Every so often, Rei and I tried to talk, with mixed results. I’ve always found it hard to speak on cue about my emotions. I am an articulate person, but only about things that don’t touch me. As soon as someone asks what I feel, I get confused. I don’t have the immediate access to my feelings that seems, to my eternal amazement, to be the birthright of most human beings. What question could be more profound than how are you? It feels lazy to say just any old thing, so I look inside myself and invariably this is a terrible idea. Searching for feelings is like being the lookout on a ship, shining a lantern into thick fog. Objects that appear close at hand recede into the murk, or reveal themselves as chimeras. Somewhere off the port bow are icebergs. At any rate, it takes me a great deal of time to formulate a response, and to the questioner it must seem as if I’ve been struck dumb. [...]