“Hi my name is… uh…”

Am I my name?

The group leader smiled warmly, but there was an air of mockery from the rest. The grins seem plastered on.

“I’m Tom.”

“Hi, Tom.”

Again, a mixture of sincerity and irony.

Including the group leader, there were twelve of them. They sat in a loosely defined circle, in uncomfortable plastic chairs. Only one chair was turned away from the center; it seemed an awkward pose for the stocky balding man, it filled the room with frustrated sexual tension. He was staring at me with clear blue eyes, urging me to speak my senseless words.

The pressure from the others was alleviated by the comfort radiating from the group leader. She was tall and thin, black hair and thick rimmed glasses. She possessed the Buddha’s unwavering half-smile. She sat directly across from me.

“Can you take us to the beginning?” she asked.

I tried to think back. How had I become familiar with the idea?

“I guess the beginning is the problem of knowledge. I don’t remember when I started thinking about it, or why… but I quickly found myself stumbling against the limits of certainty.

“Maybe I got the idea from Bertrand Russel. He must have mentioned it in passing, as a stumbling block in the path of Reason.”

“The first of many!” someone quipped.

“The more obstacles the loftier the goal,” said the man with blue eyes.

“I must have pushed the idea aside. I’ve always been introspective, narcissistic, obsessed with the idea of ’self,’ but I began to think about it in different terms. There were so many lexicons to adopt, so many ways to drown the subject in objects. I began to dissect my character traits in psychological terms, my will in philosophical terms, my body in medical terms… it was confusing but interesting, there was always something else to learn.”

She nodded politely. “The mysteries of nature are infinite.”

“You mean our ignorance is infinite,” retorted a black-clad teenager to my left.

“Or maybe our desire to keep digging,” someone else said.

“Our refusal to recognize the bottom.”

I began to get nervous.

“When did you have your first episode?”

“Well, I was in the mountains…”

“The fresh mountain air clears the mind,” said the man straddling his seat. His gaze was fixed on me.