You can't be deep without a surface - Jonathan Lethem

I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.

I met someone who lives in an elevator.

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.