I don't think I could have planned a better vacation than the one I recently concluded.

I planned that one, but didn't follow the plan.

I was touching base with the family, then heading to the Caribbean and Mexico.

I touched base with family. Then I changed my mind.

I went fly fishing. I've never enjoyed fishing and I'd not planned to fly fish. My brother-in-law, Tony, lent me a pole and I thought I'd try it out. Now I get distracted in the middle of a busy day thinking of when I might be able to get back out and try it again. I loved it. I want more.

My sisters have made the most enjoyable human beings I've ever met. To miss a day of their lives is to miss a dozen of the most profoundly enjoyable novels and thirty-seven soul-shaking poems and sixteen beautiful songs and lots of laughs and silly indulgences. Am I crazy to live so separate from them? Yes. But here I am...

My trans-planet vacation is yet to come and still to come but I cannot regret my recent travels.

I am returning to my muddiest roots day by day. I soon shall be recognizable only to my mother's gynecologist.

Integrity

Oh how the observations of the most obscure of us can sum up the whole of the problem...

I am not absorbed by the desperate protestations of a closeted law-giver, but I succumbed to temptation and read the transcript of the late great senator's confrontation with truth.

In the end, the law-keeper says it all.

The scandal itself is minimal in the wider Order of Things, but in the background is the spirit true to both the confronted senator and the lofty Leader of the Free World. The spirit pervades the world today and stains me and my enemies alike.

A man declines to tell the truth to those who know the truth perfectly.

Embarrassing.

A man should be more than one who denies the clear truth. He should stand up and shout all truth, and especially the truth that is not so easy to see.

Embarrassing when he does not.

No wonder we're going down the tubes.