The hangover was brutal but he didn't mind. It told him he had been somewhere else, someplace good.

The wisdom to quit is all we have left.

It was like a church in there as only the truly lost sit in bars on Tuesday mornings at 8:00 a.m.

Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait.

2 p.m. beer nothing matters but flopping on a mattress with cheap dreams and a beer as the leaves die and the horses die and the landladies stare in the halls; brisk the music of pulled shades, a last man's cave in an eternity of swarm and explosion; nothing but the dripping sink, the empty bottle, euphoria, youth fenced in, stabbed and shaven, taught words propped up to die.

Food is good for the nerves and the spirit. Courage comes from the belly – all else is desperation.

Death is nothing, brother, it's life that's hard