It is so easy to see how other people are screwing up there lives and not see our own. But, in the way I have decided to think about things, how other people are screwing up their lives is exactly the way we are screwing up our own.

My friend David provides me with this kind of feedback. He is constantly telling me how his life is going to hell. I've known him for thirty years and he has constantly been falling apart for that entire time. We exchanged snail mail occasionally for years, and with the advent of e-mail it has changed to several exchanges a day. Sometime I hate to get posts from him because I gnow that his post will be filled with his latest catastrophes. He constantly yearns for advice. It's not my particular advice he seeks for, it's advice he can get from anybody. I would swear he is the original model for the Chicken Little fairytale. A while back, I would try to comfort him, but now all he gets from me is the most sarcastic shit I can conjure. The truth of it is that all I can do is project what I would think of myself if I found myself in the predictament I interpret his posts to represent... as if I were him doing what I would do if I were able to see through his eyes. Well, I can't.

I don't have a clue about what he faces in his life. I don't gnow why his relationships and marriages fall apart. I don't gnow why his business failed. I don't gnow why his two sons get into trouble or why they don't appreciate the sacrifices he had made to make their life better. I don't gnow why he hasn't been able to devote the time his considerable artistic talents need to flourish. I'm not going to spend all day convincing him he has talent. I'm not ignoring my talent, why should I give a shit if he ignores his. He's the one who cheats himself of his talent. I don't have an opinion on how the tattoo he got to irritate his former lover mad looks or whether it's cool for a man in his mid-fifties to get tattoos. He got tattooed. It's a little too late for opinions. I only gnow I would feel idiotic if I did it.

He doesn't wanna hear that, and I don't wanna tell him that. I don't understand the reason he got the next cartoonish tattoo a week later. By now, I gnow better than to have an opinion or to offer advise that might lift him out of the abyss of his folly. If I did have advice for him, it would be advise I should take myself, and I gnow better than to take such lousy advice. Nobody gnows. Nobody...