He read and wrote challenging poetry as a young man, when he got out of college he didn't change the world with a bohemian free-as-air lifestyle -- he became a stock broker sometimes making 250,000 a month, putting most of it up his nose, with 4 kids and a beautiful wife. Then he burned all his bridges systematically ricocheting down through rehab, each one less nice than the last, divorced from the wife and her new boyfriends, and he missed his kids that he didn't know. Later he was a night clerk in a 7-11 in Laguna Beach, wearing an ugly second-hand Hawaiian shirt. He was looking at his reflection in the glass doors while it was still pitch black outside at about 4 AM, when a drunk came in and he confused the drunk for his reflection, but he was sober.
He knew he was sober then. He felt glad. He had nothing and he was so glad. He also knew he had become one of the epic inexcusable fuckups he always despised, and more. He was a piece of shit; by his hand he had ruined everything. He had no more game. He put his hands on the top of the glass counter and looked out.
Some words came into his head like they did all those years ago, but these were different words, not to impress or change him or anybody anymore. He wrote them down on a paper bag. The writing was terrible.
He could never write. But he could laugh about it. He had arrived in the present moment after taking about 35 years to get there.
"What you laughin about? " asked the drunk bum.
"Thinking." he said.
The sun came up over top-of-the-world.
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