Handbill Handout

I am sitting in a Hell's Kitchen bar having a few pints with an old friend.  It is a place he has chosen and it is far enough west that we are nowhere near the tourist horde.  I am, as I often do, complaining about my job and the general stupidity of our industry.  Old friend had little patience for this.  "It's not like we work in a coal mine" he says "It's an intellectual coal mine" says I.  "BUT IT ISN'T AN ACTUAL COAL MINE!" He's right, you know.  Besides, what the hell is an intellectual coal mine?

I just saw a very old picture of me. I’m with my brother, and I am maybe seven years old which means he is 23. He is in his full dress Army uniform and I am standing to his right, barely as tall as his armpit and I am wearing a green plaid shirt with a huge 1970’s collar and a denim jacket with a nameplate on it, the same nameplate he is wearing on his full dress uniform. We are standing in front of a brick wall and parts of two windows can be seen, two slivers at the top of the frame. There is a hedge to our right (left in the frame). We are smiling. My arm is wrapped around his waist and the tips of my fingers protrude above his left lower jacket pocket indicating that my brother was a hell of a lot thinner then than either of us are today. My hair is blonder than it is now. It’s all ahead of both of us there, all of the happy days and sad days and the overwhelming grey pile of nothing days that make up the overwhelming majority of life. Days that just lay there like a pile of unf...