AUTOBIOGRAPHY: The personal history of Francisco Varela as told by him on his veranda in Monte Grande, Chile, on February 17, 2001 when he was already greatly weakened by chemotherapy but still extremely present and awake, three months before he died on May 28, 2001. As very few before him have done, Francisco Varela attained levels of accomplishment in Western science as well as in Buddhist phil...

The film begins with a volcanic eruption that stranded the director, Pauline Julier, in a foreign city, among strangers. In turns, these strangers evoke legends about the formation of the continents, the blooming of the tectonic plates or the explosion of ash that provoked summers without sun.