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my father’s apprenticeship at Camel Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, his job as a sheet metal worker, my mother’s breast cancer in 1971, his infidelities, their divorce, the industrial accident in 1978, the names of the bands I played in, the dates of my university education, my ex-wife’s name, my son’s date of birth, the facts of our separation and estrangement, even the job in New York, followed by another job in the Netherlands, apparently beginning in 2009. In the inner circle was a list of works beginning with
The Ethics of Deconstruction
in 1992 and
Very Little … Almost Nothing
in 1997, both of which I had given to Michel. I don’t think he read them. No matter. The list continued with perfect accuracy until 2004 and then on into the future. It appeared that I would publish a bookon Wallace Stevens in 2005 (weirdly, this was already largely written); something called
Infinitely Demanding
in 2007, dedicated to my mother (I laughed); and
The Book of Dead Philosophers
in 2008 (or was it 2009? Hard to read). After that, the handwriting became nearly illegible. There was something written in German on mysticism, and then some final titles. Illegible. Did that say “tragedy”? Maybe. There was the name
“Hamlet”
with a question mark beside it. I had no idea. Funny, there was no mention of the text that you are now reading.
    I tried to resist looking through at the center of the circle, with the date of my death. But there it was:
“le 13 Juin, 2010, 1551h, Den Bosch, hémorragie cérébrale.”
Cerebral hemorrhage. OK. I was expecting lung cancer. But where the fuck was Den Bosch?
    * These individuals have been informed. After correspondence with them, it became clear that none of them were known to Michel’s family, which possibly explains why the boxes were sent to me in 2004. The charts are in the special collections room in the University of Essex library along with Michel’s other works, but they are sealed until the time of my own death.

 
    Initially , the news didn’t affect me much. Rather like Wittgenstein receiving word of his terminal cancer with great relief, I found some solace in knowing exactly when I would die. I simply decided to put the whole incident out of my mind. It worked. I spent the next days packing my books and emptying my office. I met with Robert twice and was evasive when asked about the memory maps. We arranged for a small Michel Haar archive to be established at the university, and I would write an introductory text for the library website. I took my memory map and a handful of Michel’s manuscripts with me and returned to the gloriously suffocating heat of my first summer in New York City.
    At first, everything was fine. I told no one about the map, for shame at taking seriously such superstitious nonsense. It was my dirty little secret. I decided to commit myself quietly to fulfilling my fate. It was all terriblyeasy. The writing of books and papers flowed in exactly the sequence that Michel had predicted without even willing them into being. I slept well. I had a series of enlivening and transient relationships. I did my job well and was popular at work. I lived contentedly in my spacious one-bedroom apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. I did a wonderful job at concealing the anxiety which unconsciously consumed me. Time passed.
    In 2007, I was awarded a fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and spent the year in the comfortable sterility of Brentwood, just west of the 405 freeway, on Sunset Boulevard. I drove a silver Volkswagen Passat and had an office overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a compliant research assistant, and the use of the UCLA library. In seven months, I had written my book on how philosophers die. It was funny, full of impressively wide reading, and utterly shallow. Prior to the financial collapse of 2008 and the withering of the publishing industry, I made decent money on book deals and rights sales. Pleased with myself, I returned to