The barrage-balloon cables lay rusting across the sodden meadows, going to flakes, to ions and earth – tendons that sang in the violent nights, among the sirens wailing in thirds smooth as distant wind, among the drumbeats of bombs, now lying slack, old, in hard twists of metal ash. Forget-me-nots boil everywhere underfoot, and ants crowd, bustling with a sense of kingdom. Commas, brimstones, painted ladies coast on the thermoclines along the cliffs. Jessica has cut fringes since Roger saw her last, and is going through the usual anxiety – “It looks utterly horrible, you don’t have to say it….”

“It’s utterly swoony,” sez Roger, “I love it.”

“You’re making fun.”

“Jess, why are we talking about haircuts for God’s sake?”

—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Fabrication Yard, Dallas, Texas