8 old macdonald celeste woke up sunday morning thinking about pipes the network of them that coursed through homes and restaurants , movie multiplexes and shopping malls , and dropped in great skeletal sections from the tops of forty-story office buildings , floor by giant floor , plunging toward an even grander network of sewers and aqueducts that ran beneath cities and towns , connecting people more viably than language , with the sole purpose of flushing the things we 'd consumed and rejected from our bodies , our lives , our dishes and crisper trays .