Chapter 12More and more often that year, and especially in the winter months, he found himself drawn back into such a state of unreality; at will he seemed able to remove his consciousness from the body that contained it, and he watched himself as if he were an oddly familiar stranger doing the oddly familiar things he had to do. It was a dissociation he had never felt before; he knew that should worry him, but he was stunned and couldn't convince himself that it mattered. He was forty-two years old and he could see nothing in front of him to enjoy and little behind to remember.
At forty-three, John Smith's body was almost as thin as it had been when he first walked the campus in a dazed awe that had never quite lost its effect on him. With each year the flexion of his shoulders had incre
