Escúchame. Soy tímido. No tonto. No puedo mirar a la gente a los ojos. No sé si entiendes lo que se siente. Hay todo un mundo que existe a mi alreded… - Jonathan Lethem

I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped.

The way to make a bundle in architecture right now was to devise new ways for people to pretend to gather while actually keeping their distance.

THE OLD GROWTH, THE MAPLES, turned first. They rusted one leaf at a time, where ocean breezes bruised them, late in August. Paulo, the tree warden, once told Journeyman that the first trees to change reveal a map of damage. The earliest turning were those once sickened or lightning-struck. So Journeyman saw the season as a theater of succumbing. The wind’s bite called each tree to solidarity with the weakest. Only the evergreens were refuseniks. Primordial trees, dinosaur trees — in their gummy hearts, they were deader than the trees that turned.