Check out other work in the Paint Chips, Cracks, and Decay series here.

-Operation Forest of Thought was my attempt to create the prison of mind that I hoped would hold Snevets. I consulted English, philosophy, and art professors. I gave them intimate access to Snevets’ case files. Their job was to construct the bars of this prison from the information there within. I had never managed such a group before. The police community is very hierarchical. These men were not. They could argue and talk and seemingly never settle on anything. What I thought would take a week took a year. But, they finally had nine recommendations. 

1. Snevets was a francophile. Any space constructed to hold him must include objects from French thought and letters.
2. Color was important for Snevets. Many of his jobs turned on colors, their metaphoric properties, their relation, and their motion.
3. Fruit drew Snevets’ eye as much as anything. Knowing a high end green grocer to stock the space would definitely help hold Snevets.
4. Walking: The old man loved it. Giving him a park nearby or a large grounds surrounding the property would allow him to stretch his legs and mind.
5. As far as architecture, it needed to be comforting, suburban. They explained that Snevets lived a contradiction. He had the imagination of a libertine with the habits and routine of a middle class life. He needed the physical comfort of suburbia to access his profuse imagination.
6. Privacy: his imagination had a great need for privacy to exercise itself. It was inward facing, needing space from others to plumb its deepest levels. His reveries of mind were ultimately solitary.
7. A library of course. I didn’t need the professors to know this. But they helped me with stocking the library from classics to the literary journals of the day.
8. The fellowship of men, which is a nicer way to say drinking buddies. Snevets was no débauche but seemed to find relief in periodic nights of eating, drinking, smoking, gaming, and conversation. 
9. A study to work in. Preferably abutting the library. Containing the usual: a desk, a window, good lighting, a reading chair, prints on the walls, and a low coffee table. 

Check out other posts from The Snevets Stories here.

Check out other work in the Uncollected series here.

-April 11th 2026
The unexamined death is not worth dying. 

How I end my life is important. Ideally, my friends and family should have foreknowledge and a chance to say goodbye, nobody is traumatized by finding me dead or the cleanup, my estate is in order, and the death is not painful or violent. There are few options given current sentiment surrounding suicide, especially for a healthy person. However, Switzerland is providing an alternative. The right to choose the manner of dying is protected by Swiss law. There are Swiss non-profit organizations that will help an individual to self-administer pentobarbital sodium after careful checks into the person’s health and intention. One falls asleep within 20 seconds and dies within 5 minutes in the presence of loved ones. The company then cremates the body and sends it to next of kin. It isn’t cheap at $11,000, but it is currently the best option. My hope is that in the intervening 31 years I have left other countries join Switzerland and there are cheaper options closer to home. 

Check out other posts from Death Letter here.

Lice in the locks of literature, Tennyson called critics. (196)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #DMquotations
All page numbers mentioned are from 5th edition of Reader’s Block.

Or will the question persist? Why does Protagonist have no life? (197)
#Reader/Protagonist

Having written books of his own, would he have known other writers? (198)
#Reader/Protagonist

Does he not, now? (199)
#Reader/Protagonist

After Anne Sexton turned on her car’s engine in a closed garage to commit suicide, she sat drinking vodka while waiting. (200)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #ThisIsTheEndMyFriend

Erinna of Telos, who died at nineteen. Twenty-three hundred years ago. (201)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons #ThisIsTheEndMyFriend #Numbers

Politics in a work of literature is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. (202)
#DMBookshelf

Check out other posts from the Markson Project here.

Check out other work in the Screentime series here.

Check out all the work in the collection: The Social Unit 

Check out other work in the Bookshelf series here.

Someone will call. Surely someone will call. (189)
#Reader/Protagonist

Aristotle’s may have been the first purely private library. (190)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons

At forty-six, after an illness, Goya suddenly turned stone deaf. (191)
#DMGuidetoIllustriousPersons 

How long can Reader deal with Protagonist’s isolation without explaining his background? (192)
#Reader/Protagonist

How conceivable is it for the emptiness to simply exist? (193)
#Markson Mysteries

L’Être et le Néant. (194)
#DMBookshelf

Check out other posts from the Markson Project here.

Check out other work in the Light series here.