There is a cup on the corner of the workbench, blue enamel, chipped at the rim, and inside it is a brown ring that has been building up since some time in February. I drink from it every day. At this point the ring is part of the flavor. I am not proud of this. I am also not going to wash it.

My studio is in Holešovice, third floor, the kind of building where the radiator knocks twice an hour like it wants to be let in. Half the room is salvage stacked by material, not by project, which means I spend twenty minutes every morning looking for one specific hinge I know I have. The other half is the current build, a room I am reconstructing from a demolished textile factory out in Liberec. Forty-one meters of conveyor belt, three doors, and a mountain of wooden bobbins that I am starting to suspect I bought from a man who sold me the same bobbins in 2009 under a different story. Possibly they are good bobbins. At least now they are my bobbins twice.

The cup is the only thing in here that has not been catalogued, sorted, labeled, or argued about. Everything else gets moved, borrowed, documented, insured, rejected. The cup just sits there getting worse. I think that is why I keep it.

I do not know what I would do if someone washed it. Probably nothing dramatic. Probably I would just start again.