“Ed began explaining this Yo La Tengo thing, how he was listening to a record of theirs, on vinyl he emphasized, and he'd been thinking about a genre of music called shoegaze something about the body language of the shoegazer, the perpetual crumpling or downward slope of the gazer's neck, and then he changed the subject, abruptly, to nettle root—had I ever taken nettle root? I was in a subdued, semi-meditative state, but he repeated himself, louder—Mary, have you ever taken nettle root?—and I said, Um, no, to which he immediately began chanting.”