Four Bottles of Beer On The Wall

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Time has not been an easy foe and I haven't had some real sleep for days. And when I finally thought I got one going well I got broken off it for some reason and realized I had been weeping in a dream I vaguely remember. I sat up and thought how I hated it when it gets to me. Sometimes it hits you hard enough that it stays through the day and sneaks up in your sleep. Some days you just never sleep at all.

It was getting late but I was out of a drink and I haven't got a good book for leverage, so I went down to this restaurant close to the beach. It was a few meters behind the sea wall and with the open-air you could hear the waves coming and going regularly. The sound of this made me want to have some steak and a beer, so I ordered for it. I thought that if I was not going have some good time the natural way as in normal days, then I might as well just buy one. I'm sure a few bottles of liquor would build up that belligerence and that's just what I needed. If it was day you would have seen the awashed wall just up ahead that held off the sea, stretched out to as far as anyone could see sitting where I was. Up ahead you'd see a harbor jut a long way off the land and it made me think of the old harbor my cousin and I used to go to when we were small and pretend we could fish so the girls would think we were really cool and all.

A cat hopped from somewhere whilst I was looking away piercing through the darkness and sat up right opposite my seat. She seemed pretty hungry just by her looks and she looked very poor and about to break and, what the heck, I said to her "Hey there! Don't you look just like me. I'll name you Misery, if it's all right. Even with animals misery loves company. Would you be a friend ang get this hideous monkey off my back?" But this no-nonsense waitress came across the way and shooed her off her seat with a menu she always held unto. She must have felt sorry for me dining in with a pussycat.

I gazed back to where the harbor ought to be seen during day and felt how odd it must feel standing there. Now I thinkI know why. It feels odd like standing upon the tip of a giant spoon and being fed down into the great tongue of the sea. My cousin and I- Oh! we used to sit at the edge of that old abandoned harbor back home, sitting side by side with very short white shorts, and imagine skate-boarding around Saturn's belt, making up stories about Halleys plunging deep from the skies like a fiery broomstick, and talking about Puff, yes, that magic dragon. And In the afternoons we would watch Camiguin Island covered beneath the haze miles ahead, above the ocean, and moon of Hanalei.

I went out past midnight and I knew deep inside I was right again. Five good bottles made me feel like a better man and coming across the ancient part of the city I came to admire the empty streets and the cold air that was the only thing between the heavens and myself. I was all light and no longer had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I thought about the cat and how brave she was to have sat with someone she had never met in her life and that she was so much braver than I ever was, and she never even had to have a drink. I walked back home and once again fell in love so easily with very simple things. I swear before I went back to bed and finally slept that night that I started to believe in God again.

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