I have been accidentally meditating. This morning I fell asleep with my dental hygienist’s excavating wand between by front two teeth. Bora Bora was on the screen. At some point without my realizing it it was overtaken by an aerial of a small island with a glass-bottom boat moored at the point where the water slopes over one big dune and becomes suddenly dark. When I woke up with my eyes already open I was deeply emotional over the thought of being young with my sister on the cusp of the big slope, the one after which we’d have to swim.

There’s this thing called the Goenka Retreat and it’s a meditation retreat that teaches an intensive type of silent meditation called Vipassana. And now everyone is killing themselves from it. I listened to a podcast series the Financial Times did on the retreat. It begins with two British sisters from a musical