I began to see each person as the continuous tick of adding machine
paper. And all of these strips of paper -- the man driving alone at
two in the morning on the ever spinning Hudson Parkway, the magnate of
a great but failing bank, the plumber, the podiatrist, the owner of
the bakery that supplies scones to Cafe Jou Jou, the Chinese peasant
lost in Shanghai and reduced to begging as their economy gobbles
antiquity -- are fed into a grinder that mashes them up.  And out
comes, after ground with unknowing precision, undifferentiation. And
no one could say if its good or bad. No one would say, save for the
ignorant, who can easily say that it is too messy and full of
obsequious bitterness, or the ignorant who call it true and ineffable
goodness, and yet when asked what there is to praise about it name
qualities not evidenced by the mashing process. These points of view
are reflections of the beholder, not of the grinding.