Sarah Sarai Descartes was not a philosopher, but a chair with one arm around me and another under my legs, carrying the puny selfhood I crawled from at 18 on knees and elbows. You can live in the ring of mist around the leaning Chinese peak if a hung-up life’s enough. Ah, the consolation of philosophy. Spinoza was the man I’d have married if I’d moved to Salinas, worked in a Woolworth’s, lived over a bar, not...