In 2018, a teacher of mine told me about a book called The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse by Dale Pendell. Pendell was a poet, ethnobotanist, and novelist, who died in early 2018, just months before I heard about his book.

I spent most of 2017 and 2018 in isolation. After getting divorced in late 2016, I moved into a cabin at the top of a windy road in Topanga Canyon, California, in hopes of starting a new life. This new life did eventually arrive, but not as quickly as I would have liked. First, the universe insisted I confront and transmute everything that had led me so far off my path. This took some time.

While I scoured the depths of my subconscious, confronting years of self-delusion and grief, the world around me seemed to be doing the same.

Trump’s election had only been the beginning. From the Women’s March and #Metoo, to the white supremacist rally in Virginia, Kaepernick’s taking a knee, raging wildfires (one of which forced me out of Topanga for nine days), devastating hurricanes, and the deadliest mass shooting in US history, the world seemed to be forcing us to confront everything we’d hoped to avoid.