That is what I have been sitting here doing: listening to the damn dishwasher, wondering how it is I got so lucky to have a dishwasher.

I have also been going through my files. I have enough material, new & old, to come out with Notes From the Night Desk: Volume 2. It’s hard to believe… to have this amount of work, & knowing I had the dedication to do it.

I have been reading a collection of Ernest Hemingway quotes & thoughts, On Writing is the name of the little book, edited by one Larry W. Phillips. In the book is this passage: “If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is at it would truly be.”

Maybe that is why I do not try & write fiction anymore. And I don’t think Hemingway truly did. He wrote about what he knew – what he went through. Kerouac did the same thing, & Bukowski, & Mailer did, as well. Faulkner was right: Truth is better than any fiction. Or, maybe the bastard was wrong. Maybe fiction is really the truth…? We just label it as fiction to avoid lawsuits.

The point being, for me, anyway, is I feel I should write about what I know. I’m not gifted like, say, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, or any other fiction writer for that matter. Or, maybe I don’t care about such things anymore. I have a small audience of readers that seem to find my words & life entertaining enough to keep reading. And that means something to me. No, no, I may not come up with a great written idea as Jules Vern had done, but I keep up the work. I keep up the honesty.

Volume 2, dear Reader, will be a little disturbing. SECTION 2 of the book will delve into a darker part of who & what I was ten years ago. The writing, language, content & style are going to make you keep on reading, or throw the book down, damning me for the content. But what the hell… I have to keep this wonderful thing up.

Sometimes to keep going further & further on in life, you have to run in the other direction. Let’s all keep that in mind as we keep going.