The divisions that mark my subject are three. The first is that point where the world begins--where it appears from out of the mystery of non-being. The second lies somewhere between its progeny and its future--the times between beginnings and ends where we, the beneficiaries of our being-here, come together to sing a celebration of the wonder that it happened at all, and then intone the fear of its ending. The third division is a speculation on ends--our own and the ending of the world. I use these divisions to locate a something that comes from nothing onto a historical tradition that...

This book is a narrative, interspersing prose and poetry within a compatible place. The boundary between these forms is porous, for intersections between them are not considered as a negative. Rather, they are seen as a method--a way to exemplify the various contents by bringing them into a new and less rigid order--and then to watch them change again. The contents comprise a number of issues: Mind, brain, (soul), and their philosophical divergences--fact, fiction, and their pluralities of truth--rationalism, empiricism, and categorical confusion--an intersection of belief-systems generating...