Less Misery Through Obscurity

And because I feel I owe you (yes, you, AD) a bit more love and less unhappiness, I give you this photo. It was taken at a bar in Tribeca that I go to with the Welder, where he drinks beer while I drink bourbon and look at his crazy eyes and wonder what the hell we are doing at the edge of Manhattan, for the 347th time, laughing, eating mozzarella and not being sure, again.

I am sure, however, that I love this photograph. The building housing the bar dates back to before 1817, and old misshapen bottles line shelves by the ceiling—brown ones, clear ones as wide as the circle of my arms with spouts as narrow as the outline of my wrists. This painting sits behind the bar itself. I know it is dark, this photo, but I am only at this bar in the late evenings, sitting on a stool with a man who makes me feel present and aware that the walls surrounding us contain a kind of important revelry, a feeling that life would not be as wonderful as it is if this place did not exist, and if these people were not in it. So a dark photograph of a painted man in a bowler hat partially obscured by pint glasses feels just about right to me.

So here it is.