"Shine On Your Crazy Diamond." - P. Floyd

Yesterday, I entered into one of those perfect moments of "awe," beyond time. It was in the evening, I was on the back porch, the sun was starting it's descent in the west, the light was perfect, transcendant, Neil Young's album, "Zuma," ("he came dancing across the water, with his galleons and guns...") was on the player, and I was finishing up Nick Tosches book, "The King of the Jews," (not so much a biography of Arnold Rothstein, as a meditation on the mysterious, unknowable nature of man.) Nick, steps out from behind the curtain, and he tells the reader that a good friend of his, a writer (I'm guessing Hubert Selby Jr.) has just died, and Nick goes off on a tangent that has little to do with Arnold Rothstein, but much to do with why I think this guy is such a great writer.

From Nick: "I'm sure that it is the death of my friend that has brought me to pause here...But something else also occurred to me. It occurred to me that everything I knew and loved seems to be drifting away: a whole way of living, loving and being. It occurred to me that anyone who wastes one single breath is a fool. Life is all that we have, and we must live it, for real: like leopards, like beautiful creatures, like stars that pass through the nighttime sky over the wildest, darkest, deepest sea."

And then this: "Why am I writing this, and why are you reading it? What are we doing here? We should get the fuck out of here and live. By the time these words have passed to you, I will be found either at Circa Tabac on Watts Street or the Club de l'Aviation on the avenue des Champs-Elysee. Meet me there, good scout. You're buying."

For a brief moment, I think - I will find him, I will sit down and buy this man a drink and I will thank him for all that he has given me. I will thank him for keeping the flame alive, for opening me up to the mystery of a man, a life; for keeping the flame burning, madly, brightly.