about two hours of my time. And then upon the completion of morning tasks, I sit down at my dining table on whose uncluttered surface there rest only three objects. My diary, whose last entry was written some fourteen years ago, my laptop and an old yellow tooth. The diary has been patiently awaiting this moment for some time, the moment at which I would begin telling my story, and I will open it soon. But first the tooth, an old molar that rests on top of my laptop. The tooth has become my lucky charm, a reminder that I cannot be beaten. So I pick up the tooth, hold it clenched in my fist and close my eyes. And feeling warmed by this mnemonic of strength, I open the computer to record the morning’s events. But then I can’t remember the order in which I just performed my morning tasks. (You might at this point be forgiven for making the following observation – it may require more than one gentle stroll to propel me back into the world of normality.)