Dr. Eben Alexander’s so-called afterlife

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

In 2008, Dr. Eben Alexander contracted a rare form of bacterial meningitis that, according to his account, shut down his neocortex, the seat of human consciousness. The near-death odyssey that followed was, he writes, “perhaps one of the most convincing such cases in modern history.” At the end of it, he could declare, “I didn’t just believe in God; I knew God.” No mere intimation of immortality, Dr. Alexander’s memoir carries the audacious title "Proof of Heaven" and, at time of writing, it bestrides the New York Times best-seller lists like a Colossus. When he fell ill, he was a brain surgeon, but he has given that up to pursue something more worthy of his talents, namely to “break the back of the last efforts of reductive science to tell the world that the material realm is all there is.”

I was impaled by a fence

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 23:00:00 +0000

It was turning out to be a bad year.

Over the course of a few months, I had lost an apartment, my Mac died, and my car had reached a point in its life where the mechanic wondered if it was really worth that thousand dollars to replace the master cylinder. As for work, I am a music journalist, a career that puts me at the nexus of the recording and publishing industries; in other words, at the center of the Internet’s “creative destruction,” working twice as much for half the pay.

In short, it was turning into the kind of year where impaling myself on a fence could be considered a highlight.

It also explains why I was so quick to accept an offer by one of my editors to house- and dog-sit while he and his wife were in Hawaii. I’d turned into a professional vagabond, a stayer in guest rooms, someone living on the floors and couches of human kindness. It allowed me to keep telling myself that, while my life was nowhere near middle-class, it could be middle-class adjacent. Especially when I’m asked by friends with nice houses, great record collections and generous wine cabinets.

Salon.com > Medical oddities

Dr. Eben Alexander’s so-called afterlife

I was impaled by a fence