My dawg Jonathan Landsman is visiting the next few days; expect either a four-day hiatus or a burst of creative output. For now, sate yourself with a little Conrad…

“How steady she goes,” thought Jim with wonder, with something like gratitude for this high peace of ease and sky. At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with a heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship’s keel upon the sea as the black line drawn by pencil upon the chart.