'Drinks for all my friends'

[I thought it might be a nice addition to my fledgling blog to post the occasional entry from one of my beloved moleskins. Most of the excerpts were written in dive bars in the lower east side of New York as I, happily drinking alone, got comfortably numb and wrote in order that people didn't notice me staring at them (read: people watching)]

...I’m wondering about the old woman in the mangy, thrift shop fur. That lady, over there, on the broken stool who’s fingering her watery bourbon drink. She’s the one closest to the john. You can barely make her out, she's crouched and camouflaged against the tattered felt of the pool table and the neon glow of beer lights. Her eyes are scanning the 60 proof crystalline palisade of the bottom-shelf, and she is lost in thought... ‘Where is the yellow label festooned with the roses of Spain?’ She’s leans heavy on the side of her head, holding the sutures of her skull tight, like the lid of a child’s jewelry box where secrets are kept. She’s holding in the dapper fellas and the courtesy of strangers, all worn slippery and thin now, a melange of deco colors and the way she used to dance to horns. All of these memories flicker on a cathode tube, a bluster of static snow, the gentle fluttering of ticker-tape that welcomes you home.