IT’S A CURIOUS THING, watching your own hand disappear, especially when you lean forward to view what should be a stump and see only your skin infinitely regressing, extending into a kind of invisible fog, vanishing into mist and memory. It’s even more curious to walk forward and find yourself in a different place altogether; a place as warm and humid as any sauna and dense with foliage, and not just any foliage but the kind you might expect to find in Hawaii or South America or the jungles of Vietnam—hothouse foliage, tropical foliage, primordial foliage—not far away but right there, by the Mohawk River, in northern California. In 1978.
It’s also curious to find yourself talking to someone you can no longer see, but whom you know is right there—only a few feet away. At least I hoped he w
