The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.

I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?

No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.

As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock. There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.

The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.

The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.