A hot wind is bending limbs on the tree outside the window. 

        That tree has grown several feet during the past four years.  Swaying leaves are noticeably closer than they were.

        The first entry in this online journal is dated August 31, 2006.

        I noted those tree limbs then, but they seem to have been still that day.

        As I have frequently observed, time is an uneven medium, and in some ways that entry seems very distant.

        The tree has grown.  I’ve sailed around the world again.  And the American economy has collapsed. 

        I don’t know how much I have written here.

        Glancing back I seem to post ten to fifteen times a month, which means six or seven hundred entries.

        Whatever the number, I’m sure I’ve written more in ‘self-portrait in the present sea’ than in all my published books and articles combined.

        I’ve always liked that title.  I carried it around inside me for decades before finally finding a worthy use.

        The journal, which some call a ‘blog’ but I do not because I find ‘blog’ an ugly word and I kept a journal long before it existed, continues to fill its intended purposes; and has provided me with the unexpected pleasure of becoming acquainted with some of you whom I otherwise would not have known.

        On the remote chance that I have a drink this evening, I’ll make a mental toast to the last four years, the next four years, and you.