-I sit on the futon typing on my laptop. Around me are notebooks, books, beer bottles, cigar rings, and ash trays filled with ash. A cigar is smoldering in one of the ash trays that looks like a banana. This is where I was meant to be--my mind secluded. Yes, I am alone. Removed from what “normal” people call life; TV, family, responsibility. I ask myself if this was a choice and as much as it was I am convinced it has also been a product of my destiny. Not self-fulfilling mind you but rather something less controllable, something with great reward and yet something that is slowly breaking me down. I just hope there is enough of me left to make it to the finish line. You see the creative mind is self-destructive and while it is driven to create it to is also driven to destroy itself. So please give me hope. Please give me time so that this journey will have been worthwhile because I have nothing else.