"We don't have no truck with them newfangled ideas about discontinuity and synchronicity and all that crap. Around here, if a horse kicks you, you get a broken leg, and if you've got a bellyache it's because you ate Italian sausage last night. That way everybody knows where they stand."

"Well, damnation, I don't know why a thing like that had to go and happen. Still, sometimes it does happen. Sometimes a cause and effect absolutely refuse to bond.

When that happens, and we ain't got no explanation for something, we call it God's Will.

So I guess it was God's Will that this happened now with you, and I think we should kneel down for a moment of silent prayer."

Mishkin came to a long line of men. The man on the extreme left was listening to a transistor radio tuned very low. He heard something, turned to the man on his right, whispered, "You only live once. Pass it on."

Tom Mishkin and James Bradley Sooner sat down to the meal. The mouse jumped on to the table and began lugging plates around, serving mashed potatoes, cutting the roast beef. Mishkin asked, "Does he always do that?"

The mouse said, "I will admit that it is a curious situation. Allow me to explain. For one thing, I am Jewish. For another…"

"Serve the goddamned food!" Sooner roared.

"Don't get so excited," the mouse said and went back to work.

"Now, about this strange thing that happened to me," Sooner said.

The player drew three cards and threw down his hand in disgust. "I came into this game with no stake and lousy cards," he said, "but this draw is simply the end." He pulled a revolver from his pocket and shot himself in the head.

Another man moved into his place, picked up his hand, grinned, and bet his life.

Speckled landscape. The whitebird of bitterness. White eyes. White legs. Whiteout.

Like the man who set fire to his friend's overcoat upon hearing the command, "Light up a Chesterfield".

SILVER SWANS SWAP SOPHISTRIES

"How long do the hallucinations go on?" Mishkin asked.

"Not long enough."

"What is this?" Mishkin asked.

"This," Orchidius said, "is a device for altering reality."

The object was the size and shape of an ostrich's egg. It had a single toggle switch.

One side was marked, «On». The other side was marked, «Off». The switch was turned to "Off".

"Where did you get it?"

"I bought it at the Whole Earth Store," Orchidius said. "It cost $9.95."

"Does it really alter reality?"

"It's supposed to. I haven't tried it yet."

"How could it?" Mishkin asked. "How could anything alter reality for $9.95?"

"At that price it sounded too good to pass up," Orchidius said. "But I guess it can't work."

"You can't be sure," Mishkin said. "You haven't tried it yet."

"I don't suppose it's really necessary to try it," Orchidius said.

"Of course it is! Push the switch!"

"You push it."

"All right, I'll push it." Mishkin took the egg and pushed the switch «On». They both waited for several seconds.

"Nothing happened," Orchidius said.

"I guess not. But how would we know it if something did happen? I mean, whatever happened would still seem like reality to us."

"That's true."

"Maybe you'd better turn it off."

"Turn what off?" Sooner asked.

The heroic figure of a man, holding a flute in one hand, a serpent in the other. This man says, "Enter."

A horned woman mounted on a werewolf, holding a sickle in one hand, a pomegranate in the other. This woman takes your overcoat.

A man with a jackal's head, naked except for winged sandals. In one hand he holds a fragment of papyrus, in the other a bronze disc. This man says, "Immediate seating in the first three rows."

How many more reminders could anyone want?

Puzzle picture: Concealed in this rustic landscape is God. The first viewer who correctly identifies himself will receive, at absolutely no cost to himself, satori. Second prize is a weekend at Grossingers.

"How long will the hallucinations continue?" Mishkin asked.

"What hallucinations?"

Mishkin, at the age of twelve, loved God so greatly that he broke his marriage vows to himself.

Mishkin was unfaithful to himself again today, preferring the affections of a stylish sports car and a suede jacket to the ardent constancy and unstinting love of Mishkin.

"Your problem," the analyst said, "is an inability to love yourself."

"But I do love myself!" Mishkin declared. "I do! I really do!"

"Do you expect me to believe that?" the analyst asked. "I saw you looking at Sartre, Camus, Montaigne, Plato, Thoreau — to mention only a few of your lights o'love. When will you stop having these absurd, incessant, and unrewarding affairs?"

"I love myself," Mishkin wept. "I really do."

"Still smoking," the analyst noted. "Still lethargic, passive, uncontrolled. Is this the way you treat one whom you claim to love?"

Deep in the woods, Mishkin found an apostrophe. It was lost and crying softly to itself.

Mishkin took it in his arms and stroked its soft fur. The apostrophe sank its curved claws into Mishkin's shoulder. Mishkin ignored the pain and continued to smoke his cigarette.

They took his card and punched it. At once he felt relief, and then boredom, and then anxiety. He felt fine as soon as they put a new card into his hand.

The footprints continued into the woods. Mishkin followed them. He was well armed, prepared to face the fabulous beast. At last he saw it ahead of him and hastily fired. Too late he realized that he had shot one of his avatars. The avatar expired. Mishkin felt a sense of loss that became, inevitably, a sense of relief.

The Man of a Thousand Disguises sat in his temporary office and considered the problem of Mishkin and the engine part. Somehow, the two would not come together, the desired juxtaposition would not come off. There was no flow towards the desired objective.

Because of the difficulties inherent in this problem, The Man had been forced to invent himself — a deus ex machina —now standing tongue-tied in front of the audience and endeavouring to explain what was to himself still inexplicable.

Having constructed himself, The Man of a Thousand Disguises was now stuck with himself. Did he also have to explain himself? Quickly, he abolished the necessity for doing so. He only had to explain about how Mishkin and the engine part came together.

But how in fact didthey come together? Did they really have to?

"And so they came to their untimely ends, Mishkin, the cosmic jester, and the engine part, which was the cruel and paradoxical point of his joke. Yes, they perished, and at the same time the Earth fell into the sun, the sun blew up, and the entire galaxy fell through a black hole in the fabric of space-time, thus obliterating the tragi-comedy of human existence, and indeed, all dramas, all existences."