Like all of us, Matthew E. White was born into a constructed world. His unfolded out of the mingled sands of Virginia Beach and Manila, the youngest son in a family that raised him barefoot between the blurred racket of that far eastern jungle city and the backyard lightning-bug-hum of a trimmed southern lawn. His first moves, from picking up a basketball to picking up a guitar, were cast in the dual glow of these latitudes. Something between them taught him to love. Something between them taught him to time travel. Here began the lessons of Big Inner.

On that day...