I know now I was grieving something , the death of an ambition. I started attending reading events at Green Apple Books, my local bookstore, because it was something I liked in grad school, and I had to get myself out of the house. Going to those events was (is) a way of traveling without moving; they have afforded me an incredibly valuable... See more

BS : I used this story to tee up one of the central questions the book asks: What does it mean to have a strong and enduring sense of self when everything is always changing, including you? I am fascinated by this paradox. We all want to be solid and stable, and yet we are also constantly undergoing these shifts to our sense of self. I wanted to... See more

During the next several months I went through a wrenching re-adjustment of my world-view as I assimilated what I have just related here. There was simply no way it would fit in either the religious categories I'd grown up with or the comfortable, naive materialism I had constructed for myself. I clung to the conviction that I live in a rational,... See more