Epigraph: ... it seems to the man that an immense black window opens wide before him and that his thin little gray human soul is going to fly out through this window and his lifeless body will stay lying on the bed ... And that moment, the immense and utterly black window will swing shut with a bang. -- Daniil Kharms
Author's note: Danil [sic] Kharms, 'So it is in Life', 1937, trans. Matvei Yakelvich, with Simona Schneider and Eugene Ostaeshevsky, The New Yorker, 6 August 2007; James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, 1956; and Matthew Arnold, 'Dover Beach', 1867.