What happens when a high school English teacher asks a fifteen year old kid still concerned with acne and how his hair looks to read a French philosopher's essay about the absurdity of life and the inescapable quest for meaning?This is a book for anyone who has ever been a kid, who ever felt alone in the midst of family and peers and a world that seemed not his own...for anyone who has felt the pain of becoming conscious and the great joy of waking up.These are honest, humorous stories about growing far from and then finding one's father, of a ten year old's first profound disillusionment, of discovering a first real friend, and of finding one's still present past in 1970s Berkeley after having left Brooklyn, Yiddish accents and Russian Jewish roots behind.Above all it's about waking up, and staying awake.About the Author: Paul Volk was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He taught philosophy for several years at Rutgers University before leaving New York for the West Coast in 1970 where, among other things, he drove a taxi cab in San Francisco and worked as a cook in an Armenian restaurant. In 1977 he and his wife, Adrienne, moved to northern Minnesota where they lived in a rural community of about fifty people until moving to the Twin Cities eight years later. At the age of forty-four he returned to school and studied theology. The Volks presently reside in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They have one daughter.