Long Ago, Among Other Lies They Were

And Our Few Good Times Will Be Rare Because We Have The Critical Sense And Are Not Easy To Fool With Laughter

Lighting New Cigarettes, Pouring More Drinks. It Has Been A Beautiful Fight. Still Is.

That’s When I First Learned That It Wasn’t Enough To Just Do Your Job, You Had To Have An Interest In It, Even A Passion For It.

I Was Drawn To All The Wrong Things: I Liked To Drink, I Was Lazy, I Didn't Have A God, Politics, Ideas, Ideals. I Was Settled Into Nothingness; A Kind Of Non-being, And I Accepted It. I Didn't Make For An Interesting Person. I Didn't Want To Be Interesting, It Was Too Hard. What I Really Wanted Was Only A Soft, Hazy Space To Live In, And To Be Left Alone.

The Worst Thing For A Writer Is To Know Another Writer, And Worse Than That, To Know A Number Of Other Writers. Like Flies On The Same Turd.