Elisa Gabberts The Self Unstable combines elements of memoir, philosophy, and aphorism to explore and trouble our ideas of the self, memory, happiness, aesthetics, love, and sex. With a sense of humor and an ability to find glimmers of the absurd in the profound, she uses the lyric essay like a koan to provoke the readers reflectionunsettling the role of truth and interrogating the I in both literary and daily life: The future isnt anywhere, so we can never get there. We can only disappear.