My good cybermate Yuriel has been having a trying time of it lately. Reading his latest entry reminds me very much of some key wisdom I encountered back in the Summer of 1988, when I was -- dare I say it -- his age.

If I may be so presumptuous, I was in much the same frame of mind that he is now, when I came across a key piece of wisdom that changed my life; I have tried to live by it ever since.

These prophetic words were found (I kid you not) in a bathroom stall at the Heartland Cafe in Evanston IL.

There, written in an exquisite hand that would have been far more likely to be found on a wedding invitation or college degree than on a bathroom wall, was this paean to the tortured triviality, banality, and uselessness of our insulated, isolated, urbanized existence.

I, who amuse myself with the conceit of being a decent writer, was in awe of this prose, which was every bit as exquisite as the hand it was rendered in. Moved to the point of tears in fact; no small feat given the context.

I have long since forgotten these words, and the Heartland Cafe has long since repainted their bathroom, so this soul-wrenching cry is lost to us forever, a fitting tribute to the utterly ephemeral nature of creative genius.

However....

Immediately below this sublime and heart-rending treatise, written with a fat felt-tip pen in a barely legible scrawl were an entirely different set of words; words I have remembered, and share with you below. They were not written for me, but might as well have been, and I offer them up now for Yuriel, in the hopes that they serve him half as well as they have me...

Take a shit,
Get a cold beer,
And you just might pull through,
you over-educated asshole.

Cheers brother Keep the faith.

My good cybermate Yuriel has been having a trying time of it lately. Reading his latest entry reminds me very much of some key wisdom I encountered back in the Summer of 1988, when I was -- dare I say it -- his age.

If I may be so presumptuous, I was in much the same frame of mind that he is now, when I came across a key piece of wisdom that changed my life; I have tried to live by it ever since.

These prophetic words were found (I kid you not) in a bathroom stall at the Heartland Cafe in Evanston IL.

There, written in an exquisite hand that would have been far more likely to be found on a wedding invitation or college degree than on a bathroom wall, was this paean to the tortured triviality, banality, and uselessness of our insulated, isolated, urbanized existence.

I, who amuse myself with the conceit of being a decent writer, was in awe of this prose, which was every bit as exquisite as the hand it was rendered in. Moved to the point of tears in fact; no small feat given the context.

I have long since forgotten these words, and the Heartland Cafe has long since repainted their bathroom, so this soul-wrenching cry is lost to us forever, a fitting tribute to the utterly ephemeral nature of creative genius.

However....

Immediately below this sublime and heart-rending treatise, written with a fat felt-tip pen in a barely legible scrawl were an entirely different set of words; words I have remembered, and share with you below. They were not written for me, but might as well have been, and I offer them up now for Yuriel, in the hopes that they serve him half as well as they have me...

Take a shit,
Get a cold beer,
And you just might pull through,
you over-educated asshole.

Cheers brother Keep the faith.