Kauai

In a word, unreal.

In more words, by our second day there we were already scheming to find a way back. Now, a tentative plan:

1. Achieve academic success in a variety of fields
2. Acquire capital
3. Over decades, build an empire
4. Do not retire; instead, expand empire
5. Steer ample progeny into strategic industries
6. Buy holiday mansion on beautiful tropical island
7. Remodel mansion on beautiful tropical island
8. Paradise

At least, that's what our boss has done. And how it's worked out for him.

I have never known a truer capitalist, a truer empire-builder--a truer American, really--than my octogenarian boss. And I mean that in the best possible way. I wish I could tell his story here, as it's remarkable on a million dimensions, but the last time I wrote too freely of my boss I earned myself a list of brand-new enemies.

Somehow, the man himself was conspiculously absent from that list. I still wonder whether that's because old men have no use for grudges; or, more plausibly, whether something peculiar to his character made my sins seem irrelevant to him.

I am someone who keeps grudges, who takes offense and who is often slow to forgive. I'd rather not be, but so I am. Yet I'm still young, with relatively few experiences: compared with my boss, I exist in a small space. Maybe I have no sense of perspective. Such petty blights as grudges could very well recede to insignificance against the background of a long, full life.

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Soon there will be pictures.