SCIENCE, RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CARDS

Deep thoughts, mundane events, and esoteric tarot cards abound in this intricate memoir-cum-treatise.

Blair here conducts a tour of his ideas on many subjects. On the topic of science, he includes a brief, inconclusive discussion of the possibility that gravity might have a repulsive effect in some contexts. The author comments extensively on religion and philosophy; he’s broadly accepting of many faiths—his own journey traversed Christianity, Buddhism, and “Annihilationist Atheism”—questioning both rigid fundamentalism and a materialist view that accords life no mental or spiritual dimension. He defends his political choices, arguing that it’s not necessarily racist to vote for Donald Trump. Several chapters analyze world history, from the year 471 million B.C.E. to 1999, using tarot cards denoting abstract concepts like Unity, Duality, The Great Ultimate, and Voidness Models. Blair also revisits personal history, some of it traumatic, including his father’s death in a hospice and his own decades-long struggle with mental health problems and an involuntary commitment in 2019. The book is a digressive ramble through Blair’s many interests and memories. There are imaginative flashes in his writing, including a short story in which an extraterrestrial human-aardvark hybrid takes over Chicago’s public-access television station. His descriptions of psychiatric episodes are evocative and terrifying (“I suddenly felt physical sensations that seemed identical to what it would be like for aliens to have my brain exposed to scalpels or similar cutting instruments without anesthesia and then for the surgeons to perform extremely rapid brain surgery as part of digging for something.”) Too much space, though, is given to random, uninvolving events, like a college date with a woman who talked about USDA nutritional guidelines, and to inscrutable tarot readings. (The spread for “June 20th, 4710000000 B.C.E.” reads, “0. Nonduality &/or Plurality / Ace of Preservation / XXI. The Great Ultimate / V. Religion / 2P / 3P 4P 5P 6P 7P 4D 5D 6D / 7Cmc / H. Heartfelt / Ace of Commerce / XVII. Excavation,” with no interpretation.) Readers will find much of the book to be heavy going.

A jumbled miscellany of reminiscences, theories, and stories—some captivating, most baffling.