We live so many lives within our lives—smaller lives with people who come and go, friends who disappear, children who grow up—and I never know which of these lives is meant to serve as the frame. But whenever I’m in the grips of a fever or infatuation there is no confusion; my “self” recedes and gives space to a nameless joy, a unified whole that preserves all the details, inseparable and distinct, next to one another. Afterward I always remember this state as one of grace. That might be one way of describing the whole, people filing in and out of my face in no particular order. No “beginning”
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