If we are not what we eat, and we are not, nor what we read, as we are also not, nevertheless a plate of latkes and a page of Saroyan do something to limn the portrait, as the crashing waves delineate the shoreline rock.

Naah.

Skip that.

Who wants to nag about Saroyan, who needs latkes at this time of day?

Let’s get to the real stuff.

Let’s talk hair.

I have more hair at forty-seven then my father had at seventeen. Scads more. Masses. Waves and clumps. Wonderful, wonderful, hair. Oh grey, yes, certainly, sure, shot through with grey, grey aplenty, grey galore and the same again in spades, except for the beard, let me quickly mention the beard, which I should also say my father couldn’t grow one of even with the encouragement of manures and the addition of colourings to his face, two of the ploys he tried, no use, total failure, couldn’t get those bristles of his to form into anything of significance whatsoever on the round bubble of his visage; well. O.K., I admit it, this beard of mine, even though I’m only forty-seven, is basically beyond grey and into white.