each other. Hurt each other. Hate each other. How silly is that? A heart cell hating a lung cell ( A 100). The first time I saw that panel I enjoyed it as a parody of on-the-nose dialogue from a "psychological" B movie -- which it is. But this is Kaufman's double-world of mocking sincerity, and I have, over repeated viewings, come to realise this is Kaufman's modus operandi. One can read this parting gag as a metaphysical manifesto: all intimation of a mystical non-duality may only be hinted at in jokes or very subtle traces. 12 Kaufman revisits the motif of consciousness as a matryoshka doll more extensively in Synecdoche, New York ( right ). Craig's miniature stage has been replaced by Caden Cotard's vast playhouse, but the game remains the same: escape the claustrophobic "self" and achieve communication with the "other." More committed versions of the seemingly hypnotised customers of JM Inc. manifest themselves, this time as an army of overachieving actors giving up their lives for Caden's perpetually untitled creative endeavour, each one desperate to connect with something "worthy," something more significant than their "selves." Each is only too happy to discard their own persona to adopt the perpetual role of a "simulacrum" (the word is one of Caden's many unused pretentious titles, and one of Kaufman's many digs at the postmodern lexicon which, like psychoanalysis, has so profoundly influenced his thought and which he so routinely ridicules). 13 The wonderland of shifting scales of large and