I just read some things I wrote in the ex-expatriation phase of all this. Lost my pace, my style, my narrative voice. It’s really difficult to conceive today–a million candlepower v some decimal albedo–what must have been going on in toto.

It’s legal. It can’t be thought fair. Glibness is a sorry trade for the time and reasons to be explaining what one had and wronged or had lost and righted. Like any other sucker, I thought it was a bargain when I inked it mine.

The rubber chicken does better at parties. I lack the hieroglyphs I used to be able to twist out of the 90-penny chain dermographia.