The dining room ceiling collapsed today. This is an 82-year-old plaster ceiling. What a fucking mess. There is dust everywhere. Some of my valuable collectibles got damaged: Chinese sculptor Hoo Rong made us an old man doing Tai-Chi out of clay--it was decapitated. The papier-mache hand-painted antique cabinet I picked up in Singapore? Dented. That's more than a hundred years old, and I cradled it in my lap for 25 hours' worth of flights without dinging it.

I'm not blaming Mr. Splitfoot for collapsing the ceiling; the dining room is beneath our bedroom, so yesterday's ambiguous little message might have been his attempt to warn us that we had a major plaster problem.

Last night my wife and I made love as usual. Nothing was amiss. She got up after to go tidy herself in the bathroom, I lay there looking at the goldfish tank and not really thinking about much. When she returned I hopped up and took my turn at the sink, rinsing and washing and drying. I heard her surprised shriek and rushed back. She was pointing at the center of the bed, where a nearly perfect inverted cone of white powder was stacked four inches high. I touched it and the cone crumbled quickly, and I knew immediately it was sheetrock and/or plaster dust.

"What the fuck honey?" my wife asked. I told her what it was, and immediately looked up at the ceiling to see if something had cracked. Nope.

"Mr. Splitfoot," I said. She rolled up the fitted sheet with the dust--she never could abide any litter or crumbs on the sheets--and took it downstairs. I pulled another from the closet and began working my way from corner to corner, each end popping off after I secured it as I secured the next. A lifelong frustration. The fish followed me in their tank, expectant.

When we first moved in my mother-in-law had a Catholic priest bless our house. He was a tiny Filipino with a giant cross and a sprinkler full of Holy Water. When he got up to the attic he splashed a bit of water but refused to go up the stairs. His eyes were suddenly huge there, at the foot of the stair, where that odd attic smell begins and the temperature is always way too hot or way too cool for whatever season it happens to be.

I don't buy that blessing or exoricising shit; and not for the same reasons I used to not. Hell, I used to think ghosts and spirits were hooey. Mr. Splitfoot has rained on that parade. The reason I currently don't buy that blessing or exorcising shit is because it didn't work. Last night I was doing research for a big paper on Michel Leiris--I had Post-Its and bookmarks in a couple dozen books and photocopied articles, many in French--and I foolishly left them unattended on the coffee table and got up to make some tea. Not three minutes later I found the books under the sofa and the bookmarks and Post-Its in the Kleenex box. Took me a good two hours to get everything back in place.

Up in our attic is a small cubby hole I've only been in once. Something moved in there when I went in just under ten years ago, and the only light was from a slim crack along the vented eaves. I thought it was maybe a raccoon I'd seen, or a very long and big-eyed cat. Perhaps I try to convince myself that's what it was, because the attic cubby is the only part of the house our Filipino priest didn't bless, and when I was in there I must admit I had little desire to hang around and figure things out. I wonder if Mr. Splitfoot hid in there during the sprinkling and that's how he's able to continue tormenting us?

Today Mr. Splitfoot ruined my favorite shirt. It wasn't expensive or anything--I bought it for two dollars in some run-down shithole vintage shop in upstate New York--but I loved it nonetheless. It was a two-tone gold and yellow checked buttondown shortsleeve with a flared 70's collar.

At any rate, I washed it with a half-dozen other shirts, and put them all in the dryer. When I heard the dryer stop running I went down to the basement and saw my favorite shirt on the floor under a greasy leaking can of Penn State motor oil.

I don't know why Mr. Splitfoot does such things. Why would he pick that particular shirt unless he meant to torment me? Usually his activities are much more randomly annoying.

Mr. Splitfoot upset a bag of apples today. I'd hand-picked them at Market, happy for the first fresh such fruits heralding my favorite season. I left them in a brown bag wedged between the rice cooker and the microwave, with little chance they'd topple unassisted.

Although my wife and I were the only people in the house, the large muddy footprint of a male's boot was clearly visible on the kitchen floor, green apples spread around it bruised and dirty.