But I usually can’t because I’m too busy trying not to go insane, so I simply add these young books to the piles that surround me, like prison bars, penning me in but also keeping me safe from the coming bookless world.

SECOND, I’M PATHOLOGICALLY LAZY. I have a form of attention deficit disorder. I like to pay attention only to things I want to pay attention to, and cleaning my apartment does not fall into that category. Thus, I live like the Unabomber, but without his sense of purpose. I have, of course, made attempts every now and then to straighten up, but I approach it in the same manner as my taxes — something to be done only once a year, while screaming in confused agony like a cat in heat.

As a result, the dirt in my apartment has been around for so long that it’s a kind of carpeting, and I breathe in more dust than a whole classroom of poor asthmatic children. Also, for over a decade I’ve never washed the yellowed Shrouds of Turin that cover my bedroom windows and pass for curtains. They are porous from age and let in so much cirrhotic light that I’m dependent on my knotted eye masks to sleep. When I do wake from my dusty, tormented six to eight hours, I bathe in my tub, which brings to mind that well-known phrase: pond scum.

I do want to emphasize that while I may be filthy, I’m not materialistic. Almost all my furniture was found on the street a dozen years ago. I currently make a nice salary but still live like a feral graduate student. I hardly buy a thing.

So my apartment is not cluttered with possessions. It’s simply the garbage of life and the dirt of life — kipple in all its effluvial manifestations — that I can’t keep up with. But to write this piece, I had something of a minor breakthrough: I shifted the bulk of my kipple into the small child’s room off my bedroom. This has cleared some sightlines and lessened the risk of a spontaneous fire.

THIRD, I’M HALF NUTS. I used to have seasonal affective disorder every February, but now I have it year-round. Most people like to call it depression, but I prefer a more old-fashioned diagnosis — I’m losing my mind.