I recall over and over again through memories that haunt me, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of the harsh central fire, that the rift in my life began, or was my excessive need to punish myself which kept me alive.

When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives and actions, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain fateful way, my life began when I became enslaved.