Many thanks for your interesting letter. You describe a very special sort of “anticipatory” dream such as (I and) many people have in relation to nocturnal myoclonus—the sudden jerk of a limb, or the whole body, which can jolt one awake.

  One friend of mine would always imagine that the TV set on a table at the foot of his bed was toppling off the table—he had to wake nightly to save it. The imagined leap was the dream “rationalization” of the myoclonus. For myself, the “anticipatory” (or, as I prefer to say, “rationalizing” or “explaining” or “contexting”) dream can take all sorts of forms, but all involve a sudden (imagined) movement—falling into a ditch, whatever—I suspect that such dreams can be fashioned in a (split-) second between the first unperceived, unconscious, “intimation” of the jerk and its full realization. It might be possible to test this with patient video-EEG recordings (over many nights, for it only happens with most people, occasionally).

  I read Dunne’s book[*44] as a boy—I think it (ingenious!) nonsense. I am no believer in “clairvoyance”—dreams or otherwise.

  Thanks again for writing,

  Oliver Sacks

  To Revella Levin

  January 13, 2015

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Val,

  Thanks for your good letter of Dec 7 (and an earlier one, from September).

  No, I haven’t forgotten you—you are not at all forgettable!—nor have I been ill; but I have been totally absorbed in writing an Autobiography—something much more open and personal than anything I have written; and (I hope) at least moderately honest and not too self-serving. Writing it seems to me to have some affinities with being in analysis—a sort of self-analysis, but one embedded (as perhaps all analysis should be) in one’s passions, intellectual and emotional; one’s loves (and, yes, hates); all the events and accidents which interweave with whatever central thrust one’s life has had—I find myself dropping into the past tense—and thinking sometimes I am writing about someone else, someone who is oddly familiar (in many ways), a stranger in others, but who, on the whole, I have come to like—more so than when I started.

  Who knows (at our age) what the future holds? I wish us both a happy and productive 2015.

  Love,

  Oliver

  Skip Notes

  *1 Joseph Horovitz (1926–2022), the husband of OS’s favorite cousin, Anna, was a well-known British composer and conductor.

  *2 That is, his mother’s side of the family.

  *3 Delbrück (1906–1981) was a pioneering molecular biologist.

  *4 OS frequently quoted the philosopher David Hume, and in 2015 would write a short essay (“My Own Life”) about Hume’s thoughts on death.

  *5 OS enjoyed sending his friends birthday presents, little pieces of elements whose atomic number corresponded with their age. Thus, when Younes turned twenty-one, OS sent him a piece of scandium, and for twenty-two, titanium.

  *6 A sort of shimmering or scintillating vision sometimes seen as part of a migraine aura.

  *7 Lee had enclosed the final chapter of his forthcoming book on color in plants.

  *8 OS may have meant to type “plantscape” here, as in the passage from Oaxaca Journal he is referring to.

  *9 A type of photoreceptor found in plants, bacteria, and fungi.

  *10 Not entirely true, as OS would no doubt agree. Some deaf people enjoy dancing—though they may not be able to hear melody, they can feel vibration. Other deaf people, like Evelyn Glennie, are percussionists.

  *11 During this period, OS visited a number of residential therapeutic communities for people with severe mental conditions like schizophrenic or bipolar disorder. Wendy (her last name is omitted for privacy) was a very engaging young woman whom he met at one such place. She had written to ask: “Why, if symptoms of untreated mental illness are so maladaptive (and too often socially stigmatized), has it survived the evolutionary cutting-room floor, so to speak? Am I just a mistake that somehow survived evolution’s ax?”

  *12 From the late 1990s onward, over many sushi dinners and long bike rides, Devinsky and OS formed a deep personal and professional relationship. Devinsky shared OS’s interests in antiquarian books and the history of neurology, as well as much else. They consulted together on quite a few patients.

  *13 Names have been abbreviated and certain details changed for privacy.

  *14 OS sometimes used the honorary title Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians (recently bestowed), especially when writing to other neurologists in a professional context.

  *15 Benzer (1921–2007) was a molecular biologist who studied behavioral genetics, often in fruit flies, genus Drosophila.

  *16 Columbia University created this title for OS, to give him a joint appointment at the medical school and their undergraduate campus.

  *17 Nicholl’s article “The Chemistry Set Generation” was published in Chemistry World.

  *18 Fossil evidence of this long-extinct fish was discovered on Ellesmere Island by Shubin and his colleagues in 2004. Tiktaalik has various features (such as the primordial beginnings of four limbs and wrist joints) that make it a missing link in the transition from fish to land dwellers.

  *19 Musicophilia.

  *20 The “gym” piece explored Hayes’s grief after his longtime partner’s sudden death.

  *21 OS had joined this group in his sixties, and spent time with them each winter in Curaçao, doing open-water swimming. Their coach, Doug Stern, had recently died.

  *22 Lightly crossed out in the original.

  *23 Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals is Payne’s photographic history of the monumental but now abandoned and decaying state hospitals that had once been a source of civic pride throughout the United States.

  *24 OS did write a foreword, which also appeared as an essay in The New York Review of Books,“The Lost Virtues of the Asylum.”

  *25 “Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers.”

  *26 Hart, a student of Aumann’s at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, published this interview in the journal Macroeconomic Dynamics.

  *27 Aumann, a Nobel laureate for his work in game theory, was a founder of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University.

  *28 Horgan had invited OS to an onstage interview at Stevens Institute of Technology.

  *29 Lawrence Bragg and his father, William Henry Bragg, jointly received a Nobel Prize for their work on X-ray crystallography.

  *30 Anne Mathews-Younes, Nick’s mother, who had also become a friend of OS’s.

  *31 At this time, OS was plagued by sciatica and could not tolerate sitting.

  *32 Since OS was unable to sit, either to eat or to write, we constructed a standing “desk” on his kitchen counter, using sturdy volumes of The Oxford English Dictionary.

  *33 Later retitled Hallucinations.

  *34 OS has the timing a year off here; his second visit to Manitoulin was in 1980.

  *35 Institute for the Humanities at NYU.

  *36 Goodall, who worked closely with Bekoff.

  *37 Even after Marcus Sacks’s death in 2004, OS remained close to his widow, Gay, as well as to her children and their own families.

  *38 Much of Lower Manhattan had been flooded by Hurricane Sandy.

  *39 Cobbett was a wide-ranging and influential writer who advocated self-sufficiency in his 1822 book, Cottage Economy.

  *40 Breger was the author of two books on Freud: Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision—an Analytical Biography (2000) and A Dream of Undying Fame (2009).

  *41 Björk, after reading Musicophilia, asked for a meeting with OS—she was incubating her Biophilia project at the time. This unlikely pair hit it off, and OS and Bill later visited her a couple of times in Iceland.

  *42 Young’s 1964 book.

  *43 Gerald Edelman, who had died on May 17, 2014.

  *44 An Experiment with Time (1927) by J. W. Dunne, about precognitive dreams.

  16

  Gratitude

  2015

  Over the Christmas break in 2014, OS took off with Billy for a few days in the Caribbean; he had just delivered the final manuscript for On the Move to his publishers. He felt a little unwell while he was away; he thought he might have gallstones. Less than a month later, he was diagnosed with metastatic cancer—the ocular melanoma he had lived with for nine years had spread to his liver. He knew this would be fatal, even before his doctor delivered the bad news: he had eight months to live, sixteen at the outside.

  It was immediately apparent how OS would handle this: he made a list of new priorities (“have fun, even be silly” was one of six directives to himself), and aside from time with those he loved most, writing, as always, was the most urgent and the most rewarding. In the months he had left, we—Billy, OS, and myself, along with some helpers—worked nearly around the clock, soaking up maximum time together and completing an astonishing number and range of essays. We were focused and, in a way, joyful. Time was precious, and we used it well. He sketched out a final plan for a posthumous collection, The River of Consciousness. We pulled out some articles that had been awaiting completion, and he started a few more. Altogether, 2015 would see the publication of nine new essays in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books.

  The first order of business, however, even as OS was heading back from that first doctor’s appointment, was to get word to Dan Frank, his editor at Knopf, to ask whether the publication of On the Move could be expedited, so that OS could live to see its reception. (Knopf agreed almost immediately to publish the book in early May instead of September, as they had originally planned.)

  A few days later, OS wrote, almost in a single sitting, an essay called “My Own Life,” conveying his gratitude for a life well lived, and saying, “It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.” He put the essay away for a few weeks, awaiting the right time.

  OS decided, too, that he wanted someone to record him reading passages of On the Move in his own voice—it would be his last testament as well as his coming out as a gay man.[*1]

  There was one more thing. Before he announced his diagnosis to the world, he had to tell his closest friends. He did this almost entirely in his favorite medium: letters, many dozens of them.

  To Anna and Joseph Horovitz

  February 5, 2015

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dearest Anna and Joe,

  I have some sad news. At the beginning of the year it was discovered that I had metastases (in the liver) from my eye melanoma. These things rarely metastasize, and I had nine good (and productive) years before my luck ran out. There are no really good treatments for this sort of cancer, but some treatments have a chance of slowing, though not completely stopping its advance.

  I hope that in the time remaining I can write—I write, Joe, as you compose, and nothing gives me (or others) greater pleasure. I have several nearly-completed books which I would like to complete, even tho’ I may/will not see their publication. I am exceedingly glad that I did compile an autobiography (just) before this hit me—it will be published here on May 1. […]

  Work apart, I hope that once a treatment is over (it will occupy and debilitate me a little from mid Feb to mid April) I will be able to enjoy life as well, go out, see my friends—and, sometimes, say “Farewell.” I hope then to come to England, provisionally, in May.

  You have been both so important in my life—you are my favorite people!—and I look forward so much to seeing you again in the Spring.

  Your clarinet pieces, Joe, have been on my bedside CD, since you gave them to me, and come fresh and delightful (and witty!) whenever I play them. My piano-teacher, Faine, adores them, and I encouraged her to write to you.

  I find, as David did when he had his cancer, playing the piano a great solace, and for me, as for him, it is nearly always Bach now.

  All my love to you both,

  Oliver

  To Robert B. Silvers

  February 8, 2015

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Bob,

  The Review will soon be receiving an advance reading copy of my autobiography (On the Move), basically the uncorrected MS of 12/14. The book itself—with some corrections, revisions etc—is to be published on May 1.

  Knopf advanced the publication-date from (its original) in September, because I have a serious medical problem now, and don’t know what shape I will be in, or if I will be alive, in September.

  Last month I was found to have metastases in the liver from my eye cancer. These ocular melanomas rarely metastasize, and I am very grateful to have had nine good (and productive) years before it decided to spread. There are no radical treatments for this, only some palliative treatments which may slow its spread. I feel well at the moment, but start one of the treatments (which may have some debilitating effects) next week. This week I will be making a video-reading of selections from the book, perhaps ad-libbing or improvising a bit—Ric Burns will edit this.

  I was anxious to do this, to provide images as well as words, while I was still in good shape.

  I may (or may not) (try to) publish a “final” piece about getting the news, facing death, doing (especially writing) what I can in the time I have left—it will quote Hume’s final piece (“My Own Life”) which he wrote, in a single day, when he knew he was mortally ill. “My Own Life” is honest, brave, realistic, as Hume always was—and I will use this title.

  But at this point I want only to inform a few friends (and relatives)—and I have come very much to think of you as a friend, no less than an editor (the most wonderful of editors!) over the forty-plus years we have known each other. You have been an important and special figure for me over the years—and have inspired or suggested much that I might not have written about otherwise. I think especially of Seeing Voices.

  This letter is to you, for you, and I write in confidence.

  My best,

  Oliver

  To Nicholas Naylor-Leyland[*2]

  Friend and Swimming Companion

  February 15, 2015

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Nicholas,

  I’m afraid I have some sad news to share. The cancer (melanoma) I had in my right eye, which was not supposed to metastasize, has done so—to my liver. This was discovered last month, after I had had some dark urine (I thought it was just a mild gallbladder attack).

  Treatments are only palliative; it can retard or reduce the metastases for a while—30% of my liver is now occupied by them—maybe extend survival for a few months, but that is it.

  I am, at least, extremely glad this didn’t happen earlier, and that I was granted nine good, productive years, to enjoy life, see friends and family, travel (and being me) write, and I hope I can continue to do so for at least some of the time that remains to me. I am especially glad I was able to complete my autobiography (On the Move), and that the publishers, working 24/7, will be bringing it out in a couple of months. It has a couple of your photos in it—the ones you took when we were in Curaçao—so you are listed among the photo-credits.

  Things like this make one view one’s life—and death—in a different way. I have a great sense of gratitude for all the good things, and above all, people there have been in my life—and you (since that morning we met in Curaçao, in ’96) are among them. I have so many good (and often funny) memories of times spent with you—how, sharing a cabin on one of Doug’s weekends, you kept turning up the heat, and I kept turning it down.

  I have to go into hospital tomorrow, for “embolization” of (one half of) the liver—the emboli, hopefully, will reduce its load of metastases (they are very sensitive to oxygen lack)—and if this goes well, and I can tolerate it (the metastases release cytokines, inflammatory agents etc, as they necrose) I will have the other ½ embolized in a month or so. I feel fine now—have been swimming every day, and making a film with Ric Burns—but may be knocked out a bit by the embolizations.

  But, with luck, I should bounce back, for a time, be able to enjoy life, to write, and (most important!) to see friends, those whom I love, and who have loved me. Not least—you.

  All my love,

  Oliver

  To Jerome Bruner

  February 15, 2015

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Jerry,

  It was inspiring to see you in such shape and spirits on your 99th birthday, and at the quiet lunch (with just you, Kate, and me) a couple of weeks later. And I was deeply grateful for your (2014) inscription in my (1983) copy of your autobiography In Search of Mind.