1/"Despite our Disneyland culture, some men around thirty-five or forty will begin to experience ashes privately, without ritual, even without old men. They begin to notice how many of their dreams have turned to ashes…

2/ A young man in high school dreams that he will be a race driver, a mountain climber, he will marry Miss America, he will be a millionaire by thirty, he will get a Nobel Prize in physics by thirty-five, he will be an architect and build the tallest building ever.

3/ He will get out of his hick town and live in Paris. He will have fabulous friends... and by thirty-five, all these dreams are ashes. At thirty-five his inner stove begins to produce ashes as well.

4/ All through his twenties, his stove burned with such a good draft that he threw in whole nights until dawn, drinking parties, sexual extravagance, enthusiasm, madness, excitement. Then one day he notices that his stove doesn't take such big chunks anymore.

5/ He opens the stove door and ashes fall out on the floor. It's time for him to buy a small black shovel at the hardware store and get down on his knees. The ashes fall off the shovel and onto the floor, and he can see the print of his bootsoles in the ashes.