In my Beginning is my End

"I've already marked my beginning, the explosion of consequences, with the touch of a wine bottle and a shout of distress. But this pinprick is as notional as a point in Euclidean geometry, and though it seems right, I could have proposed [other moments]. There are always antecedent causes. A beginning is an artifice, and what recommends one over another is how much sense it makes of what follows."