It
finished with the birth of my daughter under a halo of joy. But the
turning point - the point when everything came full circle - happened
during a lonely lunch downtown a week earlier. The lone-diner must have
made some impression giving several fist-pumps in a dusty
lounge area. I hope to explain why those fist-pumps hung a "halo" onto my joy a week or so later.
This is not a book review of Infinite Jest. Rather, I want to tell about reading that book in a crazy year and how it all led to a cheerful welcome to my daughter, Amalia, with the help of a British Bulldog. The process included vigorous intellectual challenges to worldview, inescapable illustrations of a farcical and flawed world through a "post-modern" lens (and the worries associated therewith), and, finally, an anchor-drop back to a more "modern" philosophical safe haven that literally parted storm clouds after a flood.
It was a long and brutal battle through serious introspection and macro contemplation shaded with an unsettling skeptical tint... until Winston Churchill reminded me to welcome Amalia to the good in our world as well.
