"Each Saturday, Eva escaped Suburbia and found the city by bus.  She visited coffee shops with walls covered in thick gobs of all colors of paint.  On those walls were self-portraits, famous people’s faces, beautiful houses perched next to the ocean, anything and everything anyone could dream of.  And anyone who entered that coffee shop could paint what they liked, in fact they were encouraged to do so, because most everyone in the city is an artistic genius.  Eva herself painted “Suburbia Burning.”  She said that in the city there are at least three apartments and two stores representing every country in the world.  Eva showed me incense she had purchased from India of the City, a pair of brown leather sandals from Zimbabwe of the City, and a porcelain plate with the image of a bull from Spain of the City.  Most everyone smokes in the city, Eva declared, so she advised me to start immediately, and coffee can be substituted for a meal.  She went to hardcore punk clubs where people wore collars and gave clones a hard time for dying so early in life.  She met a boyfriend with pierced nipples and an orange and green Mohawk who spoke German and had at one time or another broken every bone in his body.  She told me that there was hope for me, because on the most fashionable streets in the city men hold hands with men, and they’re all incredibly handsome and perhaps the most radiantly happy beings she’s ever seen…."

-From "Too Many Roads in the World"