SEEKING TRANSCENDENCE IN UPSTATE NEW YORK
My first year living and working full-time in New York City, I was filled with equal parts wonder and existential fatigue. I had landed from the southwest with romantic ideas about writing and art—idealizations that were gradually whittled down by the reality of commuting and a nine-to-five. I wanted to “figure out for myself the good life, by my own nature alone,” to crudely paraphrase Thoreau. But, rather than going inward and into the woods, I took the L train to midtown Manhattan for a copywriting job where I was “putting all the commas in the right place,” à la Holden Caulfield. One night, when my partner and I met up after work, he spoke about seeing these kaleidoscopic floaters behind his eyelids—something that,
