He lived in a hut not far from the monastery . It was tiny , an old wood hut like Jeramiah Johnson. He told me he was a crazy poet in the 1960’s. Golden Park was big time in San Francisco. He knew poets who knew poets and ended up in the Paris Review thirty years later.. We drank like no tomorrow. He showed me Big Sur. We drank ourselves silly checking out the girls in Monterey. After our meeting I thought of John Steinbeck and travels with Charley . I thought of Joe my friend of thirty years and of

the sour notes from his last letter. What can I say, it’s all gone like the waves of the last one million kalpas. After he left I found myself in some Mexican cafe drinking a coffee that was as big as a milkshake. It’s life I guess , this bullshit life that makes you want to fake every goddamn thing from zero to infinity.