‘An obsession with meaning, at the expense of the ordinary shape of life, might be understood as psychosis, yes.’ ‘I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.’ He twiddled his pencil. His nails were very clean. ‘I am only asking questions.’ ‘So am I.’ There was a pause. I said, ‘How would you define psychosis?’ He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil: Psychosis: out of touch with reality. Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it.
