It suddenly occurs to me that the universe is an enormous decapitated clown, a giant model of a computational candy so sophisticated that anyone noticing it is instantly hypnotized. It suddenly occurs to me that, although nobody has the slightest idea, the fact is that the slightest idea has long had nobody, and this situation’s delicate implications have rarely been glimpsed for none dare guess their fundamental shape. I am suddenly aware of the conjecture that awareness is, itself, a conjecture, sustained and nurtured like a strange sort of train whose cars are ghostly and spare, whose whistle reminds one both of the ancient oceans and the dead, and whose engine is at once angelic and nefarious. This awareness is thick, and I become trapped in it like an insect in a web or a mote in a rapidly congealing tangle of flows whose substance cannot be immediately ascertained and defies all ordinary speculation. It suddenly occurs to me that you occur, to me, as suddenly, as all of this, and thus, I find departures apropos.