“All I do know,” he goes on to write, “is as we age the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier…much heavier.” But that wasn’t all he knew. By the end of that passage he moves in on the more formidable truth: “Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlived their usefulness…. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment’ll be in tears.”
