Mostly, this meant a litany of sensations (“Cherry blossom. Chocolate milk. Night terrors”) and stoner insights: “It is impossible to waste energy. All you can do is pass it on.” Maybe, but my mind kept hot-air-ballooning away to my fellow-cultists, who were facing their own spiritual co-op boards. In Manhattan, we don’t stare at celebrities, so I tried to luxuriate in warm, extended eye contact with McKellen, but after a while I resented this faux intimacy. I felt like Carol from the TV show “Pluribus,” trapped by a gooey hive mind, or like Emily Webb, had she remained stuck in the Grover’s Corners cemetery for all of Act III.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter