[FOsen]

Dear NEURASTHENIC PROCRASTINATOR,

Thank you for your letter to “Ask ST Coleridge”. You cannot conceive of the Eagerness with which I began this Reply. I immediately ordered a new set of writing supplies. Before they arrived, however, I was felled by a bout of Dysautonomia, which kept me abed for some weeks.

The next month but one, I began determinedly imagining various themes for my Reply, and they have never been far from my mind over the ensuing Years.

Nevertheless, it was not until I found myself confined to this farmhouse near Porlock and self-prescribed two grains of anodyne for an indisposition of the Stomach, whereupon I fell into a 3-hour Reverie, that the sought-for Advice came to me, luminous, shimmering, and fully-formed.

In a paroxysm of Resolve, I now seize pen and paper to . . . Alack—here’s a person at the door—back in a tick!

Frank