“I mean, Ken has a policy of never taking even a one-granule snort when he's doing a show, and, though he's never said anything, it's assumed he expects the same from us; but there it is, God's terrestrial goodness, in exceedingly admirable quantity, and all of us just start giggling because, well, we just can't believe it... ; and we're all just standing there with our brains salivating, and then Kenny, y'know, while kind of looking down at the ground, Kenny hauls off and says:-Aw, what th' fuck ... ; it's our last week, i'n' it...? and he heads to the table in the corner and sits down;”

“...and as he swigged another dose, it just kind of came clear to me that the guy was nothing but sadness, really nothing but that, the weakest link in the Great Chain of Being, and that if when raging he was pathetic then in triumph he was tragic; and it also seemed as if, at some level, the guy knew this, that he also was aware that the whole package he had put together for himself had been misconceived, and that any effort to refashion it would just reconfirm its faultiness; and that the zone he inhabited was one that he himself had built, but as a barrier, of course to prevent the world from getting too close but also to forestall any seepage of self, whose effects on other folks he could too easily foresee; and that the poor loonster had become addicted to the language of communication because he knew that each word showed just how hopeless he was-and that people would sense this, and so would stay even further away ...; the guy, in short, had built himself a quicksand situation, a real no­winner, and I just figured OK: give him what he wants and keep the fuck away; don't only ignore him, but force yourself to forget; acknowledge his desire and leave him to his internal exile...”

“...and the smells, you know, the smells- I mean, if only our customers knew; they haven't got a clue about the greatness of these things when they buy them the next morning; you see, when the muffins come down the conveyor belt, and they're thrown from their pockets in the rack pans as the belt turns down-well, this paddlewheel action, if you're standing right there, flings this absolutely amazing hot aroma right into your face-from the Oat Brans, from the Banana-Rhubarbs, especially from the Double Double Chocolates; and then the muffins themselves are so warm and nice-shaped, like these great little trumpet mutes of cake like texture, and you're feeling this kind of glistening inside your cheeks, this liquidy glowing, and you're thinking that these muffins would, you know, just fit so well right in your fist, where you could take them and shove them sugar-warm right into your face-just fill up your mouth and chew and chomp, densely, sweet-texturedly, liquidly ... ; and then, you know, while you're sweet-chomping, it would be like you could smell them with your entire mouth, with your entire sinuses, with your pores...; but all this is gone by the time the muffins are distributed to the delis and diners in the morning, all dead and cold and dry; in fact, no one out there even has the beginning of a clue how good this shit is;”

“-So, OK, that's part of it, he said: but for me, the more significant thing is that, every time, the Coyote just comes back: the world somehow allows him another chance; he's always given another shot, as if he had not just killed himself; that's what matters in these films;...You see the puff of dust, but he just comes back with another, identical story, and then it all begins again; and that's why I find these films literally miraculous: they're miracle plays, pathologically repeated, in which all the vio­lence and destruction have very little to do with the central premise- this miraculous capacity for coming back;”

“-So how about you?, I said: what do you do, if you don't mind my asking; -Not at all, he said: I'm into mitosis;-Aren't we all, I said;-”

“...because the guy was oblivious, anyway, he was so into what he was doing: rooting through the ranks of rubbish, sorting it out, putting some on the central worktable, then moving some of that selected shit around, stacking it, arraying it, then circulating around the table and sizing the shitpile up, from different angles, with incendiary eyes ... ; and then, the next evening, I saw there was more shit, the guy must have been bringing it in...”

“I grieve to think that closeness requires some measure of distance as its preserver, if only as a safety measure, because it certainly seems as if connection, in a deeper sense, introduces a specter of estrangement; for to come into contact with someone is to change her—there is that certainty; it reminds me of a game that Robin told me about told me about one day after school, as we were walking down Annatta Road certainly twenty years ago: find a word, a familiar word, on a page, and then stare at it for a while, just let your eyes linger upon it; and soon enough, sometimes after no more than a few seconds, the word comes to look misspelled, or badly transcribed, or as if there are other things wrong with it; so I tried it once, with the most familiar word there is: love, first verb in the Latin primer, the word known to all men; and after no more than five seconds I could swear that it wasn't the same word I had always known: it looked odd, misshapen, and as if it had all kinds of different pronunciations, except the one I had always believed was correct, and had always used; and so there was dissonance...”