from Gravity's Rainbow

Rain drips, soaking into the floor, and Slothrup perceives that he is losing his mind. If there is something comforting -- religious, if you want -- about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many if us can bear for long. Well right now Slothrup feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoia part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky.