This wasn't the first time, and I can assure you it won't be the last of my sudden disappearances. I'd like you all to think that I am occasionally called off on super-secret assignments by an unacknowledged branch of an unacknowledged government. Or perhaps I have a penchant for being abducted by aliens. (Callisto is fabulous in the springtime. I highly recommend.)

But no. Behind this curtain is a disheveled lump of a thing, a satisficer in the guilt-minimization problem that each new day presents. For correspondences lapsed and everything else unwritten or undone, the least I can do is apologize. And thank those who do somehow manage to write and rewrite the world every day. I drink words greedily even when I offer none at all. Never, ever let them tell you there's no such thing as a free lunch.

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Update: The previous post, almost a month old, attracted some extraordinary comments. I hope to have more to say on several of the themes discussed — seignorage and the credit crisis, fiat vs commodity money and full or fractional reserve banking, etc. etc. But don't wait for me. Others have said it all already, much better than I will.

To regular readers and other imaginary friends, my apologies for the prolonged silence. I owe much a deeper apology to several very real correspondents whose mail has gone unanswered for the past few months.

I am given to strange twists and turns in my personal and professional life. My new wife and I recently took a plunge into the sea of entropy, and are only beginning to catch our breaths at the surface. We find ourselves in Lexington, Kentucky. Go figure.

My personal life remains very much in transition, but I'm hoping to resume a semi-regular writing schedule. Many thanks to any and all who take the time to read these words.

Glenn Reynolds writes...

ARNOLD KLING ON fear of confrontation: "Unfortunately, large segments of American society no longer have the ability to confront real evil. People lack the confidence and moral clarity to stand up to intimidation. . . . One can view Islamic militants as armed versions of unruly teenagers. We should not feel guilty toward them. We should demand reasonable and decent behavior from them, rather than excuse their tantrums or their crimes."

That would require thinking of ourselves as adults, which is unacceptable to many.

I want to think of "us" as the adults. In fact, in the run-up to the Iraq war, which I supported despite the clear disingenuity of the war's justification, I took a similar, explicitly paternalistic view of the world. The Europeans in particular were behaving like petulant teenagers, protesting "the system" while enjoying a vast subsidy, in financial terms and as "moral comfort", by letting America do the dirty work ensuring their security. And I viewed much of the Middle East as locked in a kind of post-Marxist, post-colonial, Che-T-shirt-style adolescent radicalism, which mixed with Islamism and pan-Arab nationalism, and unfortunately real explosives. My view at that time was that the United States was an arbiter of reason and civilation, imperfect but sufficient to enforce certain standards and keep the peace.

But, owing partly to the incompetence which with Iraq's reconstruction has been managed, but primarly to the fact the United States has allowed the soundness of its own economy to become badly undermined, I no longer believe we are credible adults. My estimation of the Europeans and the Islamic world have not changed. I've little flattering to say about either. But now the United States reminds me of an alcoholic parent trying to keep its delinquent kids in check. Tipsy, blustering America might be well-intentioned, it might in fact know better what's right and what's wrong, but its constant bumbling, its ability to throw tantrums but incapacity to lead or to guide, and its self-destructive partying on cheap capital render it an ineffective role model. The US is in for a bad financial hangover from its subsidized home-equity binging. While I have complete faith in America's ability to take a cold shower and figure out how to right itself economically, that will take several years, and those will be years in which the US will be weakened, and manifestly in crisis. America's security burdens will weigh heavily in an era of financial pain at home and escalating US dollar prices for anything and everything in foreign lands. I'm afraid we may not have the wherewithal to carry the load.

And then I am haunted by Osama Bin Laden's tale of the weak horse and the strong horse. In a world where America is weakened and Europe is senescent, let's hope that it is India, or the Pacific Rim, or even Red China itself that rides tall for a while, and not some destructive amalgam of religion, nationalism, and fascism.

For the last year or so, my personal investment portfolio has been heavily, aggressively short US equities and the US dollar. It's not working out for me so far. Both the dollar and US stocks have done fairly well, and I have significant unrealized losses, and am struggling a bit to cover my positions. I find that being short is an ethically interesting and challenging position. I find troubling my awareness that to some degree, I have a financial interest in bad things happening. A terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia leads to a spike in oil prices? Ka-ching. A hurricane in the Gulf? GM declares bankruptct? Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

That makes me feel nasty, like some evil Gargamel plotting misery and mayhem from his castle keep. Really, I'm not. Like most people, I'd like for everything to work out for everybody. So how is it that I've put myself in a position I stand to profit from other peoples' loss and misfortune? (And perhaps there is justice, the hand of God even, in the losses, rather than profits, I've made from the strategy.)

It would be hard for an expatriate not to love a book whose first line is

It should be against the law to mock someone who tries his luck in a foreign language.

So begins Budapest, by Chico Barque, delightful in English translation from the Brazilian Portuguese about an invisible man of letters who falls in love with the Hungarian language.

In Baltimore, it's morning, but I'm not in Baltimore. It's 1:30 pm here in Constanta, at the edge of darkness, or at least the Black Sea, and I having a lazy beginning to a day which, after all, still has an agenda. My finacée, R—, has not been feeling well. We stayed in bed together this morning, and after a while we both felt better. There are consolations to this gypsy's life I've made for myself.

But it gets to me, it always gets to me, and I must go and try to hawk my family's "villa". Somewhere, there must be the perfect trading company or somesuch that would love to make a home of the finest office space in Constanta, at the very heart of the city with original hardwood floors and spectacular views of the beach. My charge has remained vacant 5 months, and I am embarrassed. Oh, dear reader, you wouldn't happen to be a multinational businessperson expanding into Central Europe? Oh well. I thought not.

To the realtors' offices then, to put a fire under all their asses. I am one to talk, here in bed and it's going on 2 pm, but I have no great impression of the work ethic of the Constantan realtor. Of course they preen with the status symbols of the age, the long, dark coats and gleaming silver mobile phones, but it seems to me they put up ads and wait for phone calls, and atata tot — that's all. It's not enough, of course. So I will make myself much pushier.

R— is in the bathroom, primping and powdering herself in long rituals. She will never be persuaded, though I have tried, I have, that all this work is entirely unnecessary. So I wait my turn, to use the can, take a quick shower, then off we go, to lunch, to the realtors.

When I was a child, I was told that I was a good writer. That always seemed to me like a mixed blessing, because writing is something that mostly I did out of obligation, for school or for some other purpose. There were those times when I wrote because I wished to write. But those were usually times when something was wrong.

Interfluidity is born at a moment where I feel a spontaneous desire, perhaps even some desperation, to write. Now as it was always, I am provoked into writing because something is wrong.

Something is not flowing. Something is blocked. At one level, this is something akin to writers' block. But it is goes beyond that, because it was never my ambition to be a writer, exactly. At a broad level, I feel I have something to contribute, there is something that I'm supposed to do or have done, and I've not succeeded in doing it. Interfluidity is my attempt somehow to flow, to get all the things I am thinking and trying out there, even on a page made of electrons and other peoples' eyes.

I'm skeptical of myself these days. My recent track record has not been one of success. There are a thousand projects started and never quite completed. (This is my second blog, here's the first.) I've taken foolish risks financially, and therefore foolish losses. I've tried, so far without success, to reintegrate myself into the academic world. I'm feeling closed-in, stuck, at a loss. So here's a new page, upon which I will try yet again to flow.

I am not a humble person. There are things I have to contribute that could really matter, that could be revolutionary even. But so long as it all remains closed-up in the hollow cavity of my skull, who gives a shit? Interfluidity.

This is a placeholder, some words, forgettable, regrettable, as I've nothing to do or to say but to try to get the look right, the graphics up, all that jazz.

But it is also I suppose a new beginning, to something, a forgetting of escapades and failures past, a clean path to new misadventures. Let's see where it goes.