A book about presence, written by someone who seems barely present with or tolerant of the reader's actual experience of reading it: that's the central irony I kept returning to, and I was never quite able to shake it.
Our culture, and often our own psyche, demands constant peak performance. But a peak implies that there is a work-up to the top and a descent back down. Without that structure, its simply a plateau. In seasonal living, we flip this narrative.
