** Incomplete Selves Across Time **
My read of Amber Spyglass 20 years ago was less a story and more an involuntary life timestamp. I remember where I was when I finished it: a long, uninterrupted binge read, the kind of marathon read that leaves you emptied out and unsure what to name the feeling. The book left a residue of longing—emotional but not easily mapped to words.
In deference to Pullman’s ability, The Rose Field is story I considered taking vacation to finish, but the ambient velocity of the AI world makes such indulgence unrealistic. Pullman writes about metamorphosis through loss; The image of torn rose fields lingers because it mirrors something real: the sense that progress often shears away pieces you meant to keep. Pullman’s trilogy is nominally about worlds in collision, but its deeper target is identity across discontinuities. Reading it brings the question: who was I, and who am I now?
I’m not unhappy with this path—diplomacy, tech, AI. I’m grateful for all of it. But the Rose Field probed the quiet suspicion that something essential might have been misplaced along the way. Gliding between protected cars and protected hotels, doesn’t feel like the wrong life, but it doesn’t feel like the whole one either.
Crossing the express lanes should mean I’m almost home. In a different timeline it would. In this one it’s just more transient infrastructure—older graffiti, an Amazon-reworked skyline, Seattle transformed beyond the version I knew. Pullman’s story makes room for that discomfort: the gap between the person you once were and the one you’ve become, and the recognition that both are partial.
Revisiting my alma mater while closing Pullman’s trilogy made it impossible not to take stock. Old self, current self—both defined by stories. Pullman’s story made me feel vulnerable in a way worth the discomfort. I’m glad to have read it. And I’m glad to have lived enough versions of myself to feel its weight.