We have never before suspected that memory loss could be fatal. Or at least I never suspected it. I’ve always taken it as more of a metaphor. A person suddenly realizes how much memory they are carrying around in their body, wittingly and unwittingly, on all levels. The way that cells reproduce is also memory. A kind of bodily, cellular, tissue mem

To the degree that my quest had an object, that object turned out to be learning to live with uncertainty and incapacity.

Nobody could reach my true self—my mind—which resided elsewhere. My true self was the brain that consumed books in bed each morning with an absorption so deep I often forgot to eat. And yet this “real” self was so ephemeral. It existed in perfect isolation, without witness, and seemed to change from one day to the next.