I Spent Years Searching for Magic and Found God Instead

I almost sold my soul, once, although I did not fully realize it at the time. I was twenty-five, and living outside Trieste, a mournful old Habsburg port city on the border between Italy and Slovenia. My life was falling apart, for reasons that were ostensibly romantic but in all honesty more spiritual. Brexit had just happened. Trump was about to. It felt like a good time to blow things up.