To let journalists tell it, I’m a “wraith” with a “checkered past” who “disappeared from the internet” on or about 2016. The truth’s not that intriguing, I’m afraid, but over a decade editing the Heisenberg Report, I’ve managed to capture the imagination of a near-and-dear cult following for whom my eccentricities and kitsch style are a source of entertainment, education and, occasionally, enlightenment.

Once upon a time I was a lot of things. Today, I’m an ersatz bon vivant touring the American South, reading, writing, dining and trying to reclaim a sociability lost to self-imposed exile. These are my diaries.