My friend whose name isn't Brush used to collect pieces of dog shit he would find on the city sidewalks. He would mark the location of the poops as he would see them, and then over the coming days, he would repeatedly return to the location and take notes on how the poops developed. He would watch them for signs of desiccation, hoping they would bleach in the sun. If there would be too many flies eating it, or if the weather was particularly wet and the structure would dissolve, not Brush would cross out the location of the poop and never think of it again. But when his patience paid off and a perfect sample would emerge, he would pick up the piece of poop and take it home with him, dipping it in lacquer and hanging it on a chain. When I visited him in his apartment, he had hundreds of these put up on the wall. "What do you do with these?" I asked not Brush. "They're amulets," he said. "What do they ward off?" He went quiet, nodding to himself and staring into space, but he never answered.