One-liners and whiskey bottles

There is a dive, nestled in the back streets of St. Paul that my best friend frequents: he has described it to me so that I can see the faded brick and smell the rich tobacco mixing with the stale odor of lives that have passed by. I can see the seats, with tears intimately known to all who frequent it, and I can see the low stage with its hot spotlights that has held everything from the worst of the Seattle scum to the surprisingly good jam bands that seem to appear every now and again.

I've been to plenty of dive bars in my day - from out of the way ones like Hangar 7 in Lake City, to Backstage Lounge and 1982 in Gainesville to this little one in downtown Orlando whose name perpetually escapes me. But there's a flavor about them that is different with each ones: Hangar 7 is the last gasping breath of inspiration for a dying town of backwoods hell, the rundown reminder of the mobsters who used to celebrate in the unpoliced roads and halls. Backstage Lounge is full of the pure musicians who don't mind out of the way bars full of rednecks and hooters' wings, not to mention the savory hicks who shoot pool and compete at the dartboards. 1982 is less dive and more dirt, and has the slickly raised eyebrows of any hardassed boozer exercising his right to drink his sorrows away, and maybe even pick up a pretty girl who wandered in off the street. I have fonder memories of the strange one in Orlando, mostly because I met a lover there for the first time, and when I think of it I smell his cologne and taste his lips while smooth jazz worthy of Armstrong plays in my ears.

And now, I sit here at my desk, lit by a single lamp as hot jazz is burning up my speakers, thinking of the dives that inspire me. For writing has grown difficult with the past months - brokenheartedness that left me uninspired and flagging at the dawn of each day. The only time when words even flicked near my fingers were late nights when the gin was cold and the rum warm, with the summer breeze flicking outside my walls and clouds scudding across the sky.
Now autumn has brought her gracious beauty to the land and soon winter shall follow, and in the death of the year I find new life in my writing, my dreams, and my heart. I love summer the most, but this past summer tried my love of life extremely, and only now does autumn's chill breath begin to revive me.

My life is not yet smooth: there are mortifications that stick in my throat and make the days hard to swallow, and I can only thank good fortune that there is some honey in each day to make the bitterness less objectionable. The ills are even worse for the fact it is my own weakness that wreaked them upon my life, but I shall continue to hope that I grow stronger from each healed wound, and that Fate shall not punish me for weakness in the face of beautifully cut lips, softly sworn lies and blue-gray eyes so full of deceit they should be put out and cast into the ocean for Poseidon alone to destroy.

So I return to my spiritual dive, and it is cluttered with gin and beer, the odd fragments of jaeger and vodka scattered on counters and other available surfaces. The chairs are all brown leather, the floor scraped with the passing of many stools and feet, the walls stained with sin and the remnants of wrathful folly. The band is playing away, reminding me of better days and so poignantly chording with my life I feel like Rick in Casablanca, wishing my forsaken love well away from my bloody joint.

But the day has grown old and though the night is young, the morrow is already fully appointed and I must consider the health of my body as well as of my mind. So I cast aside my crumpled papers filled with single lines and crossing-outs and I drain my last glass and ready myself for the shadowy land of nightmares with brief respite in solemn dreams.

Gute Nacht, meinen Freunden.