Don't Lose This, It's My Only Copy

Abstract

I GET MIGRAINES and to relieve them have a prescription that has for its major ingredient a vasoconstrictor called ergot: it's derived from a mold that grows on wheat in damp weather, and some authorities believe the wet weather in Massachusetts in 1690-91 caused the hallucinations that led to the Salem Witch Trials the year following. That is, if you have expanded veins (especially in your brain) then ergot is for you. But if your veins are normal and you contract them with ergot, then you may see some strange things indeed. That may have been my condition a few days ago when I was poking through the ashes of our fireplace looking hopefully for a scrap or two of the best poem (in its only copy) I had ever written. My wife had burned it the previous night she said because she thought it was only scrap paper and besides I should put my stuff up. I woke with what seemed a migraine (though they're not always there when they seem to be) and I took my ergot. I was short of the nausea stage but beyond that where it's difficult to focus or to stand to look at that on which you're trying to focus. One wing of the fireplace screen was closed and reflecting my sick face as I poked uselessly in the ashes through the open wing side. The face watched me and made, as it says in the Psalms, mouths at me: mocking, talking, jeering. I watched myself out of the corner of one eye and gradually registered the information that the reflection was full-face while what I was presenting to the glass wing was nearly full profile. This sort of thing is difficult to assimilate when one has a migraine. I faced the visage but with my eyes closed. Summoning what was left of my rationality, I opened my eyes and saw that the face was pleased. Don't look, it seemed to say: Don't look. Just mouthing words. Don't look? He shook his head in agreement and the act shook me: how can one shake Yes in agreement? It's like nodding No. Yet he did it. And was even then smiling. You have contributed to our archives, he said. And I thank you. I was on hands and knees now, facing him. I had dropped the poker and supposed I looked like a dog. Archives? Yes, he said, This is how we get them-we get the only (or last remaining) copies of manuscripts when they are destroyed. Whether published or not, we get them when they are lost to you.