In the first chapter of Kerry Howley's Thrown, which is probably the most bizarre and fascinating book I've read this year, a graduate student in philosophy wanders out of a conference in Des Moines, Iowa, on phenomenology-the philosophical study of consciousness-and into a mixed-martial-arts event that happens to be taking place in the same convention center. She stays, though she's not sure why, and during the last fight of the night she has an extraordinary experience. A kind of rapturous clarity comes over her: "It was as if someone had oil-slicked my synapses, such that thoughts could whip and whistle their way across my mind without the friction I'd come to experience as thought itself."
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