["If what is held in consciousness can be a legitimate object and we therefore can explore its themes and structures, its phenomenology roughly, does it exist? there? Don't you just have nothing? or nothingness?
"If you externalize it . . . spoken it immediately becomes a fugitive of the ether or perception, never to be precisely repeated, or written it becomes subject to predators of nether reaches, or the wild itself.
"Nevertheless, isn't it an it? some essence? As in the free but private thoughts of a prisoner in or isolated from society? 'You can take away everything else but not what I think and not what I believe'.
"I would say so. I would say no."
To wit.]
Working title: Becoming John Doe
Summary: Disappearing and shedding one's identity have their ups and downs, but the end of the game is one place that this twenty-something must discover with a little help, the place where everything begins.
A bit more detail: A ride to the next gas station turns into a personal journey for PF Donner, a well-bred twenty-something raised by his loving yet demure uncle, Joe King. Disappearing and shedding his identity have their ups and downs as PF travels to keep from being found by Connie, his entitled girlfriend, and their friend Fred, public servant turned skiptracer. Towns in the US and abroad provide the settings for PF's disappearances and the tests he must pass to elude his pursuers and forge his identity. In Austin, Nevada, far away is not far enough. In Las Vegas, New Mexico, and the hill country north and west, paranoia sets in. In Bavaria, a place that strangely seems like home, a deaf and dumb monk delivers a message that strikes home. PF realizes that each obstacle to vanishing and starting over has its practical and seemingly profound lessons. On the brink of returning to his roots and the life he knew, PF meets Rick, who shows him the dangers of running from something, and Anne Deer, who shares an insight into what she thinks he truly searches: care-less permission. PF calls it liberation at first, but then, on the brink of a life-altering decision, he comes to see it as embracing himself and the identity he manifests each moment.
