1To take seriously the proposition that disappearance is the normalorder of things.2Gene and I decided to go to the movies. Gene had a rough timearound people because of how his face worked. When he was sad hisface registered joy. When he liked someone his face registered fear. Buthe liked watching movies, where he could see but not be seen. Butwhen we got to what we thought was the right address we found thatthe movie theater had been replaced by a baseball stadium which hadin turn been replaced by a labyrinthine complex of self-storage rentalunits. And the city itself, the beautiful city that used to surround themovie theater, had been replaced by a military research facility whichhad in turn been replaced by desert. It was too late to go home, andfortunately there were a few other people there as confused as we were,who let us join their camp and shared their water with us while weconsidered what to do next.3Silence and residue of waters, radio waves, ungrounded ground.At the end of the ceremony nothing had been bought, but so much,      so much had been sold.4To wake up in the middle of a dream without the dreamending, to wonder how this could be unless it were someoneelse’s dream, or not a dream at all, but rathera pageant of sorts, a gratuitous gift. Love is theater,she said, and you thought this was nothing, just a standardpart of the seduction, but later, in the room you borrowedto make love to her, you felt, dimly, the presenceof an audience, and then you noticed that the actorassigned to play her part had been switchedwith another.5And then the corporation announced that it was about to initiate anew program called Amazon Preemptive Delivery, in which as soon asyou mentioned or even thought about a product a drone would bedispatched to deliver it to you, and the charges automatically deductedfrom your account. Average delivery time would be two and a halfminutes, meaning that your bright new purchase would often havearrived before you were even aware that you wanted it.6The man who made the announcement was wearing an Italiansuit that fit his body the way a field of wildflowersfits a hillside meadow and would respond to objectionsfrom various members of the assemblyby sighing and saying to the ceiling, “There are always,in every era, those whose primary desireis to impede the path of progress.”7A thing on a stage is perceived by so many eyes at onceit can practically disappear beneath the weight of all that seeing.8Which explains, perhaps, the dream of being actor.9No fact of the matter, in our view, as to whetheran attraction existed that brought these two figures into orbitaround each other or some bored divinityhad decided to manipulate the game, the flowof things, merely self-entertaining with the nearest-to-hand playthings he could manage to find,which happened, on this occasion, to be human.At any rate, their habit was to meet at noonin the lobby of the Prudential Building. And whatis a building, after all, but a larger, more durableset of clothes that many people can wearall at once? And what is a smile, but a wayof speaking without speaking? And what is lovemakingbut a way of saying to one’s surroundings,I, too, belong among the items that have been placed here?10Silence and residue of waters, radio waves, ungrounded ground.At the end of the ceremony nothing had changed hands, but our     hands had been somehow changed.It was our hands themselves that confronted us now, fresh-born,     unrecognized, strange.