That was 27 years ago, a dreadful confluence of ill-fortune, sundry circumstances appearing (some new, others flaring up anew) on the same weekend. I was not yet thirty-five, and the direst issues seemed at the time as though something over half my life had come to naught. Perhaps they had, but the period so negated looms less large from here, and I have attained heights of physical cowardice I could only have dreamed of back then. If I ever go by self-slaughter, it'll only be because the impending alternatives are direr by any rational calculation.

cordially,