Hello, Heather. My four years in Paris working on that project were a watershed in my personal history. In spite of my ridiculous workload, I had ample time to read and think. At first I chose Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard, as if to suss the enemy’s position. Then serendipitous enounters with Fjellman and Postman sent me to authors I had never read. (I was a college dropout.) I spent long lunches with Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aldo Leopold, and Loren Eisley. Then Edward Abbey took me into more radical territory. I began to gain clarity, even as I felt myself promoting the advance of “creeping surrealism” (to use Joel Achenbach’s phrase.) In the end, however, I reconsituted my faith in the real. If you will indulge me, I will share, in later posts, some of my more vivid observations and experiences.