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Saw Bladerunner off yesterday morning and the house seems quiet and blank on the ebb of last week's tide of boyish backpack and biohazards. He ran 3'15 on Sunday, in spite of a mild case of whatever the hell it was that I had steeped him in every morning over coffee.

I'm blinking and sleepy and eating Lebkuchen in the shape of little behatted Clauses -- the sainted kind, not the one you have in a contract. They strike a variety of oddly emphatic festive poses. Lined up they look like sugar-glazed Village People. YMCA, cinnamon-style. Chocolate on the bottom, what are you looking at, VOGUE. Stale crumbs of pumpkin-seed bread in one of the balcony planters, and a great tit hops in gingerly. And then a sparrow. My mind is full of tissue paper. New, clean tissue paper, to be sure, which is an improvement on the grody scum two days ago. Still muffly in there. The thoughts are all like hostages gagged with duct-tape in the boot of the getaway car. Mmfmmfmmmfff. MMMMmFFFF!

I can't hear you.