May 24–25, 2019
Unlike the notes on the other OS Sacks books on this site, this was not — I don’t think! — read as part of the essays project with CT. Although I feel confident he has read it. I think that it was this book, my favorite of his works, that awakened my interest in him as an essayist, and let to the long detour that CT and I have taken through his ouvre.
What follows are my notes from circa 2019, in a less structured form than has been my later custom.
1. Mercury
- He dreamed of Mercury, shimmering blobs rising and falling: Mercury, element 80, is a symbol of his age.
- Other elements have taken their turn – Gold for 79 – signaling his lifelong interest in periodic table of the elements.
- He writes of a near death experience at 41, accompanied by thoughts of gratitude, and giving and giving back.
- … and of his pleasure in being alive, with positive and negative experiences…
- … and of his regrets, and what it might mean to complete a life…
- His hope for his end: to die in harness, as did Francis Crick.
- His feeling of age not as a shrinking, but “an enlargement of mental life and perspective.”
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