There was a wide crush of people, a tributary of skulls and shoulders eddying past each other, jostling and splashing over steps into a horizon receded river of soul. The scene seemed to freeze in relief, a great whitewash descending, dripping and rushing from balustrades and columns to etch away from the world color and sharp shapes into a pale sea of conformity, outlined by caricatures of reason layered over papier-mache thought. From the eaves, with dark stark exclamations, lowered pinata speech ballons to dangle above the disintegrating heads and limbs, hung obscured by the reams of dust thrown up by the crumbled plaster people. The tenuous threads that held the pinata phalanx dusts as well, in a fell swoop, to burst their load in a papery cavalcade of emptiness.