Happy climacteric! What news from along the Rialto? Little or none - other than I continue to ignore good advice. Be not solitarie, Be not idle. And I pay the price in black bile, and further my apprenticeship (long and tiresome) in lycanthropy by dint of correspondence (shouting) with the screen.

No more half hearted attempts to rekindle fascination for extremes, it's lost already in Weary Age by reading invective, polemic, tirade, jeremiad, indictment and any other tract born of either conviction or outrage. But now enthusiasm bores me, scares me off with at most, a faint smile of winsome regret at my failure to discern others' existences.

So it's equanimity now, whenever possible, sober, reasoned, measured, nonchalant, and achieving a disengaged, diffident, wry observation at all times. No frenzy, obsession, partisan loyalty or fanaticism.

More Montaigne, less Swift.

More, Burton, and less Nietzsche.

You don't have a spare copy of Dead Souls, do you?

Or any Plutarch?