there was this man who still thought of himself as a little kid in his mind but his mind was sharp and full of knowledge so that in front of anyone else he was an old man full of wits but he still saw himself as twelve years old and liked to drink chocolate milk with whiskey and to get drunk and play the piano at night so soft so no one would hear him play. he watched television very low with it almost muted and the colors and moving images of cartoons made him still, still enough that he would stop shaking so he could smoke cigarettes without ashing too early and the cigarette would pile ash at the tip until it was a shaky edifice of gray soft ash. outside the poplar trees moved shakingly in the wind like when he watched a movie too long; he would sit on the driveway and think about how he wanted love to obliterate him but it never came and nothing was ever stronger than he was and nothing was fast enough either, not that he cared for speed, but it counted for a lot when he thought quicker than someone else. he would satisfy for someone slower but just as intelligent but it didnt matter because it never came. there was a bigger world but that didn't matter either because it was so large that it could only be taken as what was in front of him and he knew that to be one of the great truths he had solved so there was only the trees in the wind, the night, and everything else that rushed toward him like an inescapable wave. there was not enough time for life because he knew you could take something and make it last forever just stretching it to its finest point because he believed in a sort of infinity.

at last the call came and he could sort himself out. he pried open the bottle and took long deep swigs of the delicious whiskey, its rough and then burning flavor which would mellow out after a minute to a soft glow of calm and peace and smile. he favored it over everything else but that favor changed each day as if the ability for variety in his own destruction gave it all the colors a painter has to choose from; and then don't forget that it could be mixed with anything so that it took on various depths and shapes. he knew there was something bad about it but didn't care because it truly was only bad if you cared about the bad things that it did, but if you were able to think it all out to what was truly going on around you it wasn't a bad thing just a very nice thing like having a woman or very close friends or a job that paid well and killed you worse than the liquor but bought you time which was the only thing worth buying if you wanted to know as much as possible about everything. the goal was to get so much information that at the cusp of this gathering there would be some awesome epiphany about what to do and how to go about with everything in the future. it required a lot of interaction with both the real and unreal and it also required a lot of building and taking down and looking at everything from every possible angle.

he looked himself over in the mirror while arranging his pockets and his mind for the coming rush of interaction and for the quiet to quickly spill into an array of rides that took him up and down, upside down, and around and through; he was prepared and knew only that it would soon be better than the oncoming deeper darkness of the beginning of morning, which was only good if you had spent yourself amongst people that you loved or were making to have them love you which wasnt impossible because he was very talented with people and knew how to move them. he called out to himself in the mirror and smiled testing the smile out working it amongst his lips and bones and his nose and eyes and forehead. he ran his fingers through his hair, he knew that smiling was a powerful tool and it conveyed a lot of what he felt for people much like his hands would when he was drunk enough to give them life of their own away of his mind.